¡AL FIN!

Mon 12/10/2012 5:01 PM

Well first off, I want to thank you all for your many prayers, they have not gone to waste. As you may have seen in the picture, we had a baptism, and man was it a miracle and a half, but more of that later :) Anyways, I don't really remember all of your questions, but, Ill try to respond to the ones that I remember haha. Also, thank you all for writing me, especially Brookie and Tanner, it is really good to hear from you two! I am so excited for you Tanner for starting the cello, and yes, if you are careful, you can use mine :) To be honest that is one of the things that I have been missing the most lately is my Cello, it is definitely something that I am going to work at again when I get home with this new found love and work ethic. 

Ok, so Ill tell the story now, at least the shortish version, and the answers to questions will come later because I want to make sure that I get this in. So to start off, this guys name is Vincent, and everything that happened with him is a pure miracle. I can't remember if I told a little bit about the story behind him, so I give the quick version. Anyways, so he has been investigating the church along with others for about 9 months now, and the reason why he started is because his girlfriend is a member (flirt to convert eh;) ). Anyways, so he went to church one week with his girlfriend in the building of the AP's of this mission about a monthish ago, I am not sure. Anyway, they sent us (well, my comp and his last comp.) his name, number, and address, but for about 2 weeks they couldn't get a hold of him. Well, my first night here in Loma Hermosa we went looking for him, and when we found his apartment building he was just looking out his window, talk about a miracle! So he came down and we talked to him a little bit to find out what he knew, and ya, that 9 months paid off cause he already knew everything. So I asked him how he felt about baptism, and he said that he wanted to be baptized! It was awesome! The only problem was that this last Sunday he could go to church cause he had something that he had to do, I didn't really understand it, but that Sunday night our district leader and his comp had a baptism, so we thought it was a good idea to bring him to that one to see a baptism and 2 to have his interview, and ya, it was a good idea. I think I mentioned this last week, but after the baptism and interview I asked him how he felt, and he said that he knows that this is the true church. It was pretty powerful. Anyways, so that is the background, he comes this Sunday haha. So we had talked to him about bringing him to church with his girlfriend in the morning, and he was totally fine with that, so we show up to his house, and he isn't there. We waited like 20 minutes cause we could see lights on in his apartment, but no one came. So we went to go call him and low and behold, he was already in the chapel. So after the sacrament services, we talked a little bit, but we also had 2 other people who showed up randomly to church, so we also had to talk to them to find out who they were, and well, the next thing I know he is walking outside to the gate. So we hurry and run over to him to see where he is going, and he said ´´well, I've been fasting a lot this week and I'm really hungry, I'm going to go get something to eat real quick and come back.´´ Ya, this kid is amazing. Anyways, so all of the services end, and he still hasn't come back, so yet again we call him to figure out where he is. Well, he was at the gate waiting for his mom who wanted to see the baptism. Talk about close. So after waiting we all went inside to start the baptism, everything went great, and he got baptized! But, after the ordinance, we all found out that he forgot to bring a change of cloths, cause he had worn white pants and a white shirt to church, and was baptized in that, but totally forgot to bring a change of cloths. haha so when everyone was saying congrats and welcome, he was soaking wet. It was funny. But, he was baptized! Honestly, this was one of the biggest miracles that I have seen yet, mostly because this ward hasn't seen a baptism in over 3 months, and my companion hasn't been able to baptize anyone his entire mission, so is really is amazing that I have been blessed so much to have been able to be an instrument in the Lords hands to start to change this area around. More miracles, we are also going to have another baptism this Sunday  but that is another long story that will take a whole email to tell as well, but keep in your prayers that he, Carlos, can be baptized this coming Sunday.

Ok, so I have a little time for answers. So a little bit more about my companion. His ´´full´´ name is Adrian Alvarez, he is from Mexico, the city actually. We live like 40 minutes away from his house, so having been in the MTC for 2 months, living 40 minutes away from our house, I know how it feels haha. We really don't know when he will be leaving, for all we know he could leave tomorrow. We have heard that the changes in his mission are 6 days before ours, so we very well could be companions until the last week of this change, which is what I am praying for haha. We are actually pretty close to a lot of things, but most importantly, we are really close to Costco, a Panda Express (one out of 2 in all of the mission), a Carl's Jr., a Wendy's, and a Burger King. Oh, not to mention Walmart too. Right next to the Costco however there is a way awesome museum that I want to go see, so hopefully we will have some time next week. So I forgot to tell you that if you are going to send a package to do 2 things. One, put a picture of the Virgin Maria on it, and 2, seal it with plastic all around it. I haven't heard of anyone's packages getting stolen, and usually they only take like 1 week to get to the offices, which means for mean it takes 1 week 1 day to get to us haha. Oh, Christmas, we don't know when, how long, or what, we can do for Christmas yet, but our zone leaders said that they are going to tell us everything tomorrow at the usual meeting, so I will let you know next week.

Ok, well I need to go. I love you mom! I am excited for the packages!

With love,

Elder (papa) Noel

p.s Here is a scripture for everyone Alma 13: 27-30 and one for Brookie, Alma 27:28

Oh Boy

Mon 12/3/2012 4:32 PM

Well, the first week of the city is over, and boy was it an interesting week. So as many have asked in their letters, yes, my new area is in the city, smack dab in the middle, and mom, yes, there is a Costco  and I am a new member of this wonderful business haha :) It really is great because we were able to get pop-tarts and Costco chocolate muffins  which you know I am deeply in love with, so that is really nice :) also because I have a card now, we can go eat in the cafeteria there for the days that we receive money or pdays, which is what we did today.

Ok, now on to this week. So as I may have mentioned, the way that we are working here in mexico is completely different, we don't knock doors anymore. The way that we will be working from now on is purely by references from the members in our ward, which this past week took a little bit of thinking because well, we didn't have any haha. Since we didnt have any names from our members in the ward and we couldn't go knock doors to find new people to teach, we looked at the ward directory of all the recent converts and less active members to go re-activate them as well as ask for names, but that didnt go as well as I would have hoped. To be honest, this past week was one of the worst weeks lessons wise, we hardly taught anyone compared to my last area, solely because 1; 1 out of almost 3 people that we tried to go see ended up being just right out side of our area, and 2; 1 out of 2ish people that we went to go see werent home, so it was a little difficult the first couple days cause we really didnt know what to do some of the time, so we defintely have learned how to plan even better for this area and new way to work in  the Lord´s vinyard, but this past sunday was really good.

So as I said before, this area hasnt baptized in 2 changes, so when I got here there werent any possibles to baptize on sunday, which was really weird for me. But, we found this one 18 year old guy named Vincent my first night that well, to put it simply, is golden. His girlfriend is a member (flirt to convert right?) and he has been investigating the church for almost 9 months now, along with several other churchs. It actually turns out that he went to the ward of our AP´s but lives in out area, so the first night we went to go try to find him and low and behold another miracle, we find him just looking out his window, so we talk to him, ask him how he feels about getting baptized, and he says straight up yes, I want to be baptized. To me that was awesome, but my companion, who unfortunately hasnt had the opportunity to baptize yet, was stunned. First it was a miracle to find him, then to have him say yes to baptism, and then this past sunday we had our district leader interview him and he will be baptized this coming sunday! I am soooo excited! So I was talking to him after the interview how he felt again about the church and baptism and what not, and he said something along the lines of that he has investigated a lot of different churches, catholic, christian, jew, JW, and the LDS church, and he said that he felt a peace and tranquility in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like he didnt feel anywhere else, and he said he knows that this is the true church of Christ. It was sooo amazing and so powerful! After he said that I was a little caught off guard and didnt really know what to say haha so I just agreed with him and bore my testimony about it, and oddly enough found out that he didnt even have a Book of Mormon, so of course we taught him about that and gave him one so he could continue to grow and prepare to be baptize (that that he really needs any more).

Anyways, so that was the main miracle that we found this week, but along with that, during the last hour of church my companion and I talked with our bishop to see if we could do a little ´´activity´´ with the Elders Quorum  and the relief society, and well, it went really good. We shared some scriptures from the BOM and DC about helping others come unto Christ and that it doesnt matter what their religion is, and then asked them to write down on a piece of paper someone they knew who isnt a LDS, and well, we have work to do this week, finally, in fact, we recieved 29 names in total from doing that.

Well, I dont have much time, but here are the pictures from the last sunday in Santiago Tianguistenco with the 5 baptisms (Martin and Miguel in the first, Antonio Nacy and Carla in the last), as well as a picture of me and my new companion Elder Alvarez. I love you all so much and I am so grateful for all you do. Grandma, I got the one talk you sent from President Uchtdorf, but not the others yet. One really good thing about this area is we receive pouch the first in our zone, so I get mail one week earlier than usual :) Mom for Christmas im pretty sure I get to skype you, so if you can one send me information with an account that I can use and an account that you will be using that will be great. Oh ya, the mission address changed, so please put this up on facebook and let everyone know:

Misión México Ciudad de México Oeste

           Avenida Fuente de las Pirámides No. 1, Piso 1

Lomas de Tecamachalco, C.P. 53950

Naucalpan, Edo. de México

Well, thank you all again for your prayers and support, I love you all so much!!

Much Love,

Elder Noel