Weekly Letter: June 22-28

Yeah, so the changes are back. We found out yesterday what´s going to happen tomorrow during the changes. Hopefully our new president arrives well. We´ve been praying and fasting for him so that he can get his visa and arrive in time (hmmm.....sound familiar?) But even without the new president, there were a lot of changes...at least in my zone, I don´t know about the others, I imagine that it was about the same, but who knows, huh?

But first things first.... this week was probably our most effective week up to date in the mission. We taught so many people, found many new investigators and had a couple baptisms this week(I attached some pictures of this baptism). That being said, Elder Javier and I have definitely learned that when things are really going well....we receive the most opposition. Truly, as Lehi said, there is opposition in all things.

Irene is still going strong....and is turning into a Mama Galleta (Literally means Cookie mom, it basically means that the missionaries can drop in whenever they want and she´ll accept them and offer them a bunch of food.) She really amazes me sometimes. She really is a testimony that the work is the Lord´s, not our own. We really didn´t do anything special with her to make her into this strong member, I know that the spirit worked this change in her and in her daughter, and I will be happy to hear in a year from now when she enters the temple.

We´ve been trying to keep contact with the Orea Zavaleta family this week, Unfortunately, we weren´t able to coordinate our efforts with Jorge Montes to have a FHE in their house, and my companion and I didn´t feel comfortable setting an appointment without his help. Unfortunately, Uriel Orea has had some misunderstanding with the Ward Mission Leader, and he´s a little distant right now, and Gaby is working hard like always, and doesn´t want to cause a rift in their relationship. Luckily, both of them still are willing to accept us in their home and are interested in listening to us and eventually being baptized, but right now, they aren´t going to church...so they weren´t baptized this week(which was their baptismal date).

I think I´ve already mentioned a bit about Mariel Graciela Sanchez, her daughter Rebeca, and her son Mauricio. The mother had been listening to the missionaries for a long time, but never had been baptized. She had some conflicts with the ward....and the bishop, and wanted to get baptized in another ward. Rebeca, on the other hand, didn´t have anything against the Ward of Plateros, and wanted to get baptized this Sunday. However, when we talked to Mariel, this week, she told us that she wanted to get baptized this week, but during the week. So we set the date for this Thursday!

It was an interesting experience, because Thursday morning, Hna. Sanchez was having second-thoughts about being baptized. We set an appointment with them that morning. (Also she had apparently not told her daughter Rebeca about the change of date and we ran into some resistance there.) I never thought for the entire world that I would commit(or recommit) someone to be baptized with these words ¨Hna Sanchez, will you be baptized at 8:00 tonight¨ However, all went well, both of them committed to be baptized that night. Elder Javier baptized the mother and I baptized Rebeca. Mauricio attended the service and liked it, but right now his focus is more on the deep doctrine(he keeps asking questions about spirits, Armegeddon and all of that), and less on finding out if the church is true. However we´re going to work harder with them, especially since, neither the daughter nor the mother showed up for their confirmation Sunday(there happened to be a World Cup Game at the same time as our meetings between Mexico and Argentina....in case you don´t know, Mexico lost 3-1, how do I know? How could I not?!) So that was a little blot on our good feelings that we had during the service on Thursday.

Another less than animating experience was Sunday, when Bety didn´t show up for her baptism. However, we were already somewhat aware that this might happen. We had an appointment on Saturday with her, she still was excited about being baptized, but all of her daughters...and her husband were against it. They all had concerns about how she was not going to be able to attend family gatherings, funerals, dance, and do a whole lot of stuff. Unfortunately for her, Bety didn´t know if that was true or not. We were able to resolve some of the doubts of one of her daughters, but her husband and other daughters weren´t there, so we recommitted her to be baptized the next day, hoping that all would go well with her husband.....apparently not. She never showed up, never answered the phone....except once when her husband answered saying that she wasn´t there and basically hung up. (Sigh) so we have a little more work with her.

However, we have been able to find a whole bunch of new investigators, one of them, Daniel Rodríguez, is actually a new/old investigator. He´s been in teaching for about a year off and on with the missionaries. We found his name and address in the area book and wrote them down a long time ago. One day when an appointment fell through, we looked up our list of people and found his name. We thought he was inactive, and when we asked him how long he´d been in the church he told us one year(thinking about how long he´s been in teaching) We then found out that he hadn´t been baptized, but still remembered a lot about our church, and understood a lot. He committed himself to be baptized in two weeks from our first visit, saying that he knew it was important to get it done soon, but wanted enough time to think it through. He has had some doubts changing his religion, but he does have an Aunt and some cousins that are members (so he has family support), and he really wants to find out if it´s true. Unfortunately, he lost his Book of Mormon, so we´re going to bring another one this Tuesday. So I´ve got good hopes for him!

Well, I´m basically our of time. I wish I could say more, but I need to tell you guys about the changes that are going to happen tomorrow. We received the news about the changes yesterday and.....Elder Javier is leaving the area. He´s going to be companions with Elder Beals(who was in the MTC with me, but we never really knew each other.) in Lermo, in the Toluca zone. So he´s leaving the Federal District, Mexico City, and going to Lermo in the State of Mexico. So he´s going be a little far away. And I´m going to get the opportunity to teach my new companion (I can´t remember his name, but he´s also a gringo) about the area of Plateros. Anyway, it will be quite the experience, it´s going to be difficult seeing my companion, trainer, and papi go, but that´s how the mission is, right? Changes happen and you´ve got to take what you got and run with it.

Anyway, that´s the news for this week. I look forward to letting you guys know what happened this week!

Thanks, like always for your prayers in my behalf.

Con Amor,

Elder Thomas Blackham

Weekly Letter: May 25-31, 2010

Wow! What happened? It´s Monday again, and here I am! I can´t believe how fast this week went. Already, I´m in the third week of this transfer....which means I´m already halfway done. It certainly doesn´t feel like that at all! I realized that I´m going to complete my fourth month in the mission this week! To me, that´s just crazy! But, at the same time, when I allow myself to think about the day I entered the MTC, it feels like I was a different person.

As far as this week went, I felt pretty good by the end of it....(mostly because we had two investigators come to church, one with her family!) We really worked hard on getting these people to go to church. It was difficult because one of them, Irene, works at home and was swamped with her work the last two weeks. Each time, we committed her to go to church, and she said she would, but she wasn't able to because of her work. When we passed by, we thought we were going to have to teach about keeping the Sabbath day, but she told us already that she felt bad that she worked on the Lord´s day, and she would work harder the next week. Unfortunately, that next week the same thing happened. This last week, as a companionship, Elder Javier and I prayed and fasted to know what we could do. We promised her that this week she could finish her work early, the Saturday, in order to worship appropriately that Sunday. After promising this, she nodded solemnly and promised us she would come this Sunday.......which she did!

What´s even better is that she was able to talk with the bishop personally and make quite a few friends in the Relief society. After the meetings, the bishop talked to us privately and told us that he felt Irene was ready to be baptized. I think we already knew that as companionship before, but hearing the bishop say that really confirmed that. We have an appointment with her tomorrow, and we´re going to challenge her to be baptized! What a tender mercy it was to find her!

The other investigator, Gabriela Orea, was also able to attend all of the meetings this Sunday. This was great because she sometimes works Sundays and so we had been preparing her to go to the chapel for a couple weeks with her family. Her husband had to stay with his grandmother, who is ill, although he also wanted to go, but both of her young children were able to go! In fact, she told before Sunday School started that her children actually asked her to allow them to go with her to church! They´re really small, the oldest is six, and the other is only two, but both of them are learning already from the parents, a lot of what we´ve taught them. Hermana Orea also told me, if I understood her right (it seemed almost too good to be true) that she was going to start asking all the Sundays off of work! The only struggle both she and her husband have is the Word of Wisdom. But we taught them earlier this week about the word of wisdom, we helped them make a some goals for the next appointment on Friday on how many cigarettes they were going to smoke....both of them were able lower the amount of cigarettes this week and meet that goal! However, they both told us that it was difficult and that they felt something was lacking. Luckily we have a brother from the church who worked with addicts as his career coming to our stake to give a discourse about how to overcome these addictions.

Well, it´s already late. This P-day was quite the busy day. My companion had to go to the hospital to get an eye infection checked out. We arrived about 7 in the morning, and we didn´t get back home until about 4:30 in the afternoon. By that time, it was all we could do to eat something really quick, grab our stuff and head to the district meeting in Mixcoac at 6:00 (which we were still late for). After being up since about 5:00 this morning I´m dead tired, so I´m going to call it a day and head to bed, in order to be refreshed for this next week of missionary work!

Love you all, thank you so much for your prayers and support. It really does help. Please continue praying for my behalf, and I will update you all next week.

Con Amor,

Elder Blackham

Weekly Letter: April 13-19 (In Mexico)

Para todos ustedes:

Well, this is me, ¡En México! It´s been a great experience so far. My mission president, Presidente Fuentes speaks very little English. When he first walked in to welcome us new elders, he apologized because his English wasn´t good, but was quick to add that our Spanish wasn´t too hot either. He laughed and promised us that if we were faithful that Spanish would come.

My trainer is Elder Javier, from Southern Mexico. I can´t remember exactly what city he´s from because he talks way too fast when I ask him. The name of the city is pretty long, but it has Azul and Cruz in the name... (anyone want to send me a dearelder to help me?) I met him late Friday night, and he has apparently been waiting for a companion as long as I had been waiting on my visa.

Anyway, so the Spanish I learned in the MTC amounts to very little more than just a small background here in the field. You pick up about half the words they say and you end up getting about half of the meaning that was intended. It is getting better, though. I´ve already been blessed to see the gift of tongues working in my life. First of all, people seem to understand me when I do start talking in Spanish, and in Church yesterday, I actually understood a lot of the talks that were given.

That being said, I still need your prayers because I can barely teach a thing in the language, and whenever I ask a question and they answer....I´m not even sure what they just said. Things are a little difficult right now, since Elder Javier and I are reopening an area called Plateros that had no missionaries in it since last transfer about two months ago, so we kind of have to start over from scratch. Yesterday we went through the entire area book and picked out a few investigators to begin teaching again. So we´ll start trying to contact those people.

I did teach a couple lessons on Saturday while on a split with the Zone Leader in his area. I was not able to teach much, but it felt good talking about the gospel...which is the only thing in Spanish that I feel remotely confident in speaking.

We also had dinner at the home of the Ward Mission leader of the Plateros Ward. His name is Hermano Zepeda and he served in Veracruz Mexico on his mission. It was great to hear that. I then asked him if he knew an Elder Jensen that served there. (Hermano Jensen is a teacher in the MTC that really helped our district the last week in the MTC.) I knew it was a long shot, since I had no idea how long it had been since either one of them served missions. So I was pleasantly surprised when Hermano Zepeda brightened and went on a stream of rapid Spanish about how good of an Elder he was (and that is about all I was able to pick out). So I felt pretty happy that I had been part of the conversation during dinner, and even happier that I was able to make that connection on my first meeting with the Ward Mission Leader in my first area.

Anyway, everything is cool here. The city is HUGE. It was a little daunting when I first saw it from the window of the airplane, but it´s all good. I like it, there are a lot of people to talk to....as soon as I can talk to them, that is. I was going to attach some photos of the MTC and also some of the city, but the USB cord isn´t working and the memory card isn´t registering on this computer, but I´ll probably get it to work on another computer next week, since I just helped Elder Javier do the same thing on his computer, and it worked fine there. But look forward to getting a whole bunch of MTC and DF pics next week!

Love you all and I´m so thankful for your prayers, they really have helped.

I've got to go now to a Zone meeting (which will include playing a little soccer!), so I guess I better go and start speaking Spanish, which will be all the harder now that I´ve been thinking solely in English this last half'-an-hour.

¡Nos Vemos!

Con Amor,

Elder Thomas Blackham