Semana Santa - Easter

I read a talk titled "the Fourth Missionary" during the week that helped me realize a lot that I can improve and how to improve it. Basically, my goal is to become a truly consecrated missionary. As I progress during my time preaching and serving, not only should my behavior change, but my actual nature. I should always strive to apply Christ-like attributes and always move forward, towards the light. If I'm doing my best and giving my whole self to the work, I won't worry about irrelevant "real world" stuff, or I won't compare myself to other missionaries. I guess I can't really explain well what I'm thinking, but it's a good talk and has changed how I think about a lot of things.

We started teaching this guy named Ruperto. He's 72 and still sweeps in front of his house every day. Fulfilling his neighborhood duty. He was obviously a punk in his younger years. We also found the Sapienz Parra family, whose mother is a less active member, and they're basically eternal investigators, but we're hoping that they'll progress to baptism this time around. Our biggest hope at their house is Susanna, who was a friend that was there during the first lesson who also accepted a baptismal date. We're hoping to meet her family, but, apparently they only speak Misteco, which is a dialect that I think is generally spoken in Oaxaca and was left by the Mayans. Something like that. I'm just excited to find them and then teach all of the lessons, caveman style.

At the beginning of the week, we found a cool lady named Manuelita. We contacted her in front of house, and as we entered in, the first thing I saw was a giant picture of the Pope, and then she pulled out a Jehovah's witness Bible, and then she told us that she currently attends a Christian church. So... what is she? We just went for it and taught her the Restoration and she accepted a baptismal date as well.

My experience with Semana Santa this year was much different. Yes, there were lots of drunk people. However, there was nobody else. The city was nearly deserted during the middle of the week, because everyone goes to the beach or the water park. Elder Smalley and were literally running down street after street, just looking for houses with people in them and contacting everyone we saw. It was fun, but it's unfortunate that you can only have those exciting, adrenaline-pumped contacting times when you're not really having success, because running from place to place means that people are saying "no." So it was a fun week, and we had a new investigator at church, Maira's mom, Lola.

Family, hope everybody had fun in San Lucas! Say hi to the arch for me. And if you run into a guy selling crepes in Puerta Vallarta who is Mormon, Taoist, Buddhist and believes that people can shoot fire out of their hands, tell him that Elder Tingey says hi, and buy some of his crepes.