Elder Mike Payne: Week 69 - December 9, 2013

I've been out here for 500 days! This week was pretty awesome, our baptism fell through but we had a huge miracle so it made up for it!!

On Tuesday we were able to put a couple new baptismal dates with our investigators that we are teaching. We now have 13 baptismal dates in our area!! We are killing this area right now! This entire year in Chapala there have only been 5 baptisms and we are trying to change the attitude of this zone because everyone comes here thinking they aren't going to have success.

On Wednesday we had to do a bunch of stuff in the morning because we are going to open a new area in our zone next transfer. Then we had to take a bus for an hour and a half to go eat lunch. After lunch I was kind of upset because it was 4:00 and we hadn't had one lesson all day.

We then decided to go and try to find Cecilia Valencia, Claudia's aunt. ** Note: Claudia has worked for Larry for 24 years, and she is from the town that Mike is in! She still has family there, what a small world!** Her pueblo (town) is 30 minutes from where we were eating. We got to her house, knocked on the door and no one answered. One of Claudia's cousins, Rosa, lives across the street and she told us she was taking classes to learn how to make bread. It was in the plaza 2 minutes from her house. So we went to check it out.

As we got to her baking class we asked if Cecilia was there. One of the cutest old ladies stands up...she lookes exactly like Claudia hahahaha well not really but there is definitely a resemblance. I presented myself to her and told her that I know Claudia and she was so nice to us! She invited us into her class to meet all her friends. We entered in the class and found 17 people that were super excited to see us. We began to share a message with them and it went really well. I felt like an olden day missionary just standing in the middle of a cirlce and teaching tons of people hahaha!!

After the lesson we left like everything we had for them: The family proclamation, pamphlets, Books of Mormon, etc. They were so happy and told us to go back the following day. We went back and none of them had read :( hahaha I was kinda sad but we wrote down some names of people who wanted us to go to their houses and teach them. The only tough thing about teaching in little pueblos like that is that there are tons of traditions with the catholic church and its nearly impossible to baptize people there because of the influence of everyone around them. Cecilia took us to her house and showed us around. She is a super awesome lady. She is VERY catholic but we have plans to go back on Tuesday and she is going to teach us how to make tamales!! Should be fun :)

We are working with another investigator named Eufracia. She is like 60 years old and loves going to church. She has one daughter who is a member and the rest of her kids aren't members. She wants to go to church every week but she doesn't like reading because she gets bored. We are going to work hard with her this week so hopefully this Saturday she can have her baptism!

There is a bunch of retired Canadians and Americans here, it's cool to hear people speak English... and I get to translate for them. There is a family in our branch from Calgary with the last name Ames, (if any of my Canadian family knows them).

I am doing great and loving it out here! We are working really hard, thank you all for the love and support. 16 days until we get to skype with the family!!!!!

Love,

Elder Mike Payne