Motivation

Querida Familia,

Well I sent a bunch of pictures this week. The baptismal one is of Cristián. He is about 20 years old and is really funny. We contacted his mom and sister and they said "well we´re not interested but I think Cristián would be." We went the next day and found out that he had talked with missionaries outside his school one time and got really interested, but then didn´t hear anything. So he just kind of forgot about it, until we came and he got really excited. He laughs about everything. When we were giving the first vision...he just started cracking up. He said that it reminded him of a cartoon and made him laugh. But he has read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it. He knows that it is true and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. Just a super solid convert. I got to baptize him and when we were getting ready to go in the font I was explaining that he would need to bend his knees and cover his nose. He just started laughing and asked if he could laugh during the ordinance, I obviously told him no. So he said, "Ok hold on just a second" and left to the bathroom. He came back in a minute and just said...I just had a lot of laugh and had to contain myself. His sister will probably be baptized within a couple weeks, we are working with her but she hasn´t gone to the church very much.

This week we have Ulises (the son of Juan and Aracely that got baptized about 3 weeks ago) and a single mom and her child. Beti and Yazair. They were kind of a funny story. There was a new missionary that decided he wanted to go home. After all we could do he still wanted to go home, so his last night we was with us. He was a really weird guy, and he didn´t want to walk as fast as we walk so we started to knock doors in a housing complex called "The Miracle." We knocked her door and she opened it...she looked like she was 16 so we started to say "don´t worry about it we will talk to you next time," but I asked her "¿how old are you?" She said 25, and her kids and maid were there so she invited us in. The lesson was terrible, the weird elder just kept saying weird things and the maid said she was a member and started spouting off strange facts about the second coming and Moroni. I didn´t feel the Spirit at all so we just left a pamphlet and set up a return appointment to see if she was really elect. When we came back she had read the pamphlet, the maid and the weird elder were no longer there and she said that she was looking for a church to help her with her small children. She was looking for something to help them come to God.

I put a picture on there of the Zone Conference we did in Ciudad Azteca, and of the Zone activity we did today. We went and played soccer and kickball on a field that had real grass and afterwards they hired a taquero to come and make tacos. I got sun burnt really bad, it´s awesome. I don´t really get sun burnt anymore and it reminded me of when we used to go out of the boat all day and come back looking like lobsters. Also I took some pictures of the streets right around our house to kind of give you an idea of what things look like here. It´s the best area in the mission (in my opinion) and even though it is really small I love it a lot. I hear stories all the time of missionaries being robbed and crazy guys with guns, or seeing dead people in the street. I think you are praying too hard Mom, because I never get to see anything cool like that. I am so blessed, I love my companion and my area. I am learning so much from him and we are working really hard. This is how the mission should be. At the end of this month he will complete 16 months, so we will be together for a long time I think and I am so glad that I am with someone that I get a long with so well. He wants to be obedient, he wants to keep the house clean (more or less) and we are being as obedient as we can and working as hard as we know how.

It is so important to take the sacraments. I haven´t taken it the past couple weeks because we were passing for investigators. But this week I did and there is a huge difference in how much we have the Spirit with us. The Spirit is everything in this work...everything.
We were talking a lot yesterday as we were waiting to receive the reports from the Zone leaders about the different leaders we have had and how they motivated us. There were some who were just super excited all the time, there were other with whom we felt the spirit. Some motivated me because they selfishly wanted their zone or district to do well, others motivated me because of a sincere desire to see ME grow and learn and become who the Lord wants me to become. We can´t be boring as leaders, it doesn´t work...neither can we be overly animated...yet at the same time we have to focus on our personal desires to help the mission. Is it so that WE are remembered as successful, or is it because we truly love those whom we serve and have a sincere desire to see them become great missionaries. That Christlike love is leadership. Otherwise we are simply motivating. Leadership implies that we GO somewhere, if not we would not be leading them. I hope I am motivated by love. I hope I can be that Christlike leader the Lord and the mission need me to be. I want to be that leader. I know I have a long ways to go, but that is my vision, my goal.

I love the Lord. I love Him with all my heart. He is my Savior and Redeemer. Savior from my faults and weaknesses and redeemer of my soul. I am so grateful to be here in the mission, there is no way I would learn what I have learned or grow as I have grown anywhere else. I am a defender of truth, helping to gather Israel in preparation for the Second Coming. He will come again. He will come in glory and power, and I want to be there to see it. We still have a lot of work to do, we still have a lot of things to learn. But we will do it. There is no one who can stop the work...no one.