Branch Changes

Hello everyone. I hope that you are all well and enjoying your fall. It still gets hot here during the day but in the mornings it gets pretty cold. I`m expecting the temperature to drop pretty soon. We've had a good week. We've been finding a few new investigators (some that live pretty far away) and have been teaching them.

Mowing the lawn??

 On Tuesday we had a day of walking around looking for people until the evening. That night we had a good lesson with one of our investigators, Asael. He`s a 17 year old guy who is the cousin of some members. It`s a little funny because the other Elders are teaching his mom. He lives with his cousins on our side and his mom lives on the other side. Wednesday we had district meeting (in our house :D) and had exchenches with the other Elders. I was with Elder Hammer in our area. We had a good day, a member took us with a few references and we taught some investigators. We also tried unsuccessfully to fix the churches electric piano. It was a good day, and it`s always interesting to be with another American working all day. 

Better days for the church electric piano

Thursday we had another day of searching and had weekly planning in the morning. In the night we went with a member to a part of our area called Ayeualulco (something like that) and got lost looking for a reference. I just love when the people who we talk with just blatantly lie to us. We were looking for the contact that we had talked with and we knocked a door and asked if they lived there and were home. The guy said just a minute and went to look for them. When he came back out he told us that they didn't live there. Yup. It was pretty funny.

Friday we went to another part that is pretty far away in our area called Tlatempa. There we contacted a reference (yay!) and did a bunch of contacts. We also had a funny experience but to understand it I need to explain something. So in Mexico there is a store called Coppel that sells a bunch of stuff like appliances and they give people loans to be able to buy there. So many times they have people that go out to collect loans from the people. So when we went to see if one of the contacts that we had done was home, his wife greeted us and then when we asked if he was home he wife told him "the people from Coppel are looking for your!. Also when we had talked with him before he didn`t tell us his name at first because he thought we were from Coppel haha. Friday night we also taught Edwardo and Karen the law of chastity so that they get married. It was a good lesson but Edwardo didn`t seem too excited. He told us he wants to save up to have a fancy wedding. He told us maybe in about 4 years they could get married. We`re shooting for November haha. We`re going to see how it goes. 

Saturday we had more lessons, one was really tense with the daughter of a member. The member is really pushy that they accept the chruch. It was a pretty akward lesson. You can`t really force the gospel on somebody. We`re going to see if we can visit her without her parent there. And on Sunday President Nelson came to the branch to implement a lot of changes in the callings. President Cordova now has two councilors who are members! Now the missionaries won`t have to be councilors in the branch presidency! We`ll have less meetings!

Yup, it was a good week. Tomorrow we are planning on going to a town super far away. It`s called Caxhuacan. See if you can find it on a map. It`s on the border of Puebla and Veracruz and is going to take 3.5 hours to get there in a micro-bus. It will be an adventure.! Have a great week!

-Elder Hartvigsen