Thursday, January 22, 2015

Free Food! and Spiritual Stuff.


Tuesday we went to this little store to get a Popsicle because it was way hot, and the owner of the store's sister started talking to us. She was saying how she knows the missionaries. We said "cool, are you a member?" and she said no. But she was baptized last year. My companion and I did not really understand what that meant, so we kinda just laughed. She then said, "Oh this is my sisters store, go ahead and pick whatever you want". We said no thank you. She then filled a bag with 8 loafs of bread (as in huge dinner rolls). Then she gave us drinks and when we were about to leave she said, oh wait, have two cartons of milk. We were pretty stoked after that...it was a ton of free food. 
Then that night we taught sister Grace. She is Lidias daughter. She said she took a lesson from the Jehovah Witnesses the day before. We were kinda scared until she said that she took the same commitment over again that we had given her the week before. The commitment was to pray about our message. She did the same thing with the Jehovah Witnesses message and said the answer she received for the Book of Mormon and our message was distinctly different. With the Book of Mormon, she felt a warm feeling of peace. With the other, she didn't feel any of that. It was a testimony builder for her, and for us. 
Later that week, at the end of a lesson with one of our investigators, her grandpa came out and started to yell at us. He was saying we weren't Christians, and that babies do have sins so they need to be baptized. It was almost laughable, and you could tell our investigator was so embarrassed. We just smiled at him and waited for him to go back in the house. Old Catholics are the best haha. 
One cool thing that happened with the Vizcaino family is that Saturday we had a lesson about marriage with them and then committed them to pray about it. Sister Garcia (brother Vizcaino's girlfriend) the next day told us she received an answer to her prayer. She said she had a dream and in the dream her and her boyfriend were dressed in white. She felt the Holy Ghost embrace her and then two dates appeared, the 20th and the 29th. She was super excited and it looks like she will baptize as soon as they get married and hopefully, if brother Vizcaino can, he will get to baptize her. Those were the highlights from my week. Love you all!
-Elder Keyes

The Week Before Changes

So this week was "changes" and I am staying in Llano Grande and Elder Bustillo is going to Ofelia which is like twenty minutes away from me, so I will probably see him around. My new companions name is Elder Galiego, he is from Guatemala and has been in the mission for a year and a half. He seems really cool. we will see how this week goes to see if he is a hard worker or not, but I am thinking it is going to work out great. 
This week was pretty bad and good. The 6th week (the week before changes) is always pretty slow with the missionary work. Because we had a lot of appointments fall through we got to visit members to say goodbye and take pictures and such. 
We had a part member family at church, they are way cool. They just need to get married and then we can baptize his girlfriend as his wife! His "wife" is really excited about eternal families. They haven't really committed to be married yet, so we will see how that goes. We also had conference with the president this week. Then on Sunday we had crab for lunch, that was amazing, I ate like 4. They give you the whole crab here. It was pretty cool. 

Zone leaders and the Bishop

A going away cake a member made for Austin and Elder Bustillio



Sunday, January 11, 2015

Short and Sweet

We went to the mall and ice skating today. We got back a little late. I also ate turkey on Christmas eve! I hope you all had a good Christmas! 

They got to eat their turkey.
Christmas gift Exchange. His zone leader got inflatable hammers and was super excited. 
Ice Skating!
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Hellllooooo everyone!
So the holidays are over and I am almost done being a greenie. This last week was pretty cool. They were selling these dolls and wigs everywhere. Because New Years is like Halloween mixed with the Fourth of July they light the dolls on fire at midnight. Also, the men dress up like women and dance in front of cars for money...it is kind of weird haha. Everyone was in the street during the day, and all the little kids were dressed up in costumes. It was pretty cool. At night somehow everyone had giant speakers that they played both Latin and American music very loud on. It was cool. 

Now for the important stuff. This week we focused a lot on finding members to befriend out investigators and recent converts. We taught our recent convert Lydia with her daughter and son. We had a little family home evening thing with the Vaca family, and sister Araujo. It went really well. My companion and I had to leave early. They all stayed and kept talking to each other. Lydia's daughter was at church on Sunday, along with one of her other daughters so this all paid off. 

We also contacted in a part member family awhile back. We did not thing to contact again until this last week, The Vizcaino family. The dad, Carlos, let us have a meeting with his family because he really wants his wife to join the church. We kind of dropped the ball on not trying to teach them for two weeks. Anyways, we taught them the restoration lesson and why the Book of Mormon is important. We taught them again on Sunday with Carlos's sister, who is a member. We taught the plan of salvation and sister Vizcaino was really interested in eternal families. She believes its possible, and she feels he spirit when she reads the Book of Mormon, but the Catholic roots are just to deep right now. We also found out that they are not married, so that is another challenge we will have to face. 

That is pretty much everything. Love you all. 

View from their house

The dolls lit on fire