So Tired

August 23, 2014

Well work in the offices has gotten very heavy (I forgot do they say that in English? Well they do in Spanish so I'm going to say it anyways.) Brother and Sister Tobler came this week and I love working with them so much! They remind me of my grandparents on both sides of the family and it is so much fun working with them. We have been helping them get situated here in the offices and to be honest I’m not really sure why, but we have been leaving the offices late every night. We usually leave to walk home around 11, after eating a snack before bed and hanging out a little with the APs I’m usually in bed by 12, which before the mission was really good for me, but now that I have to wake up at 6:25 it’s really killing me. Some days I just feel super sleep deprived and there is really no other time to sleep for use except P-day, which we like to spend doing some thing fun. I’ve be able to work more on the coding projects and I really love doing that, it is a lot of fun and the time seems to fly when I’m coding. It makes me really excited to get back and study more. We still don’t really have any investigators who are progressing well, which makes my emails semi-boring, but I will try and fill up the email with other things that are going on here in Mexico.

First, this week as we were out working at night on Wednesday it started to hail... but not any ordinary hail this hail was coming down harder than ever and was the size of marbles... Luckily we had umbrellas to protect us and the hail that hit our legs still hurt really bad. Also I got a few holes in my umbrella but it was a funny experience. When the hail finally stopped the streets looked like they had about 2-3 inches of snow, which later melted and flooded the street. 

Secondly, this week President had interviews with everyone in the mission and I really liked the theme he chose to talk about in the interviews. We have been focused on teaching people with the end in mind, how we want families who will enter the temple and what we need to do to help them get there. During the interviews he put a twist on what we have been focusing on to apply it in our own lives. He talked about who I wanted to be at the end of my mission, and now that I have the end in mind what am I going to do right now to achieve that goal by the time November 2015 rolls around. That was something that I really liked and something that I put into practice this week during my personal studies. I have made 8 goals of who I want to be or become by the end of my mission and a few things I am going to do each week to help me achieve those goals. 

I love and miss you all, I hope you all are having fun as you start up school again and make sure to work hard. I hope you are all doing well and I love hearing from you every week. Thanks for all you do to support me and I really do love you all so much! Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Adams

Short Note

Something Taylor shared with Mark while they were emailing, that I thought was pretty cool, is that he wrote a program for the President. They needed a computer program to stitch two missionary photos together to make one companionship photo, so he researched how to write a program for it and did it. 

August 16, 2014

Not a whole lot going on this week and sorry for the lack of an update but this one will be fairly short. This week was a lot more relaxed than last week, things well be picking up soon, but for the most part this week was nothing to special. Here in the mission, President has put a huge emphasis on families. He wants us teaching full families and looking for full families to teach rather than just anyone who wants to be baptized. He wants to see family converts who will help each other stay active and enter into the temple in a year to be sealed. This week making sure to follow the advice of President, we found 4 families who are making really good progress that we are really excited about. My companion and I have been working really hard on only teaching people who are "escoido" (chosen). Here in Mexico just about anyone will let you come back and teach them as much as you want but there are a lot of people who will just listen to listen and won’t come to church or make the progress necessary to be baptized. My companion and I fell pretty hard into this last change and spent a lot of time with people who weren't progressing when we could have been looking for more people to teach who will progress. We had a few good meetings with president this week and he asked us to help him think of a replacement for my companion Elder Christensen.

Today was a pretty good P day, we went to the new aquarium in Polanco, which was really, really cool. I’ll upload a few pictures but it was a cool experience. We then went to a favorite restaurant called "La Onda". It is really well known for having amazing Tacos al Pastor and Al hambre. It is a little pricey but my companion and I splurged this Pday and had a really good meal! :) Well I feel like that is all of interesting things that happened this week. I promise I did a lot more than just that, but working here in the offices doesn’t make for really great stories, just cool, amazing, in the moment experiences with President. Well I love you all and hope you all have a great week and can’t wait to hear from you next week!!

Love,

Elder Adams

9 Month Update

August 9, 2014
Things are going really well here, I am so tired and wiped from the hard crazy week with changes. We got to meet all the new Elders and Sisters and they are HUGE!! hahaha There are 31 new Elders and Sisters and 4 of the new American Elders (of about 10) are taller than I am!! They seem like a good group of missionaries and I am excited to be able to watch their progress here in the offices. I had a good time with all the Elders that stayed in our house who were going home. It was really sad because this time all the people who were going home I knew pretty well and I am going to miss a lot. I got to see Elder Aranda, my last companion. He updated me on how Tecnologico is going and gave me a picture of one of the Sisters we spent a lot of time teaching who got baptized the week after I left (I’ll add the picture). This Wednesday was probably the craziest. We went to bed the night before at about 12 and had to wake up at 2am to take the other Elders to the airport. We got back home at about 5am, which means we got to sleep for another hour and a half until 6:25 I am still recovering from that and I feel so wiped this week, but nevertheless it was a great week. 

This week Elder Christensen and I got a new companion, Elder Rodriguez, but he was only here for about 5-6 days. We had an uneven amount of Elders in the mission, but one Elder went home early so Elder Rodriguez took his spot. We also had a really fun, cool basketball camp. President invited me to help him with the camp for one of the zones we have here in the mission. The Elders in the zone brought 12 investigators and this morning we pretty much just had a small fun basketball camp in the church.

I got the package from the family this week so thank you so much! :) I love hearing from you all and see how you are all doing. By the time Saturday rolls around I always feel the need for a "family recharge" It always feels like time to hear from my family and friends. I love my email time and afterwards I always feel excited and re energized for the week. I hope you are all doing well and I hope everything goes well with Emily moving out to Dixie State. I miss you all and love you tons, hope you have a great week!!!

Love,

Elder Adams

9 Month Update photo

Change Week

August 2, 2014

Well this week is change week, which in the mission is pretty crazy but in the offices it is even crazier! We have been so busy with tons and tons of work to do. Getting visas for all the new Elders and Sisters coming in, helping President with whatever he needs, getting new apartments for the new areas that will be opened, getting furniture and everything the missionaries need in there, and getting all the new debit cards for the new missionaries set up. There are some crazy changes going on in the mission and we are getting 31 new missionaries, which is insane. It has caused a ton of work for us but it has been fun. We haven’t been able to work in the field almost at all this week because we have been stuck in the offices getting everything set up for the new changes. 

Secondly, we went out and worked with one of the coolest members in the whole world yesterday. His name is Hermano Tajeda. He was CMO for City Bank for 30 years and is super, super rich. Right now he is taking a sabbatical to do some of the things he wants to do. He started going to school in Madrid Spain just for fun so every month he goes to Madrid for a week. He also started taking personal voice lessons because he wants to learn how to sing and is taking personal French lessons. (He speaks fluent English because he graduated from BYU and lived in the US for about 6 years.) Yesterday during our divisions I went with him and even though he has a car he has his own personal taxi chuffer. The taxi driver took us wherever we wanted to go and just was with us the whole night and at the end he took us to McDonalds for ice cream and food. He goes to the US all the time and he is just such a cool guy. 

I have come to the conclusion that the best part about the offices is working with President. He is so, so funny, so fun to be around, and is so loving. Just a quick story we were talking with him about a newer missionary who is causing him lots of trouble. This missionary is 26 and believes that all his trainers and companions should be training him better and doing a better job and do this and this and this so on. The Elder is pretty much begging President to go home but President is begging him to stay even though he has been nothing but trouble. Jokingly President was like, "I don't know why I am begging him to stay in the mission, it would be so much easier for me if he just goes home...." he then looked at me and said "Maybe I’ll just put him with Elder Grajeda, then he’ll be sure to go home..." and chuckled. For those who don't remember Elder Grajeda was my second companion here in Mexico and gives almost all of his companions a tough time and even though I grew to love him it was a hard change.

Overall the week has been hectic and stressful but I love change week. Our house for 3 days becomes a party house because it is where all the missionaries who are going home stay before they actually take off. We help President with all the new missionaries and training, training them on how the finances work, doing things for their visas, being the errand boys (dishes, getting Costco pizza, ect) We are at President’s house almost the whole time for the first 3 days of the change and it is a lot of fun. I am so excited for these changes and meeting all the new missionaries.

Well I love and miss you all, hope you are all doing well and don't forget about me here in Mexico! ;) 

Love,

Elder Adams