Merry Christmas everybody! (today is not my P day but all of the internet places were closed yesterday so we have permission to email today and then get back to work) I hope you all had a great Christmas yesterday and were able to spend it doing something fun. For us it was pretty great. First of all, I got to talk to and see my family and that was easily the highlight of my day. After that, we had nothing else to do, and it was P-day, so went back to our house and took a nap. Sidenote: I don't know if any of you watched those videos of when the earthquake hit us here about 3 months ago. If you did, I don't know if you noticed the siren in the background. They have a super loud siren that detects and goes off when an earthquake is going to come so we can run out of the house on time and survive. Well, I was sleeping all nice and peacfully when that alarm went off. Talk about a rude awakening. I honestly didn't have too much of a rush to get outside. I figured that if our house survived the last earthquake, it was going to survive whatever was coming yesterday. It was nothing too bad though, you could hardly even feel it. I guess they said that this time it was centered in Guerrero. That gave everyone a nice scare for Christmas.

The streets were pretty dead all day so it was pretty hard to get any work done. We had some appointments set but they weren't there. We ended up just going home about an hour early and did some comp study.

Today we had a good start to the day though. We taught a mom and her daughter at 7:00 this morning. We taught them the restauration and they both accepted to be baptized on January 27. We are pretty excited for them.

those are about the only stories I've got for this week, but next week I should have a lot more.

Christmas dinner with the Velazquez family

The sunrise this morning

Our christmas breakfast

Well, last week was slow and this week was crazy!

We did a lot of exchanges this week with other missionaries and on Wednesday we went with Elder and Elder Gee. Elder Gee is just starting his mission and is super excited. We had some appointments and taught some people. Later though, like all missionaries have experienced, nobody was home. So I noticed that Elder Gee had a fat stack of about 150-200 "light the world" cards and I told him that I bet you couldn't give out all of his cards before the end of the day. Well he took the challenge and we just went crazy. We got to the point where almost everybody in the area we were at had a card. It was really fun actually and we found some awesome new people to teach as well. Now we have a bet with them this week to see who can find the most investigators. Whoever loses, buys the other companionship a pizza.

We also had been collecting clothes to give to the people in our area because it is really poor. Saturday had the theme of giving clothes to the poor so we thought it was a perfect fit. Well, thursday came and the ward had donated a lot of clothes and food. But then we realized that we hadn't really talked to anybody about giving them the clothes. So we had a lot of clothes and no specific people to give it too and we started to get pretty worried. So we went to an extra poor area of our area and asked a member to introduce us to more people who would like some clothes. Well she talked to just about the whole neighborhood, and later brought us to another neighborhood. In about 10 minutes our worry of not having anybody to give the clothes to turned into a worry of not having enough clothes. Well saturday came and the activity went super well. We also brought a a box of copies of the Book of Mormon and gave out every copy. My comp and I had to stand up in front of the crowd of about 30 people and we were almost preaching about the Book of Mormon. It was a pretty cool experience and now we are teaching a large majority of those people.

We are seeing so many miracles here and it is amazing. Elder Grimshaw and I are having a blast and enjoying every day. We had an interview with President together and he told us that he is expecting a lot out of us so we are a little overwhelmed with all that we have to do, but these have been some of the best weeks of my mission. I love you all, have a great week!



--
Elder May

Elder Grimshaw getting his ingrown toenail taken out by a lady in Itzapalapa (no anesthetic)

I found Elder Vargas again!

Dec. 12, 2017

This week was a little slower, I'll be honest. We only had one full day to actually work in our area due to a bunch of meetings and stuff. But we had transfers last week and I am staying at least one more transfer in Hidalgo and i couldn't be happier. This is seriously the best place I have ever lived. My new companion is Elder Grimshaw and he is awesome! I may have mentioned him before because when I was in Espartaco he was in my district and we had some awesome exchanges together. President knew we were really good friends and I just asked him a few weeks ago if he would send Elder Grimshaw to be my comp and he did! I honestly didn't think it was going to work but we are super excited.

On sunday we had a family home evening with the Velazquez Guzman family that we baptized a while back and it was awesome. We wanted to do something with the Light the World initiative and we came up with the idea of bringing cookies to people's houses like we do back home. Nobody does that here and so it was going to be something new for them. Well it turned out really well. They told us that they have a lot of family that live close by but that they really don't get a long. We convinced them to let us bring them some cookies and it was a miracle. They invited us all in and we shared a little message about Christmas and said a prayer with them. We later invited them to have another Family home evening together next week and they all accepted! when we left, the mom (concepcion) told us that she had never seen her family smile like that before. We were able to testify to them about the power of Christ to heal families. Just like they were able to see changes in their immediate family, we promised them that if they keep showing little acts of love for their family, that they are going to see more miracles. It was a really cool experience for all of us.

those are kind of the highlights of this week. Like I said, we didn't do a whole lot of work this week due to a bunch of meetings. I also fogot my camera so I can't send any pictures. I will update you all next week. Adios!


--
Elder May

Dec. 4, 2017

Hola every body! This week has been fantastic and full of miracles.

 We were able to baptize Naomi, Fernanda and Berenice on saturday and they were confirmed yesterday. We were pretty scared that the baptisms weren't going to go through because of certain circumstances but it all worked out. Berenice is 17 and I explained a little bit about her situation last week. Well, during the week we went to visit her and plan her baptism more. We also needed her mom's signature because she isn't 18 yet. When we asked her mom for permission to sign the baptismal record she said "I won't be singing anything" and was pretty upset that her daughter was going to be baptized. That alone was pretty frustrating because her mom was with us in every lesson and knew perfectly well that we were planning a baptism. She said that her daughter has no respect for her and is really rude and that she wouldn't be supporting her in this decision. (side note: we were in exchanges and I was with Elder Ceja) Well, Elder Ceja and I magically turned into family counselors and tried to work with them. The mom said she wanted her daughter to change and show her some respect. Berenice shared that she wanted to take this step because she wants to change and start over. She said she feels really good about what she is learning and wants to improve. She also said that whether she signed the form or not, she would continue going to church and trying to improve. That really impressed us and brought the spirit into the room. We testified with all of our hearts that baptism and following Jesus Christ is the only way to really make a definite lasting change in our lives. The appointment lasted about an hour and a half and was really intense, but the spirit was really strong. By the end of all of it, her mom signed the form and we could all breathe again. We always try to get her mom to pray but she always refuses, but this time we invited her to say the last prayer and she accepted. That alone was a shocker. We all knelt down and she said the prayer and by the end, she was crying. It was a really spiritual experience for all of us. A little intense, but spiritual.

Being a missionary has given me many opportunities to help people make changes in their lives. That night with Berenice I was able to strengthen my testimony even more about the power of Christ that can heal all problems. It is because of him that we can all leave behind our difficulties and challenges and be changed. All of us have many faults and shortcomings, but we have all been placed here to be redeemed. This is God's great plan of redemption and all we have to do is follow Jesus Christ. President Ezra Taft Benson said "When you choose to follow Jesus Christ, you choose to be changed."

Have a great week!

--
Elder May

Cool bottle someone gave me