Elder Mike Payne: Week 29 - February 25, 2013 - 7 Meses?!?! Donde se fue el tiempo?

7 Months?!?! Where has the time gone?

So this last week was a pretty good week!! Definitely ended weird haha but you will hear about that later on...

Well I am teaching in english...hold it...that´s weird! So this girl moved from Utah like 2 weeks ago and doesn´t speak any spanish. Both her parents are members and she has her baptism set for this saturday. It´s pretty weird to teach in english haha I am forgetting tons of words. This girl is 9 years old and at times she is correcting my english! It´s pretty funny because we always have lessons at the church and a bunch of members want to ´watch´ our lesson haha! There are a bunch of members who want to learn english and they are so amused in our lessons. We had like 13 people in our last lesson. No one except her and I understand anything so it´s pretty funny. But yeah we are excited for her and she will be getting baptized on Saturday!!!

We also had a member talk to us yesterday at church asking if her whole family has membership records. We looked up her family and found that 4 of them are ´not members.´ So we are going to baptize these people sometime within the next couple weeks. Our ward used to be 2 wards a year ago and as they moved all of the papers, some of the records got lost! So we have one baptism this week with one of the kids. This Saturday we will be having 2 baptisms!

We have our other investigator - Lupe. She is a stud! She paid her tithing yesterday and #1- she isn´t even a member yet and #2- we haven´t even taught about tithing yet. She said she wants to see if Heavenly Father really does bless us!! We were so happy to see that!! But yeah we had a lesson with her yesterday and she said she IS GOING to get bpatized but she wants to take her time. She is amazing! As much as I would love to baptize her before transfers, it is better if she takes her time and doesn´t feel pressured. Tonight we are going to watch The Joseph Smith Restoration movie with them for family home eveneing! I´m super excited!!

So I learned how to make potato chips this last week!! Mayra (the daughter of Lupe) sells potato chips but she was super busy one day and asked if I would help her. While my companion was just chillin and building towers with the potatoes, I was super interested and I wanted to learn how to make them. So I cleaned and peeled 100 potatoes and then cut them super thin and put them into their deep fryer. They were incredible!! I am such an amazing cook ;) and super humble about it too! hahaha

So dad asked a little bit about this but I wiill explain it. So they are making an MTC here in Mexico and it is going to be HUGE!!! The place is called Benemerito. It is a high school right now but this summer they are going to transform it into an MTC. Its is like the BYU of Mexico....except it´s a high school! On youtube our president let us watch the talk that Elder Holland gave to the students of the school. It is amazing!! If you can find it, you should watch it!

So last night, like I said, was super weird haha! So we finished a lesson and we were walking back to our house. There is a park that we have to walk through. Some guy was standing in the middle of the park, pants down to his knees, just doin his thing! He saw us looking at him, so we said ¨Buenas Noches.¨ We kept walking and he started yelling at us. He was super drunk. He was yelling in english things that were not very good. My companion didn´t understand what he was saying so I just told him ¨walk faster and don´t look back.¨ And then I could hear him running and he was getting closer. There was a carnival in the park so my companion and I decided to go there so that he wouldn´t do anything stupid in public. He eventually caught up to us and hit the back on my shoulder to get my attention. Then he got in my face and was like screaming at me in english, I had no clue what to expect! He just kept yelling at me asking why were were lying to him and he wasn´t making any sense, so after about 10 minutes of getting yelled at by this guy, he finally walked away. My heart was punding!! I for sure thought I was gunna get hit!!

This morning I was doing laundry and we have to hang our clothes to dry on our roof. The stairs to get to our roof are metal. So my shoes were wet because I was washing my clothes. As I was running up the stairs, I slipped and my shin just sliced open!! It was super nasty and bleeding like crazy!! I felt super light headed and thought I was gunna have to go to the hospital! I don´t remember but my companion said that I fell asleep for like 20 minutes in my bed! I´m pretty sure I passed out! It was a weird feeling! I think it was just shock because I was running up the stairs with wet clothes in my hands and I had nothing to save myself with... it hurt so bad!!

But overall it was a good week! Pretty interesting but good! I love you all and I am so thankful for all the support here!! I am working my butt off and it is all paying off! We will be having transfers March 18th and we have 5 baptisms planned before then!! We are workin hard and doing everything we can! ¨Do your best and God will do the rest.¨ Have a good week and god bless!!

Su hijo, hermano, amigo, primo, tio, nieto...

Elder Mike Payne