Mexico City

Hello everyone. 

I feel very strange writing on a Wednesday, and I assure you all that I have permission. So I'm not sure if I told all of you but on Monday I went to Mexico City with an Elder in my zone to see a specialist. It was awesome! But we didn't get home until 9:30 so we didn't have time to write Monday or yesterday because we had a bunch of appointments.

So last Tuesday was a pretty normal day, we had a good amount of lessons and found a new investigator. We also went out with the Elders Quorum President, Javier and he is a super solid missionary. He served in Cancun about 2 years ago but he still teaches really well. He helps us out a lot whenever we go out with him. 

Wednesday was the same, we also had our weekly planning session that day because on Thursday we had a zone conference with the President! Zone Conferences are the best. We talked a lot about the state of the mission, and about how we are going to improve. President Christensen showed us how the mission was when he arrived here and how it has changed since he´s been here. In the past few months we've been dropping in numbers of baptisms, investigators and other such things. We talked about what´s happening, what the underlying causes are, and how we can improve to see more people enter into a covenant with their Heavenly Father. We talked a lot about how to find new investigators and how to leave and follow up on commitments. It was a great conference, because a struggle that we have in our area is that it´s tough to find new investigators. We are seeing improvement, but we still have a far way to go here and in the zone. 

As always we also ate great food that the Hna. Christensen prepared. I also realized that Pres. and Hna. Christensen only have about 2 changes left until they go back home and we receive a new mission president. It´s crazy that they are going to go home and that we will have someone else, and I also imagine that there will be many changes that come with the new mission president. It´ll be great!

Friday and Saturday were pretty normal as well, many appointments fell through. I am however, grateful for our new mission leader that we received a few weeks ago. He is super excited to work and he´s doing a great job so far. Sunday was normal as well, we only have one investigator that attends, the mother of Javier. She is doing alright, but has had trouble accepting a baptismal date. We´re praying a lot for her.

Mexico City

On Monday we had interchanges and I went to Mexico City with Elder Espinoza. It was awesome! It was also very nice to be able to get out of Puebla for a bit and see what it´s like farther out. So the bus ride there was about 3 hours for the traffic (its usually 2) and it was really strange because they showed "The Fast and the Furious" on the bus. It felt weird to watch a movie, but it was cool to see the mountains in between Puebla and D.F. Also the city is huge! When you come down out of the mountains you just see waves of houses and buildings as far as you can see. 

So we got there, took the subway which was a cool experience and my first time taking a subway. It was packed, and its impressive how many people take the train, and how fast it goes. A train passes by every 2 minutes and every train is huge, and full. We also took a bus that had a huge line to get on. There are just a ton of people that live there and take public transport. We also ate some pretty good street tacos, and I ate one of head-meat. It tasted pretty good.

On the way back, the bus took a different route because on the normal pass, it snowed and they shut it down. So we tood a different route but it must have been the only one open because there was a ton of traffic. It took us more than 4 hours to return to Puebla. It was a really fun day though.

Yup, and here we are at Wednesday already. Time goes by really fast. This week we find out who has changes again. I can´t believe that another change already went by. Well, everyone have a good week!

-Elder Hartvigsen