Esquinapa

Hello! 

I'm now in a little place called Esquinapa. It's as far away as possible as
I could have moved from la Paz, all the way down at the southernmost part
of Sinaloa. We had a good final week in Pioneros. Veronica wasn't baptized,
but she will be soon. We had a Family Home Evening with Bishop Irigoyen and
had a really good lesson with her. Sunday, in the Gospel Principles class,
the discussion was about baptism, and it basically turned into a testimony
meeting of all of the recent converts trying to resolve all of the concerns
that Veronica had. It was really cool. But now I'm here with Elder Baltich!
He's from Florida and went to BYU as well. I'm really excited to work in
Esquinapa.

 Goodbye!

New motto: Let us not be weary in well-doing.

New motto: Let us not be weary in well-doing.

Calafia-Pioneers district sunrise dock photo shoot

I had an interview with President Cantú towards the beginning of the week that was really great. No, we didn't watch Brumby videos. But he did tell me some really cool stories from his mission. At the time, it seemed kind of odd. However, during the week, I was able to apply lessons that I learned from each story, and miracles happened. He basically told me: Elder Tingey, you're standing at the edge of a river with a strong current. The Lord has asked you to cross. You're looking up river, waiting for the current to settle down. It's never going to settle down, so cross now! the Lord doesn't care if you swim, scuba dive, pole vault, build a bridge. Just don't end your mission without crossing.

We also discussed the importance of teaching in order to discover the doubts of the investigators, and not really going on with teaching until we find them. We passed by briefly with Angélica on Sunday. She and her family still haven't gone to church. We were teaching, and I just said what we had talked about in the interview. It was like magic, she was really upfront and frank about the doubts she had. Turns out some cool neighbors came by and told her that the young, blue-eyed guys with backpacks were going to make her go to church, and then afterwards, they wouldn't be able to play sports, go to parties, etc. So we resolved her doubts one by one. We just need to help her have more member friends and her family will be set.

Esteban was baptized! It was awesome. I told his dad that we'll get the font ready for him for next week. The challenge is that his dad is so busy that we've only taught him half of the Plan of Salvation the whole time that we've been teaching the family. Esteban's baptism was a result of a lot of faith and good works, and it was a growing experience to be a part of his conversion.

For next week, we're working with Veronica to help her be prepared for baptism. We know and she knows and the Lord knows that she can be ready, it's just going to take some work. One of her biggest motivations is being able to teach her family once she's made the changes necessary to live the Gospel. She's awesome.

Back in the day, Elder Allen took my place in Angostura with Elder  Monroy.

Hitching a ride, just like old times

David and Esteban!  Future Elders.

Esteban's baptism

Happy Birthday

Cool sunset on top of a neighborhood called "Ciudad de Cielo" (it's like climbing Olympus to get there)

Hello!

Thank you all for the well-wished birthday. Once again, we had a crazy week, and we've been highly blessed. Elder Allen and I ended up going down to los Cabos on Tuesday! It was an effective trip, but it was a good chunk of time away from our area for the week. We came back real quick-like on Wednesday. I had the chance to stay the night with my MTC-district buddy Elder Mortensen, which was great. Los Cabos is a cool place. 

We found a teaching record in our area book of an old lady name Macelina and felt like we should go with her a few weeks ago. We taught her once, and she was nice and said that she had gone to church twice a while back when the missionaries had passed by for her in a ride. Since then, she hadn't gone at all. We felt like we should go back with her during the week, and we managed to arrive when her son, Lino, was there as well. He told us that he had recently had some marital difficulties and that he also had trouble giving up an alcohol addiction. We had a simple, powerful lesson with them. We discussed the concept of faith and works. If you pray for something and then don't act, or give God a medium through which he can help you, how can you expect a blessing? 

Has Lino asked God to help him stop drinking? Yes. But then if he goes and hangs out with the same bad group of friends that conduces his drinking habits, where's the blessing going to come from? Has Lino asked God to help him have more family unity? Yes. So would going to church be a good way for God to instruct him and help him apply the Gospel better at home? Certainly. That was basically the lesson, which ended on a really strong commitment to go to church the next day. We walked really quite far to pass by for them in the morning, and both Lino and Macelina were all ready to go, in their best Sunday wear. It was awesome! So the lesson applied and worked because they felt the Spirit and that motivated them to make a change. We took a bus with them to show them that they are capable of making to church on their own in the future.

It ended up being a really good day of church. All of my converts were there, which is a good sight to see. The Ríos family walked over a mile to get there and showed up  a little tanner at the end of the sacrament meeting. Esteban and Esteban went too. Another cool new investigator who went is named Veronica. She's a very young grandma, and her mom is a convert as of two years ago. One morning, she decided to flip the Bible open to a random page and read something in Proverbs about Jehovah instructing us in wisdom or something that she really took to heart. And then we knocked on the door! In the Gospels principle class, she was taking notes and asking cool questions and generally participating a lot. I'm happy with the people we've been able to find this week. We're really trying to baptize, and I know that we'll be blessed to be able to soon if we work with the right motives.

Goodbye!

Zone meeting (Elder Arellano looks like a dead guy because it's his final change. Sorry the picture looks like we're being transfigured)

This is how we stop the bugs

Elder Allen made me a birthday sign (he's going to treat me to some American-style barbeque today at a good-looking restaurant we saw in Centro).

Lots of traveling.

Hello! We're doing pretty good. We've had quite a bit of traveling that's
complicated things, but it's been fun. We've tried to seek opportunities to
share the gospel on the go! We flew to Culiacán again during the week, and
we're going to go down to los Cabos tomorrow night.

We were really blessed to find two new families during the week! We went to
the house of an investigator and there was a woman there named Angélica.
She accepted a visit, and when we went to her house we had a really
powerful lesson. Turns out, she had been taught by the missionaries in the
Forjadores ward a few weeks ago, but moved and lost contact. She said that
she had seen *us* (Elder Allen and I) in downtown la Paz and wanted to talk
to us, but was scared that we would think she was weird.  So she was happy
to re-establish contact. She hasn't been to church yet, so we started
simply explaining what we do each Sunday, and she stopped me and said,
"What do you have to do to be prepared to be baptized?" We ended up setting
baptismal dates with her and her sons. She's way cool and really
interested.

However, our challenge of the week was getting everyone to church. We had
set up rides and everything, but the morning of, it didn't work out as well
as we had hoped. On Saturday, we had about 14 investigators that we
expected to go, but the only ones that made it were two kids, Jesús and
Juan Carlos "el Güero," who were all ready when we came by in the morning.
They were *really* rambunctious in Primary. So were now kind of recovering
and trying to focus on getting all of the progressing investigators to
church next week.

I'm loving my time with Elder Allen. He's awesome. For some reason, the
work has been pretty difficult, but we're working through the challenges.
My goal is just to help others to feel the influence of the Spirit more,
whether it be a stranger in a street contact, a member whom we ask for
referrals, or the other missionaries that we're working with. We're able to
have many spiritual experiences each day. Hope everyone is well, and
seeking their own experiences too. Hurrah for Israel!

Frogs and Clogs

This was a nutty week. Crazy, unheard of things kept coming out of nowhere to stress us out and make us lose precious time. Then, there was a cool turning point and things started looking up. And now the process is starting over again.

 

La Paz has been in a drought for some amount of years, but ever since Elder Allen got here, it has rained almost every day, and a lot. The day that it rained the most, we were walking home, and we found a frog on the street! So we caught him, named him Slammy, and had a pet frog for a while. We would catch him flies for dinner, but it looks like he may have now been eaten by one of the vagabond cats around our apartments. But, when we arrived home that night, our house was flooded. A bunch of our materials got destroyed. It was awesome.

 

Through a strange of turn events, we also became involved in the most intense clogging and unclogging of a toilet I've even been a part of. I'll spare the details, but it ended up with rat poison, stuffing hoses into all of the different drains in the house, and Elder Allen putting his whole arm into the toilet, through the... water. In the end the solution was just buying a new, slick plunger.

 

We also did some proselyting! During most of the week, we were feeling pretty pressured about ending with low numbers. Worrying about the numbers only makes you work worse and have even worse numbers. One night, we decided to contact some referrals of a member who owns a group of apartments. She had essentially told us to knock the whole complex, so we decided to do that. When we got there, nearly all of the lights were off the place looked empty. However, beside the apartments, there's a little shack kind of room that she rents as well, and we saw a young guy sitting inside, playing guitar. We went over and asked him about his guitar, and he let me play it. We ended up sitting down with him and teaching him. He's way cool. His name is Leovardo. The member that was renting to him and already given him some of our missionary pamphlets and he was reading them. We had a great talk, he was really interested, and accepted to go to stake conference with us on Sunday. As we were leaving, we were pretty pumped. My companion told me that during the lesson, he was holding back tears. On the way there, he had said a prayer. He asked to find an "escogido." And we did! He came with us to the conference, along with four other investigators for their first time. We were finally able to get Esteban and Esteban to come after two weeks of Esteban sleeping through his alarm. The conference was really powerful, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

 

Things are going well. Out here, I often feel like my perception of the mission, of myself, and of life get turned on their head and back again. But I'm learning a lot and doing what I can to help others have spiritual experiences that help them recogninze the true Gospel and accept it. Oh, tell Ammon that I wrote him a letter. But, this morning it fell out of my pack at some point between the laundromat and our house. It's already addressed, so who knows. Bye!

Come closer to God.

Hello! I wrote a cool list of things to write about and then left it at
home. Maybe next week I'll send some anachromatic stories. Today was nuts.
We had a ton of changes in the zone, so I woke up at 4 and have been riding
around in a van all day getting everyone to their new areas or with their
new companions. And now my companion is Elder Allen! I'm so pumped. I've
known him for pretty much the whole mission, and we're already really good
friends. So things should go really well.

We had David's baptism on Saturday. It was awesome, and investigators
Estevan, father, and Estevan, son, came. The bishop baptized David and it
he was confirmed in sacrament meeting on Sunday. We had a lesson with David
on Friday. We taught him about the priesthood and about missionary work.
Towards the end of the lesson, as Elder Ovando challenged him to prepare to
serve a mission, I flipped to a picture of missionaries in my gospel art
book that I hardly ever get to use. And then I started just flipping to
other pictures and Elder Ovando kept the theme of the lesson going
according to whatever picture I pulled out.
Picture of missionaries: "Through missionary work, you can help other
people recieve blessings from the gospel..."
Kids weeding a garden with an old lady: "...and they'll continue to serve
other people and help them as well..."
Picture of a temple: "...which will help them prepare to recieve temple
blessings..."
Flip to the disciple Steven seeing God and Jesus "...which will allow them
to have testimony-strengthening spiritual manifestations..."
Flip to Elijah praying a tower of fire down from heaven, and then Jesus
holding a lamb. ...I'm worried that this makes no sense, but it's probably
because I only slept for three hours.

We had a really powerful and spiritual lesson with a cool investigator
named Thalía. Her son, David (different David), is one of the neighbor kids
that Alma brought to church last week. When we first met Thalía, we had a
conversation with her through her curtain trying to convince her to just
come out to greet us, and she eventually did. We brought Alma over to her
apartment, and sat down, and essentially the first thing Thalía said was
that she follows common cultural beliefs of the area, and therefore
worships idols. I asked her what she thought about David going to church,
how she had seen him that week since he had gone. She said it was all
great, but when we invited her, she basically said she lives a sinful life
and can't go to church. I started teaching her about free agency, and her
divine nature. God wants her to choose the right and gives her the means to
do it. My companion lovingly chewed her out and told her she was putting a
terrible example for her kids. And then I explained how the Atonement
allows her to repent, and the importance of truly repenting. I asked her,
"What do you think you have to do?"
She said, quietly, "Come closer to God."
"How do you think you can do it?"
"Going to mass."
"How about you join us at church on Sunday?"
"I'm going to go." (As in, to church.) It was simple, but the Spirit was
very strong in that moment, and Thalía made a large and important step in
the right direction.

I'm out of time. Love you guys.

Tatooine 8-6-12

We got lost in a place that looks like Tatooine. Fun Mexico fact! You can see a Maseca brand tortillería in the picture. There's one of those every few blocks, in every neighborhood in every area I've been in so far. Everybody sends their kids out for some corn tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Hello. I hope everyone is well. We went to Culiacán during the week. This time I really did get to sit in the copilot seat of the Cesna! The pilot didn´t think my jokes about twisting knobs were funny. There are so many knobs. As we were leaving the city, it was pouring, and we took a taxi. We had the windows down, and he was driving super crazy. As other cars raced by, loads of muddy water sprayed into the taxi. It was an adventure.

 

David is ret-to-go for his baptism next week. He´s a cool kid who is essentially an active member. He lives with the bishop on weekdays and went to EFY in Sinaloa last month. The ward is pretty excited about his baptism as well.

 

We had a cool lesson with Rosalva and Liliana this week. We brought a young woman from the ward along with us because we had an appointment with Dafne, who is also a young woman. But when we arrived, only Danfe`s mom - Liliana - and Dafne`s grandmother - Rosalva - were there. Basically the first thing that Rosalva said was that she wasn`t going to go to church even if we invited her. Okay... so we started teaching the Restoration, and it was going well. The Spirit was strong in the lesson, and they accepted the doctrine of the First Vision and the Book of Mormon and everything. And we were about to invite them to church, when Rosalva was like, "That´s cool and all, but I´m not going to go to church." Yeah. We did what we could. Liliana, however was much more pumped abuot going, so I think we´ll focus our efforts more on her.

 

I learned the importance of having good companionship inventories and decided that I´m going to have them weekly with my future spouse.

 

I´ve been contemplative lately about the importance of working love and charity over working with diligence. A past companion mentioned how, for him, giving 100 percent (this keyboard has no percentage symbol) is more about loving others and having the disposition to share the Gospel at all times instead of running from appointment to appointment and feeling physical gratification for your supposed diligence. I´ve been focusing on loving others: seeking to serve them, identify with them, and help them with the correct motives. In a recent Liahone, President Ucthdorf mentioned that he tells missionaries to consider that they are in the "middle" of their missions, whether it´s their first or final day in the field. I´m applying that perception to my work. I really strive to have faith and be truly excited about what I´m doing in each moment.

 

There´s a cool recent convert in our ward named Alma (it´s a common woman´s name which means "soul"; people are often confused and think that the Book of Mormon prophet, Alma, is a woman). She always seems to be trying to do her part to share the Gospel, and brought two neighbors to church on Sunday. I can´t imagine if every member were doing the same.

 

"Come to Zion, Come to Zion"

Brother Grace?

Okay, but on Elder Ovando it really looks real.

the Habanero Burger - Now available at Burger King.

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