February 29, 2016 "Meeting My General Authority Cousin, Elder Pieper!"

Today for Pday we spent it with our favorite... less active! No joke she is the funniest human ever and she took us out to an Italian restaurant.

Probably one of the nicest places I’ll ever be in my whole mission and then she took us to the big mall here in Tepic for Dairy Queen. One of the girls in the threesome was with us for the day so it was 3 missionaries with our less active whose name is Esther. The whole time we made jokes with her about how she never goes to church and that just gives you a taste of our relationship with her. We know she will go soon. She was sick this last week in the hospital actually, so maybe this next week! She lives in a really nice part of our area.

This last Sunday was transfers and it was so stressful for all of us because we all knew that 9 missionaries couldn’t stay in one ward. We all knew someone was leaving. We were all taking pictures with the members after church and our district leader got a call from the zone leader so all the members and missionaries stayed around after church to see who was leaving and who wasn’t. Hermana Muro and I get to stay!!

This last week was my last week of training so I guess you could say I’m a real missionary now! (; The three some of girls that were here only one is staying and she is training her last 2 transfers here so there will be a new missionary in the ward with us. Then 2 Elders left. So it is now 6 missionaries in one ward which is better but still a lot. We are meeting later tonight to talk about our areas because they are all gonna get a little bigger... we’ll see how it works out! I’m excited to finally get the chance to stay in an area longer than 6 weeks! And when the members heard we were staying they all hugged us and were excited, it’s nice to know we are wanted here haha.

We had the conference with Elder Pieper this Friday! Its funny because when I heard his name I told Hna Muro my great grandma’s maiden name was Pieper I wonder if they are related. So when he got here we all took a picture together and we all stood in a line and he shook our hands. When it got to my turn he looked at me and he says you know were related right? And then I remember grandma telling us we had a relative in the seventy and it all came together. It was pretty cool! He called me up in front of everyone and started talking about how important family history is and told everyone I was his cousin and everyone was like ohhhhhhh.

He told a really cool story about our grandpa and how he was only baptized in one day and I can’t remember all of it because it was in Spanish but it was really cool. He told me he is going to give the story to president to give to me! Then after the conference all the zones that came to the conference, four were picked to have and interview with Elder Pieper. I was I was picked from Tepic so we were able to talk more and I asked him questions to about how to help our less actives and investigators keep commitments. Oh and at this conference before I knew we were related they handed out the program and they had me giving the opening prayer... Remember how I ALWAYS pray at like everything? Ya I guess this was no exception, I was way nervous because of course it had to be in Spanish but once I knew we were related I wasn’t scared anymore ha.

As far as investigators goes we have had a lot of opportunities to teach lesson one because of all the new investigators I wrote about last week. Abel the one who was really into our lessons and paid super close attention went A-wall this week and we finally find him yesterday and have another appointment with him today. We will see if he will even be home. He was acting so strange yesterday and we told him if he didn’t want us to come back we wouldn’t but he said he did so we will see. We had a man named Ernesto call us on Tuesday telling us we wanted us to come teach him. He had stopped us on the street and we were running late to an appointment so we just gave him our number and left and he actually called! The first time we tried to teach him he just talked and talked so we actually didn’t teach at all. He has soooo many questions about religion and has a lot of friends of other faiths so he was always asking why one church did this and that and why we don’t. The second time we went to teach him was better. We actually got to teach. But main the lesson was exhausting. He again had 100 questions and for some reason doesn’t take me very seriously. He interrupted me so many times while I was bearing my testimony... he’s a little more interested in the fact that I’m learning Spanish than listening to what I have to say... But with that said he is way nice and always offers to buy us drinks and taxis because of how far his house is. He builds houses and while they are being built he lives in them. The house he is working on now is HUGE and so pretty. And you’ll never guess what happened.......... HE CAME TO CHURCH!! He may have a 101 questions but he is one that says he is going do something and he does it. The bishop was welcoming everyone to church and had mentioned to everyone about donating some extra money when they could on their tithing slips to help the members feed the missionaries.  After sacrament he had to go back to work and as we were leaving he said “oh wait I want to give money to the members to help feed you guys.” It made us so happy to hear him say that!

Our cool New Zealander investigators may have only been a dream... the man from New Zealand is the husband of a less active and she told us the other day that he wants her to tell us not to come back... they have a lot of marriage problems they need to work out, it is the saddest situation.

That’s all I have for this week, a little slower sorry! I love you all and have an amazing week!  

-- con amor

Hermana Acor