I mentioned last week that we were having transfers, and that I was staying in the area, and my companion was leaving. My new companion is finally a gringo! His name is Elder Emrich and he is from Missouri. He has only been out for about 5 months so we are both still trying to figure out what we are doing. I still feel like I am a new missionary with no clue what he is doing, but that is okay.

The work has been a little slow lately, so when we started this week, we told ourselves that we need to save this area, and we have been contacting like crazy. The frustrating part is that almost everybody that we have contacted lives outside of our area. That was hard for us because we basically just gave referrals to other missionaries instead of finding investigators for ourselves. This pattern had been going on every day of the week, and we had only found about 2 people who were kind of interested. We were both feeling pretty discouraged so we decided to start a fast from saturday after lunch, until lunch the next day. I will just say right now that fasting works. We ended up finding a lot of people within that time period of fasting.

One of the new investigators we found is named Luis. We just passed him in the street and he asked us if we knew which church was true. He said he has been looking for a true church for 15 years and hasn't found anything. We asked him if he had heard of our church before and he said he hadn't. We explained what we do as missionaries and he excitedly set an appointment with us for thursday this week. We are really excited about him.

Later that night, at about 8:30, we were trying to find an old investigator that lived close to our house. We knocked on her door and nobody answered... Again. Any missionary can understand that feeling. We were about to walk away and look for another person when these two little kids ran by playing soccer. I asked them to pass the ball to me and I showed them some little tricks I could do. They got all excited and we ended up just passing around with each other and became friends. We saw the parents were there watching and ended up talking to them and they were really nice and accepted us to come by and teach their family. It was definitely a tender mercy. We also learned that the parents also sell chicken wings and quesadillas in the same place every night so that gives us even more of a reason to visit them.

We definitely saw the hand of the Lord this week and Elder Emrich and I are both very excited about this next transfer. This week was evidence to us that fasting really does bring blessings and even miracles. This is the Lord's work and he can help us in whatever circumstance we are in.

Have a great week!

Elder May

Our house has a random door on the second floor

We discovered that our neighbor sells churros every morning for only 3 pesos.

The scorpion we found in our house

 A guy named juan who asked me to take a picture of him and his dog, who is named Terry. We never saw him again.

A nice park in our area

I don't have a lot of time to write this week because we have transfers today. My companion is leaving and I am staying for at least one more transfer in Espartaco. I kind of wanted to leave, but when they told us the transfer news I felt super excited to stay here. So I am happy with staying for another transfer.

A lot has happened this week and I feel bad that I don't have time to explain it all. We went to the temple and the visitor's center with Enrique this week. It was really cool. Their visitor's center is nicer than the one in Salt Lake. I was pretty impressed. We also went to a store on the temple grounds (basically like Deseret Book) and Enrique bought himself some things. He bought a missionary nametag that says "amigo de misionero" and he wears that when we go out in public with him.

We had a really good lesson with Juan on Saturday and he accepted a baptismal date on July 29. He could technically get baptized next week because he has come to church for about a month straight, but he needs more time to learn everything. After our lesson, he was showing us all of his paintings he has painted in his house. Some looks professional and others look like a kindergartener painted them. But he claims that all of them are his work. I thought I would test him and I asked him to paint me a turtle playing soccer. He said yes and the next day sure enough, he had my painting. I will let all of you decide if you think he is a professional. He said he didn't have any paint so he drew it with a pen and then used his coffee as paint...

--                   

Elder May

Juan"s art work

More art work from Juan

Enrique's nametag and young women's pen that he bought

My picture of a turtle playing soccer that Juan drew for me

The message he wrote on the back of my turtle picture

some investigator friends at church. (left to right-- Enrique, Elder Sanchez, Zoraida, Ivon, Juan, me)

At the visitor center with Enrique

Hola everybody, It has been another exciting week in Espartaco. We are entering the rainy season so our house is flooding about daily. We just don't really care anymore and it dries the next morning, so all is well!

Juan-carlos is still doing well. He came to church with us again and he loved it. We got there a little bit early and he said he wanted to play the piano. He had mentioned before that he loves music, and he has a piano in his house so we assumed he knew how to play, so we let him... He does not know how to play the piano. He basically just hit random notes and sang a song about Jesus that he made up on the spot. We thought he would stop after a few minutes, but he kept going for about 15 minutes. I eventually went up and asked him if I could play something and then I just played regular prelude for everybody. It is never a dull moment with him.

Church was really good though. I have mentioned the Lopez family before, but for those of you who don't remember, I will give you a review. They are a family of 5 that are so humble and so happy. They make money by making jello, putting it unto cups, and selling it on the streets. They are some of the most faithful members I have ever met. Well, on sunday the dad, Javiere, was called to be the new bishop! I was super excited. He has only been a member for about 3 years so he is a little nervous naturally, but we already have a lot of plans to help him out. We hope that a new bishop will help get the ward excited again and hopefully have more success.

The other day we were having a good lesson with an investigator. In the middle of the lesson we starting hearing a loud grunting sound and I started to feel kind of scared that someone was choking or dying or something, but the investigator didn't seem to notice. The noise kept coming and eventually a lady walked out, and soon behind her was the biggest pig I have ever seen. She told us she was going on a walk with Camila... the pig. My companion asked her when she was going to cook and eat it and she got really offended and told us they she has had her pet pig for 3 years now. For a second I almost thought I was back in grantsville after hearing all of that...

The work is going a little slower than my companion and I would like, but with faith we know it will get better! The best thing we can do is keep striving to be exactly obedient and the Lord will bless us in his own time.

Have a great week 

                                           

Elder May

Camila the pig

Eating fried ice cream for free!!

Enjoying some rootbeer floats with Elder Miller

This week has been a little better in the CDMX. I will tell you about one of the stories this week.

We were on our way to an appointment one day and I saw that there was an old guy about 20 feet away with a basketball. I don't think he was playing because he could hardly even walk either. He was just standing there dribbling the ball and having a good time. When we passed him I just said "buenos dias!" and we started talking a little bit about basketball. He handed his basketball to me and asked me to play basketball with him. So I crossed him up a little bit, broke his ankles, and showed him some tricks I learned in church ball and he was pretty impressed. We got talking about what we do as missionaries and asked if we could come by his house one day. He said no and walked away.

A few days later, we were walking down the same street looking for an old investigator when we saw the same old guy. We didn't say much more than "buenos dias" because he already told us that he didn't want to listen, but he ended up asking us if we could stop for a minute and share something with him. After talking with him for a little bit we learned that his name is Juan. He is 53 and has no teeth whatsoever. However, his smile is one of the happiest smiles I have ever seen. He lives alone and likes to paint. He showed us a really big painting he made and asked us what we thought it was. To me it looked like there was an ocean and a 4-winged chicken with no legs flying above the water. He told me I was wrong and that it was a painting of Buddah. Anyways, Juan is a fun guy. We invited him to church and he excitedly said yes. Usually when somebody says they will come to church with us, they never come. We were a little skeptical about Juan because he is a little different and didn't think he would come. However. we promised him we would stop by his house and walk with him to church. When we got there, he was waiting in the street for us and had his tie tied and everything. At church, after he saw the first person go up to bear their testimony, he asked me if he could share his testimony. I said he could if he wanted to, so he was the second person from the ward to go up. He said that he knows that God lives, and that he can feel that this church is true... He also said he believes his other church is true as well, but we will work on that. He also said that he knows that faith is real. I actually really felt the spirit as he spoke about faith. He mentioned how Faith can move mountains, whether physically, or metaphorically in our personal lives. I have thought about faith a lot lately and I know the words of Juan are true. Faith gives us the power to overcome any circumstance. In Ether 12:12 it says that there can be no miracles without faith. I learned a powerful principle from Juan yesterday. I also know that God lives and that Christ is his only begotten son, and our savior.

Have a great week!

Elder May

Enrique wants to be a missionary one day