Weekly Letter: November 2-8, 2010

Another week of work our here in the mission with my new companion Elder Mendoza. The work here continues to go forward, but sometimes not at the pace we would like. However, before I get started on that, I´d like to introduce my new companion. His name is Elder Mendoza, his family is pretty big... he is the second of six children, and all his family for four generations have been members, some more active than others, but the majority are baptized members. In fact he tell me that his ancestors were the first members of the church in Veracruz. Not to confuse you guys, he is not from Veracruz personally. He´s from Tijuana. His extended family basically live in one of three cities in Mexico, but he basically only knows those in Tijuana. Other part of his family lives in Veracruz, and the third part lives in: ..........¡Toluca!(more on that later)

Now about the work. Here in the ward of Centro in the Toluca Stake we have some problems about the work. I think I´ve mentioned this before, but basically this area has to proselyting areas that are really far apart from each other: Centro and Amoloya. Amoloya has a lot more fruits and the people are much more open to the gospel, but it is very very very far from the church. They´ve already got sufficient active membership to make a branch in Almoloya, but the problem is that Centro doesn´t have enough active membership to maintain itself as a ward.The church cannot and will not split a ward into two branches, so we have a little bit of a problem. So we´ve been focusing on working here in the Centro 5 days of the week, and the other two days in the afternoon, we will work in Almoloya. However, it is a little discouraging because the people here are a lot harder to talk to and make appointments with, and later they end up avoiding the appointment altogether.

However, I feel that the Lord had His hand in sending my companion here. He has family here in the ward that are inactive....and there are a lot of them! It´s been pretty interesting, because some of the members here in the ward actually know the names of all his family better than he does! Actually, he tells me that he only met his Grandfather before he came here, and the last time he saw him was 4 years ago! However, that only amounts to part of the work we want to have here in the Centro, so I hope we can find a way to find more people here in the centro. In Amoloya, it basically rains references, and it feels so wrong that we are not going to maintain that much contact with the area where there is more work, but in the end, I feel this will help the area grow and thrive in the gospel. A lot of members that were baptized in Amoloya later become inactives due to the cost of transportation, but if there were a branch here and a Worship House(not a chapel) there, there wouldn´t be as much problems.

Anyway, I´ve written a ton. I better get off because I now am out of time. Thanks for the prayers and support.