Elder Mike Payne: Week 28 - February 18, 2013

This week has been pretty good! We baptized Fernanda on Saturday. It was such a stressful day!! We had our zone conference in the morning and it ended at 3:15!! The baptism started at 4 and we were stressin because it was a 45 minute taxi ride from where we had our conference to where our church was. We finally got to the church at 3:55 and NO ONE (except for the Bishop) was there!!! We were wondering if we missed it or what happened!! The Bishop got there early to fill the font and he was just hangin out with his family! And then at 4:15 Fernanda and her family were the first people that showed up. About 5 minutes later it was like a stampede!! There were so many people there!! We had to take some of the seats out of the room because they were taking up too much space! We had like 20 people standing in the back!! Mexican Mormon standard time! Everything went well and she was confirmed yesterday at church.

The other elders in our ward also baptized someone. Her name is Eduwiges and she is about 50 years old and she has been catholic all her life. She bore her testimony of her conversion and it was super good! We had 3 investigators at the baptism who are all catholic. We are hoping that this week we can set a few more baptismal dates. We have two coming up in 2 weeks and 2 more planned for March 15th. I wanna end this transfer with a bang!! I will probably be transferred on March 18th.

So this last week the Pope retired because he was sick. I´m not sure if it is a huge deal in the States but here in Mexico everyone is going nuts!! I bet it´s probably around 85% catholics where I am at right now so everyone is making a huge deal about it! I was thinking about one of the talks that I watched back in the MTC from Elder Holland. He talked about that when we are called as missionaries we are called for a life time. God only expects us to do our best and to never give up. That's all I'll say about that.

Anyways...as some of you have asked...I didn´t do anything special on valentines. As much as I would have loved to spend it with some hot girl...I ended up spending it in Mexico with Elder Santiago, but it was good. I opened my package that morning and it was perfect because it was valentine themed! We went to go eat and the member said that she was about to leave but that she would give us our food in a bag to-go. So we took our food and ate in a park, my comp and I were laughing so hard! It was such a nice romantic date in the park...

Well I ate chicharron this last week and let me tell ya...I HATE CHICHARRON!! I don´t understand why people eat that stuff!

But yesterday I had an amazing meal!! So we had 6 elders in Buenos Aires last week so we all went to this members house to eat. He told us we were going to be eating sea food. As he served us he told us what it was and it all started out good with salmon, shrimp, and a fillet...but then it got crazy. He started bringing out squid and octopus and some weird stuff. I was so scared to eat but then it turned out to be incredible!! It was probably top 5 meals that I have had since I have been here!!

Well I am doing great and I am working as hard as possible!! I am doing great and my comp is still copying all that I do. I told him today that this next week he is going to lead. He has 11 weeks in the mission and I don´t need to be telling him everything to do! So this should be an interesting week! When I focus on his strengths I have a more positive outlook on him and our companionship. I love you all so much and I hope you all have an amazing week!! Take care and God bless!!

Love,

Elder Mike Payne