Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Twenty two years and a short email (3/30/15)

Well I turned 22 so as a result I have TONS of emails that I am responding to, which means this email will be really short. Just wanted to send somewhat of an update. First thing, a year ago Elder Herd and I baptized the Mondragon Family. I love them so much and I love hearing that they are preparing to go into the temple. Second, this week I got 3 cakes and some presents from the ward. I love the ward here, the recent converents and all the people we are teaching right now. Lastly my companion and I have 4 baptismal dates for this sunday. They are all families that I love so much that I will talk more about next week but I just wanted to talk about the happiness that comes from teaching families, all my best, and favorite converts are families that I have taught and I LOVE helping full families come to find the same happiness I have found in the gospel. Here are some photos, I can't see them so I hope they are the right ones, if not SORRY!!!

Love,

Elder Adams

Twenty two years and a short email (photos)




Monday, March 23, 2015

Two Years (3/23/15)

March 23, 2015
Wow! Well 2 years ago, this week, is when I made the decision to go back out on the mission. To this day, it has been the best decision I have ever made in my whole life!!! I love the mission with all my heart, and I love how much I have changed and how far I have come. I want to send a shout out to Tyler and Barnes and thank them for what they did for me 2 years ago. Can’t believe that they are getting home so soon but before you know it Ill be out there with them again. The mission is flying by and I can’t believe I have 7 1/2 months left.... how crazy... I also wanted to send a shout out to all my friends and family members who are having Birthdays soon, namely Madison Huish, and Emily. HAPPY BRITHDAY!!! 

Well this week flew by.... just like all the other weeks but I had some great experiences, one of those seeing Elder Herd!!! Or should I call him Collin? We had a meeting with the stake president of Lerma this week (a meeting with President Whitehead, the stake pres, the zone leaders in that stake, and the APs) and Elder Herd was in town so he came with President to say hi!! It was so awesome seeing him again. I love Elder Herd so much and to this day he is still my best companion. I learned so much from him and I am so grateful for the change I had with him. This week we worked a lot with la familia Mondragon, and the family Olvera. They are both progressing really well. This week we should be baptizing the Mondragon family (Fernando, Paloma, and Josslin). The other family (the Olvera family) are doing SOO well. The dad (Eduardo) and his kids came to church for the 2nd time this week and they LOVE the church. Eduardo stayed for all three hours, came back to see the baptism we had, and then stayed for a 2 hour Priesthood meeting. I love that family so much and I love teaching families!! I was thinking about all the people I would want to come back and visit or all the best converts I have/investigators soon to be converts, and they are ALL families. Teaching families is so great and I love the feeling of helping a complete family change their life and find the happiness the gospel supplies. 

This week I also had the chance to baptize Jorge. Jorge is an investigator of the Sisters and one of the best investigators I have ever met. He is REALLY smart, loves reading and has actually read most of the book of Mormon, almost all of Gospel Principles and the Doctrine and Covenants. Jorge and I have so much in common and we became really good friends. I had the wonderful opportunity to do his interview and he asked me if I would baptize him. I love Jorge so much and there is nothing like finding and seeing people who are so chosen getting baptized, I love it!!!

Lastly, something I haven’t done frequently enough is share my testimony. I have been getting so caught up in everything that has been going on that I rarely remember to bare my testimony of the things I am doing. I want everyone reading this to know that I know of a surety that this is the church of God, reorganized here on the earth. I know that through Joseph Smith our Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ restored their church and authority to preform the ordinances necessary to live with them again. I know without a doubt that God is our loving Heavenly Father and that I am helping him in his great and marvelous work. I am literally helping our brothers and sisters go back and live with our Heavenly Father, and that everything that God does to help us he does because he loves us and we are his children. I know this to be true, and this is the most important principle in the whole gospel, because everything else in the gospel is done for that reason. God sent his only begotten son because he loves us. He gave us prophets because he loves us, and above all has given us the way to return to him because we are his beloved children. I love you all, and hope you all have a great week and can find the same happiness that I have found here on the mission.

Love,
Elder Adams


Two Years photos





The Sweet Taste of Success (3/16/15)

March 16, 2015
Before I jump into all the great things that are happening in our area and all the success and miracles we are finding I just want to tell you guys, I love getting my shoes shinned..... ha ha there is a place in our zone where we meet up with other missionaries to do switches and for a dollar there is a guy who shines shoes SO well, Ill be sure to add a picture.

Ok, to get back on track this week, especially yesterday, was really great. My companion and I have been finding miracles like crazy while working our butts off. First off, last week we met someone named Fernando. He came to church by himself with his whole family. He was up in Huston for a little while for work and actually found the missionaries, he has gone a few times to church up there and loves it. He wants to be baptized but wanted to bring his family to church first. They have now gone 2 weeks in a row and the wife has lots of doubts and questions, but they are progressing really well. Secondly, we found a guy yesterday named Brian, who showed up to church for the first time. He had been talking with Sister missionaries over the phone and skype for the last month and they told him he should go to church, SO HE WENT! We have an appointment with him this Wednesday but we are really excited! 

This week we also had 2 baptisms. The first one was Laura.... again. Funny story…Laura was baptized by her husband about 2-3 weeks ago. Her husband had the priesthood to do it, but it never got put in the church system. He spent a while trying to get the letter he needed to validate his priesthood but he couldn’t find 2 witnesses, just the person who ordained him. After having an interview with the bishop he actually has to wait a little bit to receive the priesthood again. So I had the opportunity to baptize Laura so they can enter into the temple a year from now. I also had the chance to baptize Brenda; she is an 11-year-old daughter of a less active member that we found from one of our recent converts. Gabriel just got baptized about a month and a half ago and talked about his Sister being a member of the church also. He gave us the reference and we found her and her daughter. Brenda is really awesome and loves the church. She has lots of friends, loves the primary and is going to be a great anchor for her mom.

Lastly my companion and I found a family of four (mom, dad, 11 year old daughter and 10 year old son) who went to church for the first time yesterday and are AMAZING!!! I love this family so much and it was another miracle the way we found them. We were actually looking for someone else that we had met in the street and knocked the door that we thought was hers. A man came out speaking English and we soon found out that he was a Jehovah Witness. He was really nice and let us in for a glass of water and shared to us about how he lived in the US for a few years and learned English that way. We were talking with him and were just about ready to go, because as nice as he was he didn’t want to listen to what we had to say, when all of the sudden two kids run out of no where screaming, "look dad, they are like us" but in Spanish. Carla and Edward are the children of Eduardo (brother of the Jehovah witness we were talking too). We started talking with Eduardo and he actually lived in the US for a while (illegally) but his two kids were actually born there, and even though they don’t know English they consider themselves US citizens (because they are technically). We ended up visiting Eduardo and his family later that week and they are AMAZING!! Eduardo ended up saying to us "Good thing you never found that other girl you were looking for, because if you had, you probably never would have been able to share this message with us". The family has a baptismal date for the 12 of April and loved thier first time in church yesterday. Eduardo is sure that he has already found his answer to if the church is true or not because of all the great things that have been happening to him. HE applied the teachings he heard yesterday in church and said that he had one of the most peaceful afternoons with his family, and an afternoon without contention, something he hasn’t had in a long time. He also recently lost his job and was really excited to hear about the self-reliance classes the church was offering and actually went to the first class last night. HIs whole family is great and my companion and I love them so much!!

Well I love you all and I hope you all have a great week like the one my companion and I just had. Here are a few pictures from the week:


March 16th photos

Posing with shiny shoes


Our shiny shoes

Laura's Baptism

Brenda's Baptism

March 11, 2015

March 11, 2015
Well this week President dropped a bomb on us in our Leadership meeting. He completely changed the culture of the mission. He has been doing a good job at not trying to step on the feet of the old President, and not changing the mission too drastically but almost all the missionaries that started with the old President are gone now and so he took the time to change EVERYTHING. He put a huge emphasis on baptizing real converts. We were baptizing with 4 church attendances but now we have to do it with 5, we also had a big culture in the mission of "Sacando fechas" or going to visit someone who has the number of time in church sufficient to get baptized but doesnt wanting to and being there "taking out the baptismal date" and convincing them to get baptized. We are no longer aloud to do that and the interviews now are going to be a lot stricter, before we would baptize people who believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet but didn’t really have a testimony of him or of the book of Mormon but now we have to be a lot stricter on our interviews and really baptized people who are ready to be baptized.

My companion and I had to drop the news to the zone yesterday in our zone meeting but it went really well. I think we did a really good job and we had a really great zone meeting about how we are going to change with the mission and how we can still have lots of success but we need to do it in the right way and how we are going to do it. I am super dead now because my companion and I stayed up till about 2 am Monday night planning the zone junta.... Being a zone leader is so tiring... there are never breaks and I think I average about 5-6 hours of sleep every night but some how I still have the strength the keep going. 

This week we have 2 baptismal dates and we are really excited, we also have a few people who are progressing well and are finding lots of success in our area, working really, really hard and doing everything we can to help the people here in this area find the truth.

Well overall it was a great week, I love concilio because we learn so much and I get to see all my friends from the mission. I got to see Elder Jex, Elder Bastian and we now have 5 people from our generation in concilio as zone leaders. 

Love you all and hope you have a great week!! 

Love,

Elder Adams

March 11, 2015 photos




Monday, March 2, 2015

New Change (3/2)

March 2, 2015 New Change
New Change here in Lerma. I am staying here in Lerma but I have a new companion. His name is Elder Higbee, he is from the San Francisco area. He is a really cool guy, works really hard and has 8 months in the mission. He is a brand new zone leader so I am a little nervous just because I am going to be training him to be a zone leader and in an area that I don’t know very well. We are going to have to work our butts off but I am really excited for the change, we are pretty much opening an area but we are going to find lots of success. Elder Higbee went to BYU before the mission and actually played on the BYU team as an offensive lineman, so as you can imagine he is a big boy. He is about my height but a lot bigger than I am. Our photos are going to look really funny next to all these short Mexicans... haha

This last week has been really weird, I started to think a lot about how little time I have left... I only have 8 months left and then I will be home.... I was thinking about lots of things and how weird it would be, but the thing that made me feel the most Mexican was thinking about missing the tortillas and salsa at every meal..... Wow I think I might be half Mexican. haha. Well I have really gotten accustomed to eating tortillas and spicy salsa with EVERYTHING!!!

Overall it was a fairly normal week, I think I will have a lot more to write this week and we are going to work really hard. I will miss Elder Brimhall a lot because we honestly got along really, really well, but I think we got along a little TOO well and we weren’t as focused as we should have been.... Well I love you all and hope you have a great week!! Send you all pictures in just a little bit but this computer doesn’t have an SD card reader so I will be sending it in a few minutes.

Love,

Elder Adams

New Change photos





Lerma

February 23, 2015
Well as you all heard last week I got sent out to be a zone leader again in Lerma. I am here with Elder Brimhall and we both get along really well. The new area where we spend most of our time working is called Ocoyacac. It is a small town and the people here are really, really nice. Everyone stops to listen to us and just about anyone will let us into their house, but the whole town is REALLY catholic. There are about 5-6 HUGE catholic churches here in the pueblo which makes the work a little hard but fun at the same time. Because we are working really hard and have to put in so much to help the people (just like in any other area) but this time rather than just looking all day to try and find people who let you into the house you just have to be a really, really good teacher to help them understand the importance of our message. The zone has been struggling for a little while and for this month of Feb. we only baptized 13 as a zone, which isn’t very good... This month of March we are going to be working our butts off to help the zone find more success. 

This week my companion and I baptized one person named Laura. She is so awesome! Just a quick story about Laura. She moved in with her husband, Donny, in Chiapas about 10 years ago. They have 2 kids who are the funniest little kids ever, one who’s 9 and one who’s 6. Both boys, both love singing, dancing, and soccer. Her husband has been a member his whole life but fell a little off the course until he met her. He started doing a lot better with her and they moved up here about a year and a half ago because Donny had blood cancer. The doctors thought for sure he was going to die and they gave him 48 hours to live. He overcame the procedures and now has almost fully overcome the cancer. His wife and him have been attending church every Sunday for the past 10 months but still hadn’t gotten married. A few weeks ago they got married and this week Laura got baptized by her husband. I love the family so much. They are so funny and so much fun to be around. (I’ll be sure to attach a photo of their baptism).

Even though everything is going well in the new area my companion and I are sick as dogs, We have both had fevers the whole week, with stomach problems and lots of coughing and sore throats, its just a mix of everything this week and it has really stunk.

Overall the week went my really fast, we had a great baptism and have a few other people that are progressing pretty well that we should be able to baptize in the next upcoming weeks. Love you all and hope you have a great week!!!

Love,

Elder Adams