E-mail 11/03/2014

This week has been busy.  We are continually blessed with more and more people to teach, and even thou we are in a trio, and he tries to work in his area as much as possible, we manage to get to just about everyone in the week.  The members are getting more and more involved as it is being stressed in the stake that it is the work of the members and we are here to help.  We did manage to go on splits this week, so that helped too.

Right now, we don`t know if they will take a part of our ward or combine it with another, but it will probably happen in December.  Hopefully they will just take a part of the other ward. 

We were so happy to see a family that we have been teaching, show up for church, we didn`t think they would go, they actually showed up late because they thought it was at 10, but it was at 9, but it was like a missionaries dream.  All the members have befriended them and they talked about ways they could help them with some of the problems that they have.  They are also trying to invite them to the ward activities, but we also found out why they hadn`t gone before, it`s just that they thought that when they went to church that we would stop visiting them.

We have the first counselor of the stake presidency in our ward.  He served a mission and went to BYU and his wife is from France.  He told us that he signed up to give us food on thanksgiving day. :) it`ll be awesome unless by some unfortunate reason I get transferred next week, I don`t think so, but you never know what the Lord has in store.

Les Amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 10/27/2014

Well this week we have been busy working in two areas, or trying to find members to help out, but we are moving things along, we just have to hold out for two more weeks. We also had Stake Conference this week, but this is the first time I have not seen a Seventy come to a Stake Conference here in Mexico.  I liked it though, especially the priesthood session.  We split up in different rooms, one for the bishops and their counselors, another for the secretaries and another for the ward mission leaders, we stayed with the ward mission leaders.  The Stake President was the one teaching us, so it was nice to see them discuss some of the problems, and it has given me a few ideas to help get members involved in the work.  Like we discussed, it´s the members job to do missionary work, we are just here to help.  I don´t think there is enough time to keep this ward from getting combined with Versalles, unless we started seeing some miracles, but we are going to do the best we can.

My companion´s Spanish is improving quickly.  This week we helped him roll his R, but now he is doing it all the time so it can sound better, but it´s getting annoying, but that´s ok he´s just happy to get the language down.

I hope you like the pics I´ll be sure to send some pics of those tomatoes if we get some;)

Les amo

Elder Durrant

cerro de muerte (hill of death) it looks like a person
laying down head to the left feet to the right

 

Elder Arnold eating his first nito
(negrito(liittle black boy))
it´s a chocolate twinky

Elder Montes de oca eating his first twinky

check out what we found in our backyard,
looks like I just might be getting something
special for Christmas this year

 

 

I found a little friend at church
(I let him go out side)

E-mail 10/20/2014

WOW! what a week.  It was kind of funny because last Monday, I had an old guy yell in my face, and no it´s not something that happens a lot.  Well what happened is that we went to go visit someone that lives in his house, so when we got there he started showing us his books, it was very interesting, but we were there with a purpose, so we tried starting up the lesson, but he would cut us off and start talking.  Later on, the son of who we went to go visit, went to ask a question, but the old guy snapped at him, so his mom got upset and started yelling and he started yelling back, then in a moment he turned his anger to us and started yelling at me about an inch from my head, but I stayed calm.  He was a 70 year old man, so I wasn´t too worried, but we decided to leave.  It was funny to be honest, because he got all worked up over nothing.

Oh and we are also in a trio now, our district leader´s companion went home for sickness and there aren´t any other trios in the mission so he will be with us for the next three weeks, or until they find him a companion so now we are working in two areas.  It´s a lot of work to be thinking about both areas, hopefully we can survive.  He goes with members whenever he can, but with us both preparing investigators for baptism, we are stretched out a little.

I also haven´t mentioned that our ward is in bad conduction, by December we should be combining with another ward, they are just trying to hold out until another ward gets divided so that the stake doesn´t turn it back into a district.  I was hoping that we would have enough time to get the ward back up, but there just aren´t enough priesthood holders, but we are doing are best to help things move along.

¡Les amo!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 10/13/2014

Well this week we found a fairly high speed internet, so I decided to send pics instead of writing, so this will be a short one.
We are finding more and more people to visit.  We are looking up less active members and if they don´t live there, then we contact them.  We didn´t get anyone to go to church, our ward is at 9 and every one is asleep at that time, so it will be tough but not as tough as my last area.  We had to take a bus just to get to church and seeing as there wasn´t very many people with cars, it made it tough.  But the distance to the chapel from our house is about the same as at home, so it will be easier for the distance, and at the end of the year we will have the 11, but we will see if I´m still in this area by then.
Oh and we went bowling today, well I didn´t do so great, but seeing as I haven´t played in a while it´s understandable.
Les amo
Elder Durrant

 

 

 

 

 

 

E-mail 10/06/2014

Wow what a week, well there aren`t very many people here to teach so we have been contacting and looking up less active members and trying to get as many people to go to conference as possible. There`s a family of 4 that we are teaching that went, so we are happy :)  We hope to be able to find more people this week. The ward here is struggling a lot, the members are willing to help, just that there aren`t very many priesthood holders, we hope to help things improve.  Conference was awesome, I loved the talks and it was awesome to have the different languages.  I think it will attract more people of different languages.  To be honest I don`t like listening to translators, I like hearing their voices, so when the first Spanish speaker came on, we went and listened in Spanish.  He actually spoke in the MTC when I was there and he speaks just fine in English.  The sad thing is my companion was sick on Saturday and then he got me sick the next day, so it was all I could do to listen to the last session, but I`m feeling a lot better now.  I went and bought some chicken noodle soup, it`s been awhile since I`ve had some.  Then an Elder shared some of his licorice with us, it`s been forever since I`ve had some of that too.

Well I`ve got to go, but I hope you all had a good GC

Les Amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 09/29/2014

Wow, well first thing, I was right, I got transferred! but my companion got transferred too.  This is the third time in a row that I have left an area and my companion left also.  I am in Aguascalientes again, en boulevares.  It`s kinda weird to be back here, all the taxis are red!  I`m here with another American companion, his name is Elder Arnold, he is from Rexburg Idaho (I never get a companion from Utah:( he`s my third from Idaho, and I had another one from Nevada)  From what I saw on the map I could walk my new area in about 20 min, I did not know that there was an area so small in the mission.  My companion  just finished his training so his Spanish is still a little rough.  Right now we have only 4 families to teach, but hopefully we can change that this week. 

Right before I left, a recent convert gave me a watch that`s huge, I`ll try to send a pic.  It`s always rough leaving an area, especially when you`ve been there a long time, but it`s also nice to get a fresh start.  Plus, I`m no longer the district leader. It`s been good to serve others and I have learned a ton, but I guess the Lord finally decided that I've learned my lesson, and that I could have a break.  I`m so excited to be able to focus on my area and have a little bit of time to make something to eat at nights.  I don`t think I`ve eaten dinner in a couple of months.  Speaking of food, someone gave us tortas with meat from a cow head, which includes everything. 

¡Les Amo!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 09/22/2014

¡Tuvimos una fiesta esta semana! (we had a party this week)

Tuesday was the Independence Day here in Mexico and the ward had a party and so we brought some investigators.  There was a lot of food and we took the opportunity to give them a tour of the chapel.  There was even a flag ceremony and they sang and had the pledge of allegiance.  Everyone was making jokes about serving two masters, but I just did the salute, I didn`t even understand what they said.  I asked someone afterwards but he didn`t know either.  The next day I had to do an interview for the hermanas (sisters) in the other ward.  On Friday we brought an investigator to the baptism, and come to find out someone invited a friend of his, so we taught them both in the chapel. On Sunday we got a new Ward Mission Leader, he was a bishop of another ward before, so hopefully we can get some movement going on in this ward.  Sadly this next week is transfers so I might be writing to you from another area next week :(

The area is starting to progress a lot, we hope to have a minimum of 30 lessons this week.

Les amo

Elder Durrant