Saturday, June 27, 2015

Week Forty-six and a half: Estrés

STRESS. This week was super stressful with a LOT of office work. This monday, the new mission president is coming, so we were crazy busy getting everything ready for his arrival.


Monday we had our last conference with President Camarillo. we had a special training from him and his wife about the Book of Mormon and the Sabbath day and then we took a break to take pictures as zones and photos with just us and the President and his wife (picture 1)

Here's a pic of our zone this last Monday!

After taking pictures we had a testimony meeting with the 2 zones in our stake (the only 2 zones who went to this conference) and it was super awesome! Before the mission i just kind of dozed through testimony meetings and didnt take advantage of them but now i appreciate them! the spirit is so strong and i got to learn so much about so many missionaries who had to go through some crazy stuff to get on the mission and make huge sacrifices to be out in the mission field and that really helped strengthen my testimony about the work we are doing and why we are doing it. After the meeting we gave our "last goodbyes" to President Camarillo and his wife but instead of saying goodbye to me they just said "see you soon! we still have work to do!" haha so i wont say goodbye to them until monday when the new president is already here.

Other than the conference this week was full of working furiously at the computer trying to get as much work done as i could before President Camarillo leaves.

Also, we bought a ton of parasite medication for all the missionaries in the mission 
so we built towers out of the boxes! (picture 2)


Challenge: Read 1 Nephi 13. I read it this week and it hit me really hard how much it testifies of the restoration of the gospel and the establishment of the United States. READ IT! I PROMISE YOU WONT REGRET IT!

Thank you for all your prayers, love and support! i love you all! -Elder Wagner

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Week Forty-five and a half: President's second to last week

Elote!
 I finally found corn like in nacho libre! i feel like i have filled an emptiness that has been in my soul for years.

This week was full of tender mercies! i didnt even realize in until now, but thinking about the past week i can see the Lords hand helping me out in small but big ways. I found a lot of stuff that i can do differently in my assignment that i didnt know how to do before and now i can work more effectively and with a lot less stress, we got to eat a giant BBQ with president, his wife, his daughter, the assistants, and all of the missionaries in the offices, and a thousand other small things.

Elder Guillen's Birthday. we bought him a dairy queen cake

Elder Zurita and me eating an entire 3 milk cake (pastel de tres leches)

We woke up this morning and saw we had a message from president and i was expecting an emergency or he needed us to run and do something for him that moment, but it turns out he just invited us to eat at his house! we had a BBQ and relaxed at the mission home for about 4 hours and got to joke around with the president which is something we almost never get to do. So thats pretty much all i did today and im suuuper full!

BBQ with President, the assistants and the secretaries!

BBQ with President, the assistants and the secretaries!
The investigators we have are really having troubles with keeping commitments and i think we are going to start working hard to find new investigators. Beatrice is amazing, she is christian but she has a hard time accepting that one church is the right one and she doesnt think that its important to have an organization. Hopefully this week she can come to church and find out for herself why we teach her the things we do!

Beatrice! we took her to the temple and had a great lesson!

Everything is coming up really fast. President will be leaving the 29th and just has a few more days! its crazy in the offices because we are trying to prepare everything and im trying to close the books from Pres. Camarillo so Pres. Egginton had a clean slate.

Tomorrow we have stake conference and ill be able to see some of the members from my first area and hopefully my converts will be there and ill be able to see how they are doing!

Challenge: Smile! A few months ago we went to visit a reference we had received and after knocking for a good 5 minutes we decided she wasnt home. as we were leaving we walked past an older woman and in stead of saying hi to her or something like that we kind of ignored her and started thinking of the next plans we had. about 5 seconds later we realized that the woman lived in the house we were looking at just a few moments earlier. we then went over and spoke with her. she said we should have been kinder and said hi to her and smiled because thats what nice people do and it helps brighten other peoples days. we ended up talking with her for a good little bit and we came back another day to find out she was catholic through and through, but she taught us a lesson that we should always smile and say hi to someone because we never know how that one smile or one word could change someones day or brighten it a little bit. Smile!!!

I hope you all have a great week! thank you for all your love and support! les quiero mucho! con mucho amor, Elder Wagner

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Week Forty-four and a half: !Hola todos!

This week was pretty normal to be honest, we had divisions with the zone leaders and that was the most crazy/exciting thing we did. we worked a lot with our investigators and found a new couple that is very nice, but we havnt seen any progress with them yet because we only taught them once and we will teach themtomorrow. they are named Aldo and Judith. Aldo already knows a little about the church, but never investigated seriously but now i think he will progress because he has his wife to learn alongside him.

We also have been teaching beatrice a lot. she is very christian and we lost contact with her for a while but now we are teaching her and we have plans to go with her to the temple grounds next week! she is reading the book of mormon and even watched the live story of Thomas S. Monson because we invited her to see one of his talks. she really enjoyed it, but her biggest challenge is accepting one true church. she believes that everything from God is good and she is saved because she already accepted Jesus Christ, but hopefully we can explain the gospel a little more clear and with more emphasis in the saving ordinances when we go to the temple to help her out.

Hymns. We have found that singing hymns brings a special spirit to every lesson. we now try to start lessons with hymns to invite the spirit and it almost always goes better when we do it!

Challenge: Read at least one hymn about the atonement of Jesus Christ and ponder its message. and then sing it and i promise you will feel the spirit really strong!

Thank you for all your love and support! sorry for the shortish letter, ill try to make next weeks letter better and send photos!

Elder Wagner

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Week Forty-three and a half: 10 months!


The view from our new apartment this morning

Today i finished ten months in the misson! its crazy how fast time is going by! i think just last month people were asking me how long i had been in the mission and when i said 9 they said stuff like i was just starting and i was still new, but now when i say 10 people say stuff like wow youve almost got a year! or youre already on your way back! i guess once you hit double digits people see two numbers and think its way more haha.

This week we had a ton of work to do because monday we had to move out of our old house and take all of our stuff to a new house and then tuesday we had to turn it in and clean it and we had the leadership council so i was running around doing errands for them and we had people painting the offices all week so i had to go a dayish without a computer and it was really hard to get stuff done. oh and yesterday we had our zone meeting so we lost pretty much the entire work day. so this next week we have a lot of catchup work to do. its going to be a tough week, but were going to work hard and get everything done!

oh yeah so now we live in a new house in some apartments right next to the offices so in the morning we only have to walk about 30 seconds to get to the offices!

This week we started working with a old investigator named feliza. she says she likes the church and she likes it when we come but she never keeps her commitments and its extremely lazy. but we had a good lesson with some members yesterday and i hope she starts improving. she says she is trying to decide between the catholic church and the "mormon" church and cant decide, but she hasnt ever read the book of mormon so were going to focus on that and really try to get her converted.

On thursday we got to the offices and started working really hard right away and then on of the assistants to the president called me and told me and my companion to be ready in 10 minutes in the mcdonalds parking lot with our area book. president then picked us up and we went on a small trip to a town called Tepatitlán and did our weekly planning while he did some interviews with some missionaries (i think. im not actually sure what he did) so we lost a lot of work time for that, but it was good because we had a really good weekly planning session!

Challenge: Read the introduction to the Book of Mormon. Sometimes we just read the book of mormon because we know we should but we dont really understand what it is, and others have never touched or even seen the Book of Mormon. so i invite all of you to read the introduction to the Book of Mormon and ponder what it says. its only a page and a half, so dont worry about how long itll take you to read it!

Extra challenge! I want to hear some of you experiences! if you have a conversion story or a spiritual experience you would like to share with me, please send me an email! Also, if youre not a member and want to know more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but are too afraid to ask someone, ask me! i can answer any question you might have and help l you learn a little more about what the church is all about.

Also, if you have any questions for me about what i do, how things are in mexico or any other question send me an email and ill answer it for you!

Love you all! -Elder Wagner