Weekly Letter: November 8-14, 2011

Yes, it did come, I´m going to pick it up at the offices tomorrow. I´m pretty excited to see what came. It´s been a long last few weeks. It´s rained a little bit and my shoes are doing their best to hold up, but it´s just not quite enough, you know with holes all in the soles. I´m also excited for the other things that could be coming in the mail. This will be my last package in the mission I bet...(because the Christmas season is always really really slow in the mail.), so I´m pretty excited for it, just as if it were Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas. I will be spending Christmas in the Molinito....and probably until the end of my mission. Elder Riches and I got our changes yesterday, and he´s going to El Oro, Estado de Mexico. It´s part of the Toluca Zone and stake, but if you look on a map, it´s in the middle of nowhere. He was a little bummed because we wanted to spend Christmas together, but I think it will be a good change for him. He loves the outdoors and being here in the city he feels a little claustrophobic. I mean, he´s from Grantsville and now he finds himself in one of the biggest cities in the world. I didn´t think myself to be a real camping kind of guy, but here in the city, I´m about ready for a week of camping just to get away from it all. Oh well, I guess it will have to wait until later...there will be plenty of time for camping and all that.

I have not got a clue of who is going to be coming here with me. I just know that I´m training these last two changes. President called me Saturday in the afternoon, and when he does that the Saturday before changes, it means something is going to happen the next change. He called me and told me that I was going to have a shift of responsibility from being a district leader to a trainer. He explained that he wanted me to focus on training this new missionary, and for such he was going give me that responsibility. I don´t know if he wanted to avoid whatever outburst that I imagine he could have gotten from other missionaries, but I just told him that I would be more than willing to do so. Really, I´d much rather have another son than to be a district leader or a zone leader. So yeah, I will get to meet my kid tomorrow at the offices(so I´ll be balancing my package and the luggage of my new companion in the metro...funnnn!)

But yeah, we had some success this week, but not near to what we should have had. Our baptismal date fell through. We saw her Monday, and then we couldn´t find her until Friday. Then we weren´t able to make plans with her about when she was going to get baptized on Sunday because she was going out of town for Saturday. But she never got back....so that fell through pretty hard. But that´s okay because the rest of her family looks pretty interested too. We have an appointment with them on Wednesday, and hopefully we´ll find Carmen too.

So yeah, I´m excited for this week. Plus, we had a bunch of people go to church. One is Esmeralda who had fallen through hard last week because she didn´t want to leave behind certain traditions of her fathers. However, when we found her this week she apologized several times and said she wanted to go to church on Sunday. She went, and her mom also went, but when she found out that Riches was leaving she almost cried. However, she felt very good in church and several people talked to her about their own experiences before baptism, so that she came out of church completely different. Her mom also liked church and attended another baptism(she´s the one that has had dreams about the temple.) Last night when we visited them we were about to share a message about why the Lord calls us to other places. Esmeralda and her brother were there, but the Mom was outside. We asked if she could call her mom in and she muttered something about how her mom didn´t want to change religion. So we didn´t dig too deep in there, but it seems like she´s thinking about baptism right now. So when we visit her on Wednesday we will be inviting her to be baptized this week.

We also have another family that we are planning to invite to baptism on Tuesday, and another family we are visiting on Wednesday that went to church and that we are going to invite to baptism. In all there could be 8 baptisms between those three families, but we have to have some miracles for that to happen, but that would sure be a great way to welcome a new missionary here.

I love the mission. I hate to think what my life would have been without it. I really feel like who I am, I became in the mission. When we train missionaries, we are put in a 12 week study cycle so that we can more easily show them the ropes. Sometimes the two missionaries are changed from the area after the first transfer, but probably this means that I will be here until the end of my mission. I don´t want to think about it, but I feel like my time is up to my neck. I hate the feeling, especially when I see people from my generation and they remind me how much time we have left. When members ask me how long I have in the mission I have been answering "I´ve got a year and a half in Mexico" which is true. I have...unless my calculations are incorrect 19 and half months here in Mexico. They always say "there isn´t much time left," but at least they don´t try to trunk me out like they did to Childers and Perez. However, my generation is pretty big, I don´t think I´ve ever been in a zone without at least two people from my generation in my zone. It´s an unpleasant reminder of all that I have yet to do, and how little time I have to do it.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. I love you all. Please pray for me. Having a kid when you´re finishing up is likely to revive the dead elder or kill the new-born. I hope it will be a Rogers-Calhoun experience for me. I know these are probably going to be my hardest changes in my mission...but bring it on! Please help me first, and then bring it on!

Cariños,

Elder Blackham