Monday, December 3, 2012 - December....Already?!

Hola Mi Familia! Another week gone by and we have entered into December! How crazy! It totally does not feel like it with the warm weather and all. They are saying this is unusual for Nacozari this time of year. This week.....well, let's see... Well, to start, we went and visited Hermana Mari, the lady who helps in the cake shop. She kept telling us that she was going to talk with her 2 daughters who live with her and her son in law and find a time when we could pass by, but she never told us a firm time, so we just popped in! She was quite surprised, but welcomed us in happily and even made us a few quesadillas for dinner. The whole family wasn't there and they were coming and going so we decided just to leave a Spiritual thought and come back another day to teach the whole family. Wednesday I just have to mention that with Hermana Maru (the cake shop lady) we had Chimichangas for lunch and boy were they so good! Apparently they are from Sonora and don't really have them anywhere else in Mexico. So all that time that I was eating mom's Chimichangas, who knew that they were from my future mission! Later that night, we went and met with Jesus, the new kid that we started teaching last week. We taught him about the importance of the Sabbath day and told him that we would come back for him Sunday to take him to church. Afterwards, we sat around telling jokes for a bit! I know quite a bit of jokes in Spanish now! Haha! On Thursday we traveled to Esqueda to give the district leader various things to give to the zone leaders for when they go to Hermosillo this week. We ended up staying with them for lunch and helping them the rest of the day passing out invitations to less actives for an activity that they were going to have. I also picked up my packages. They Elders in Esqueda were complaining how heavy they were and that there were 4. When we got home and opened them all up...my comp about fainted from all the goodies I received! Thanks mom for the Thanksgiving meal in a package! We had it for lunch today and it was yummy! Also, a special thank you to The Simpsons for my Birthday/Christmas packages! I, as well as my comp, about fainted from all the goodies that were packed in! We divided some things up between the two of us and probably won't have to buy goodies for a few years! Thanks so much! Friday was pretty fantastic day! We had a Youth activity and were going to make Pizzas. We went and picked up a few investigators, including Jesus! I think he had a pretty good time! Unfortunately, the oven at the church wasn't working very well and so we just sat around and hung out with the youth for a good bit and played games. It was a lot of fun! And there were a ton of youth! Later on that night, we had a Family Home Evening for the branch with a theme of missionary work. Every family was supposed to bring non members to introduce people to the church and so that we could get references. Well, it turns out that only one family brought investigators--Hermana Maru brought Hermana Mari and her family and we even invited them too. And of course Jesus was there with us. It was sad but there were a few inactives that came a ton of youth so that was kind of cool! The message was given by a brother and he talked about faith and did a neat object lesson. Afterwards, we played some pretty fun games and ate the pizza we made from the youth activity. Another sister made that cheese dip that you make, mom, it is like the pimento cheese, or whatever, that is white and has little red somethings in it. It was good and reminded me of you! Afterwards we talked about good bit with Hermana Mari, her daughter Lulu, and Lulu's Husband, Ricardo, who was the one that I was saying that lived in Provo and Orem for a while. We set up an appointment to visit with them on Sunday, yesterday. Lulu was saying how much of a spiritual hole she felt like she had so that made us excited to help her! Sunday was a pretty great day! It was Sunday of course, which made it fantastic, and it was Fast Sunday which made it even better! We had good testimonies and Lulu came to church! Hermana Mari couldn't because she had to sell things in a yard sell to earn more money. Lulu said she really enjoyed the church and felt like she wanted to get up to bear testimony with all the members too, but felt like she was going to cry, so she didn't. She said she liked the woman's presence in the church with the Relief Society. She said that she wanted to come next week too! That night we went for out lesson with them. We arrived and they had made dinner for us, which I was dreading since I was still OVERLY full from lunch, so I had to force down a few tostadas. Afterwards we chatted a bit and began the lesson. We taught the Plan of Salvation and the importance of families and what we need to do in this life to return with God and live in with our families forever. We then watched a few videos from Mormon.org. I love those videos! They are pretty neat having members give testimony! I wish we used it more in our mission like they use it in the states. Afterwards we dropped the baptism interview and they all were kind of wishy washy about it and said that they have family traditions in the Catholic church and they need to know more, etc... We told them we knew and that we would help them learn more and prepare. Lulu seemed the most interested, so I think if no one else, she will get baptized, but it is just a matter of doing it within the next 2 weeks that we have here. They are really awesome though! Ricardo and I were talking up a storm about BYU and Utah and he has a bunch of BYU apparel and he gave me a BYU coat he had. I guess I was talking about BYU a little too much and how much I loved it and got all excited with his stuff that he had. I really didn't want his coat, and I would rather have had him keep it to remember Utah, but he was so nice and felt bad reject it, so I now have a new BYU coat in my possession! How neat is that! Well, that was the week! It is crazy to think that we just have 2 more weeks here. 2 more weeks and Nacozari may not have missionaries....crazy to think of. Hope we can do all we can these two weeks to get things in order and be ready to leave. I hope so. I love and miss you all dearly and hope all is well. Just 3 more weeks and we will be talking on the good ole phone. Jared said that they get to skype this Christmas, but I doubt that would happen here. Until next time... ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner