Week 87 - 2/25/13

I am now in the area called Tres Cerritos, three little hills... not sure why exactly it’s called that... there aren’t three little hills. 

Well I got changed to junior companion... as a zone leader. I would have to say it’s pretty cool being junior companion again, a lot less thinking required haha. And as far as the zone leader part, not sure exactly what president was thinking on that one. 

Tuesday. Well we left Huejotzingo in the morning and got to the change meeting just on time. I’m with Elder A. We went back the area, had a meeting with the stake president.

Wednesday. District meeting. Didn’t have to give the district meeting yay, not my job anymore. I did a baptismal interview and it turns out the elders never taught her tithing or the law of chastity... really, like those seem like kind of important things to know before baptism.  

Thursday. Studies, weeking planning... fun fun. So we had our food appointment with the bishop. He sent his chauffeur to pick us up in his bulletproof BMW. We got to the house and it was huge. It’s in a little place called La Vista, richest place in Puebla. By far the nicest house I have ever seen, like really really nice. And we ate there very good. Our bishop is probably the richest man I have ever met. Not 100% sure exactly what he does. But after, we had a lesson with a family. Really spiritual lesson. We committed them to get baptized on Saturday. 

Friday. Hey 20 months in the mission, guess I’m getting pretty old. We taught a few lesson and then our district leader did the interviews for the 2 that were going to get baptized, and one did not pass the interview. Kind of sad for my companion, he had been working with them for a time now.  

Saturday. Well normal day. Lesson. regular stuff.

Sunday. We had church. Then the baptism later in the day. The elder that was here before came to baptize her. 

Monday. Washing clothes and cleaning the house. My companion loves soccer so looks like I will be playing soccer every Monday from here on out. Hmm. Sorry short email, my companion almost writes nothing so I think he is waiting on me. 

Looks like I will be finishing in this area, he goes home one change before me. 

Love you all 

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 86 - 2/18/13

So guess what, I’m leaving Huejotzingo.  I love it here but I guess it’s time to go.  

Tuesday. In the morning we had interviews with President Reeves. Went well, president says that he doesn’t lose sleep at night worrying about what I might be doing. I suppose that’s a good thing haha. Well it was the biggest day of the carnival so we tried to work our side of the city of Huejotzingo, but basically we didn't have any appointments and when the biggest party of the year is going on there are not too many people home. Strange because there were some people that said they don’t leave their home on that day because it’s dangerous. But we were heading back to the house at night around 9 and a drunk walked past us and said brothers don’t be afraid god is with you. Haha ok thank you for that.

 

Wednesday. Another very slow day. Basically we had nothing but somehow in the last 3 hours of the day we pulled out 4 lessons.

Thursday. Lots of people kissing in the street but that’s normal, the good thing about Feb. 14th is that the balloons covered them up a bit haha.  

Friday. We had a couple lessons with less actives and a lot of walking around. 

Saturday. We had a good lesson with an investigator and we actually had a few lessons this day. But our food appointment fell through. The good thing about the sisters in Mexico is they all know how to cook and if your food appointment falls through they are always willing to make you food.  

Sunday. Wow after such a slow week we had very good results in church. 12 less active members with whom we have worked came to church. That’s pretty exciting, most of them for the first time in years. That made me feel really good. In gospel principles the teacher was talking about prayer and one of the less active sister said that she hadn’t prayed in 6 years and when we found her and invited her to pray it has been changing her life and she said we came like angels into her life. That made me feel good because our investigators were all over the place this change, from progressing really fast to a complete halt in progress. What I saw on Sunday made me really happy. Huejotzingo will be having some baptisms soon even though I won’t be there to see it. I feel that I at least left the area better that I found it.  

Today. Said goodbye to people and now I’m packing. You know how great I am at packing.

 

 Love you all,

Eder Curtis Wigington

 

Week 85 - 2/11/13

Pretty crazy day today. I’m going to start with today because it will be the longest then jump back for the rest of the week.  

Maybe just the most awesome birthday ever, I think all Huejotzingo left to celebrate haha.

Opened the package thanks so much. Well we kind of skipped the cleaning in the morning and we went to Angel’s house and he shot off his rifle a little bit. It’s so fun to shoot those things off. All it is is black powder musket. Then to my surprise he had bought me a birthday cake! We had cake with their family. Well then we went to the center and we started to watch the carnival. It was so crazy I can’t believe how many people were shooting off those rifles. It’s so cool. And don’t worry, I did ask president’s permission to go. I really find it amazing the costumes that they have. Most of the outfits are handmade and cost about what would be 1000-2000 dollars each. Well then the zone leaders came because they wanted to… let’s see... kill the fun... Anywho, we went to eat with the one of the parade groups because Angel’s sister was in it. So they gave us food free. Mmmm. Then we came here to internet and that’s a really short version, but it was pretty awesome, probably the coolest thing I have seen in Mexico. 

Overall for the rest of the week was pretty slow for missionary work because everyone was doing stuff with the carnival. 

Saturday. Happy birthday dad and happy Carnival Huejotzingo. We actually had a lot of lessons which was strange for what we had been having. We taught an investigator for the first time and we had given him a Book of Mormon on Sunday and he was already in Jacob. I said the opening prayer and while I was saying it the wind opened the door. Later he said I think it was a sign that when you invited the spirit in your pray the door opened because I have very secure doors and they would never open by themselves, I think that was the spirit coming in.

 

Week 84 - 2/4/13

Tuesday. This whas the day to find people we had never found before. I think we just got really lucky. We found a sister that we had tried to find like 50 times before and she was home. She was alone, so we couldn’t enter but hey that’s progress right. Then later in the day we found a guy that we had never been able to find as well. Cool stuff.

Wednesday. Well our investigator decided that she did not what to get baptized Saturday... sad day.

Thursday. Mission leader conference. Very good. A little long. Big news... well at least for Mexicans. There is church school that they will be turning in to an international MTC. It will be the second largest MTC. My comp studied there and I think when he heard it he about cried.

Friday. Some lessons in the morning. At night I did baptismal interviews for the zone leaders. Pretty easy cause they were like 14, 11, and 9 years old. We ended up sleeping at the zone leader house.  They had extra mattresses, but it was freezing.

Saturday. Lots of lessons, but not good planning on our part…we were running from one side of our area to the other and back again. But we had an awesome lesson with a less active family. We used the proclamation to the world and talked about the responsibilities of everyone and we compared it to a cake.  Mom and dad were the cake, the older daughter the frosting, the 2 younger apples and the 2 youngest m&ms. Cool lesson.  They really had fun. Sadly they didn’t come to church, but as they say here poco a poquito.

Sunday. A guy came to church that we had never met before. He had lot of questions. They weren’t attacking questions just really good questions, good thing we were there to fill in any doubt.

Today. We played basketball and then ping pong in the church. There is a brother who really likes ping pong and left it in the church. We played with a number of members. Well, for all the times that Mexicans have owned me in soccer, I think it was my turn. Now I’m fixing my zone leaders external hard drive.

Well glad that all is well back home. My knocking door method is a little different, seeing as they have giant metal doors you have to knock as hard as you can or they don’t hear you haha. But thats about it.

Love you all

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 83 - 2/28/13

So it is like super cold in the morning. I have to do exercise or I would freeze. Our house has those huge windows so don’t think that helps. But everyone tells me hey you’re from the north, you should be used to that... not exactly...

Tuesday, 19 month in the mission. Wow, you could say that I’m getting pretty old. The family that was going to give us food wasn’t going to be around so they called us and said hey so we aren’t in Huejotzingo, so we just left the window open and we put key just inside so you can open up. We got there and guess what?  The key wasn’t for the house... but we just went in the window, but the window was about the size of the door so it was all good. But they made us chicken cordon bleu which was the first time that I had ate it in all my time in the mission. Kind of weird eating alone in the house.  So at night we were heading home and then there were some guys shooting off muskets. They are for a super huge carnival that is coming up. Made me jump haha. We talked to members about it and the scary thing is that they are pretty much real muskets. They use gun power and they just put bullets in it and they just shoot them off all that weekend. Apparently when they start getting drunk they put stuff in the musket and sometimes they shoot themselves. One sister told us that last year was pretty calm because no one died... So we will see how that goes. The interesting thing is the craziest day will be on my birthday. haha. 

Wednesday.  So there was a family that we were teaching that we could never get them all to pay attention. I had the brilliant idea to use my Rubik’s cube to teach the lesson. It worked and then we were just talking with the dad at the end. I had let the kids play with the cube for a bit. Then... when we were leaving I took it back and solved it but I came to the end and it turns out they had pealed stickers. I’m pretty sure it required all my energy to not kill someone in that moment, ugh, no one messes with my cube. But since I was a missionary there was forgiveness haha.  

Thursday. So we had a lesson with one of our investigators and we asked her how she liked church. She said everything went good and then she said, well something really strange happened to me when I was in the bathroom. When you hear something like that who knows where it could go. She said I didn’t know how to flush the toilet so I was trying to figure out how it flushes when all of a sudden it flushed automatically. I don’t know how it flushed, it really scared me. Yeah... that was the sensor, it automatically flushes. But it made me think, there really aren’t too many places other than in our churches where I have seen automatic toilets. Only in some of the nice places I went to when I was in the office. Fun stuff.  

Friday. Well we divisions. I went to Nealtican with Elder R in my district. It’s funny there is a member’s dog that follows the elders around all day and so they put a tie on it. haha. It would pick a fight with every single street dog and then hide behind us when it would start to lose. Thanks, that’s just what I wanted a bunch of street dogs growling at me. I wish I would have taken pictures. 

Saturday. In the morning we were going to an appointment and the phone rang and I looked and it was President. I was like ugh what did I do now, not really but it’s strange that president calls. I answered and it was Sister Reeves. They had moved their computer downstairs and their wireless didn’t work. Of course I, like Obi wan Kenobi, was the only hope. Got it on my first try, the WLAN was set to off. So easy. Haha, good stuff. Anyways as far as the work goes, kinda slow, all of our appointments fell through but that’s life.

Sunday. Sadly no investigators in church, but 7 new less actives showed that we have been visiting so that was pretty exciting. We have been teaching gospel principles but the bishop now assigned our ward missionaries to teach. They are two 18-19 year old woman. And I don’t think they had taught much before. My companion and I pretty much taught the lesson with our very long comments and oh that reminded me of a scripture and another one and another one. But it’s good they are learning.