February 23 in Carlos A. Carillo

Wow what a week. This week was super great. We went out to work and miracles started pouring in. We found 11 people to teach this week. 4 of them came to church. These past two weeks are my best numbers for my time in the mission. What I’ve been learning is that I say “we”, but it was really just God. We went out to work, didn’t slack off or anything, and now miracles are pouring in. When it’s hard and it looks like we don’t have anything, something always happens and all of a sudden success comes.

Remember the guy who couldn’t stop smoking? He’s getting baptized this Friday. That’s super exciting. He’s really excited to be baptized and I’m super excited to see him take these steps because I don’t know.... I feel sent here to help him. 

We found a couple this week who are absolutely amazing. They don’t know how to read, and I’ve never seen anyone so poor. They’re friends of a member, and they heard him talking about how the church changed his life around in less than 5 months (he’s a recent convert). Our investigator felt the spirit super strong and now he wants to get baptized, but first he’s gotta get divorced and then married, and that’ll be really hard because well... to give you an idea of how poor they are... I won’t even talk about their house. I’ll just say this. Yesterday they had NO MONEY. No joke. Literally nothing. Like, zero pesos. And no food or water. He works, but it’s a tough job and they’re in a really hard situation. I don’t know how, but I know that the Lord will provide so that they can be baptized. Thankfully they were able to receive food and supplies from the church yesterday. 

In other news: I’m a little sick with diarrhea and feel like crap again. Oh well. It happens. 

Spiritual thought: Do what’s right and have faith and work hard and when you have success, give the glory to God, and it’ll keep coming.

Love you guys, have a great week!!!! 

February 16 in Carlos A. Carillo

Woooowwwww..... Well Tuxtapec is way different than all my other zones. It’s also way cool. This may be my favorite area, we’ll see.

Stuff that’s happened this week? Well, what more to say than it was a super good week. Numbers wise, it was the best week I’ve ever had. We went out and worked our guts out this week. We only found 5 people, and none of them came to church, but the resources to find people are here. I just gotta get to know the area a little better and then were going to start seeing a ton of success. But, in the time I’ve been here, we’ve already found basically 3 people who are almost certainly going to get baptized this transfer. (Actually make that 5. We found 2 more last night.) That’s super cool. I know this week we’re going to find more people and have more success, because the Lord directs the work.  

Something that I am seeing as I study the Bible more and more, is that God doesn’t change. He does things the same way without end because His way is perfect. The thing that He’s always done is call prophets. From the days of ADAM He has called prophets. They have always been men who are taught by Him, His gospel, and then go to teach it to His people. Then, the people listen, but after a time reject the prophets, many times killing them. Because they don’t want to return to God in this moment, He either lets them be, or, if they’re too wicked, He destroys them. Then He sends another prophet. This is basically the Old Testament.

Then in the New Testament Jesus came.

Well, they killed him, our Savior. Then, they killed the apostles, and destroyed the foundations of the church that He (Jesus) had created as a part of his new law (Sermon on the Mount teaches the new law, which supercedes the law of Moses. It tells how the church was created in Ephesians.) And so, with the death of the apostles, the truth was taken from the earth.

But, like always, God loves us and so he called a new prophet, Joseph Smith, and gave him the power to translate the Book of Mormon so that all might read it and know that he really was a prophet, and that, as was promised, the true church of Christ has been restored and will never be taken from off the earth again. To this day we have living prophets that guide this church below the hand of Christ. That’s the way He established it, with prophets and apostles. That’s the way it has to be. And if there are prophets, there must be more scripture, because god is the same always. He has always commanded his prophets to write his word, and so we will always have more scripture if we have prophets (aka true church of Christ) and the scripture will always say the same thing: faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. And "anything more or less than this is not my doctrine."

Soooo yeah. Just wanted to put that. I like the Bible.

February 9 in Carlos A. Carillo

Wow so this week was really crazy. My new area, Carlos A. C’arrillo, is like the suburbs (only suburbs don’t exist here) of a small city called Cosamaloapan. I think it’s spelled like that. In this town the focus of work is a giant sugar factory. They grow sugar cane in the surrounding areas and then they bring it all to this massive plant and it works on making sugar, day and night, without stop. Many men here work there, in three shifts: from 2pm-10pm, 10pm-6am, and 6am-2pm, I believe. Something like that. There are always massive trailers filled to the brim with sugar cane. Really close to the factory its SUPER loud and smells so sweet that it’s sickening. Eewww. Me and my district are super far away from everyone else. To go to zone classes and stuff we have to take a 2 hour train ride to Tuxtapec, the nearest city, which is actually in Oaxaca (another Mexican state, not Veracruz). 

Anyways, enough about that. We’ve been working super hard to find people. And we have! We found this investigator named Omar. He works the night shift at the factory and so is always really tired. He said he’d come to church with us, but when we came to his house to pick him up, he was super tired and wanted to sleep. (Church is at 9 in the morning, and he had worked late because he’s new there, up til 8 or something.) We promised him that if he came to church his sleepiness would be taken away. He came. And when we returned home with him, he told us that it was exactly how we said it’d be: the moment he entered the church, all the sleep was taken from his eyes and he was completely awake for the whole meeting. 

I know that these things could not happen if God did not exist. These are very real occurrences. The leaders of this church (the prophet and apostles) are literally authorized of God to lead us on this earth, and I know that God is at our head. This is His church, that He has restored through a prophet, and the gospel is the only way to have lasting peace.  

This photo is from wikipedia.

February 2 in Carlos A. Carillo

Wow so A LOT has happened this week. First off, the week in La Laguna: We started off with NOTHING. We were completely dry when we started the week, no investigators, no nothing. So, we went to contact. The first half of the week we just talked with people. Then, in the second half, we began returning to the houses we had contacted previously and we started having LOADS of success! Then we baptized Karen and her family that same day!!!

I’m super excited for what’s going to happen there. I say "there" and not "here" because I’m no longer there. Transfers came this week, but they’re a little weird. Instead of happening on Tuesday, they happened today! And so we found out on Saturday that Elder C. was going to train again, and I’m leaving the area (after only one transfer, which is rare) to go to an area that’s called Carlos a Carrillo in the zone Tuxtapec! I’m super excited. My new companion is Elder G., again from Mexico (all of my comps have been from Mexico). We’re gonna work hard.

Spiritual thought: One way I know that this church is true because it’s a missionary church. If the church is really the church of Christ, then it’s going to have missionaries especially dedicated to preaching the gospel, because it’s the only way, and Heavenly Father wants to bring as much souls to Him as possible. This church fits the definition of that shown in the Bible perfectly. We go in 2 by 2, and we preach the word of God, so that they can have peace, like we do.