Mexico City #11

‪Mexico #11

12/09/13

Querido Familia,

Wow, another week has gone by!  Time moves so fast here!  We are already on week 5 of our transfer cycles.  Just one more week until changes!  Haha, so weird! 

Well to start off, you guys are my family and I’ve really been kind of just writing what I thought missionaries should write.  I want to just write completely openly; hoping that something I say will help any of you, or vise versa.  

The beginning of the cycle was extremely difficult for me. (Not because comp problems.)  I felt that my testimony was bombarded from all sides.  My testimony that all people can be forgiven was attacked.  I felt too much that there was no way that I should be here.  That I wasn’t good enough to even be here. What happened was, I trusted in my companion and told him of my thoughts.  He helped a lot, but I still felt off.  We decided that what was best, was for me to talk to the Mission President.  I went in and told him what I was feeling and he was extremely optimistic.  This was something that I didn’t expect.  What he said was;  “If the Lord only wanted 100 percent perfect missionaries, there would be NO missionaries.”  This is so true.  The thing is, we’re not perfect.  None of us!   None of us are what we want to be, or what we need to be.   However, the Lord accepts our contributions as long as we innocently offer our help.  We all have past actions that we are ashamed of.  We feel sometimes that we aren’t good enough.   We all are attacked by the doubts and feelings of the natural man.  We all can do something right now.  We can talk to our leaders.  We can show our love to another child of God. Or we can do the simple act of trusting the Lord and CHOOSING to accept the atonement.  We all have agency.  We all have that power to change ourselves from what we are into what God is trying to make us into.  That’s what I’m trying to do.   CHOOSE to forget my fears and past and just serve the lord.  That’s hard, but I know that’s what I need to do.  

Ok sorry, but preaching is my job now... let me get off my soap box!

This week was fun and hard and tiring and fun and yeah...

sooo many things!  

For two days this week, we helped a recent convert, Alicia paint her house, and it was so fun!  Her husband is Jesus, the one I was saying that was in the hospital.  Which I learned is a much bigger deal than I thought.  In mexico it’s like a 60 percent chance of you coming out of the surgery ok.   A member told me all about the health care situation in Mexico and I do not want to go there while I’m here!  But anyways, we painted the house, and we helped put up some Christmas decorations.  Here I’m tall, so I hung up all the greenery stuff!  That was really fun!  

We are trying to set a date for baptism now for Jesus.   Because they came with us to the new visitors center, and he was really happy and emotional about it, I think we are going to be able to make an eternal family!  

Oh on that note, we have a new visitors center for the Temple!  It is soooo coool!  It’s so much nicer than the center in Utah, and there is technology i didn’t even know existed!  The best part is we can go whenever we want with investigators, and menos activos and reciento conversos!  Haha !  It’s really so awesome!  

This week, we had a really cool experience while looking for a contact!  

After lunch on Friday, we were walking back to the house to do planning, and we got a call from the offices.  They said we had a reference, and they wanted us to go as soon as possible.  Well, we both felt that we should go, so we made the journey to Penon de los Banos, which is the most dangerous part of my area.  We don’t like to be there after sunlight, and the sun was setting.  But we felt the confidence of the Lord.  Well, we walk to the reference and we knock.  A young man about 25 years old, tells us that the contact, Aurelio, is sick in the hospital.  He’s an old man, so we didn’t know if we would ever meet him, or if he was going to pass away.  We left a little disheartened, and we started walking back home.  We both felt very impressed to visit a nearby less active family.  While we talked with them, we felt like we should keep the message short and leave.  As we left, we saw a woman of about 35 start running up to us.  We thought she needed to enter the door we came out of, but she says:  “No, no, no, I’m from the church!  She told us that she lives in Florida but was in town to visit her dad.  My comp asked her her dad’s name, and it was Aurelio!  Haha!  We told her that he was in the hospital and she made a funny face and laughed and said: “No, I just saw him!”  We were already seeing a small miracle.  

We went with her to their house and met him.  He’s about 80 years old and he is bed ridden.  His granddaughter, who was 3, told him that he needed to talk to the missionaries.  The mom called the church 2 hours before we were in the house talking to him!  We gave the first lesson and Aurelio was very interested!  We left in awe of how the Savior led us that day.  I don’t know how, but we are going to baptize Aurelio.  I can feel it!!!!

Oh, I hope this made sense, and I hope that I made sense of all my thoughts.  They are always pretty jumbled!

Well, family I love you and I hope to hear from all of you soon!  In a letter or an email.  Letters would be cool!   Hint!!! Haha!

love you all

Elder Clayton England