Hijo! (A Son)

Hey everyone. The time of transfers rolled around again and it happens that we are going to close our area. That means that both my companion and I have changes. We´re pretty sad to leave the area, and the members are also a little disappointed too. It seems like the president always closes our area. The sister missionaries are also closing area, but they´re closing theirs for good. Next change there is only going to be one pair of missionaries in the ward Tule. 

Last days in Tule

We had an alright week this week. It was full of stuff that took us away from really working. On Tuesday we had an average day. Only a few lessons with new investigators and a meeting with President Nelson and President Delgado, the stake president. It was a good meeting. Both of the presidents are great leaders. I like our stake president a lot, he´s a great guy.

On Wednesday I got sick. Who knows why. My companion ate the same things and he was fine. I was pretty miserable that day, so we stayed in the house. It is the worst thing ever to be sick as a missionary. However I have been very fortunate in my mission so far. Many times the Americans get really sick sometimes, and sometimes they get sick frequently. I´ve only gotten really sick 2 or 3 times in my mission. I have a pretty strong stomach, most of the time haha. Thursday we had our weekly planning session in the morning and in the afternoon we did splits. My companion went to San Martin Texmalucan to do a baptismal interview for a member had his information lost in the system, and I stayed in the area with Hno. Artemio Perez. It went alright, all of our lessons fell through, which is tough to deal with when your in splits apart from your companion. In the end we finally found an investigator in her house and we were able to teach a lesson.

Tlaxcala Zone Conference

OK, I forgot to mention that on Wednesday we received a call from Elder Suarez one of the assistants who told us that we´re going to close area and that I'm going to train! I´m really excited for this opportunity to be able to train a new elder. It'll be a great experience and I'm looking forward to it. So on Friday we went to Puebla for a meeting with the trainers. It was really good, we learned that we need to provide our companions with opportunities to make decisions, and how to provide "leadership as a shadow." Afterwards we went to the baptism of the son of our (awesome) ward mission leader. It was good but they fed us tacos de canasta (it literally translates to basket tacos). They´re these tacos that they make in a town near here with a ton of grease and they usually sell them pedaling around on bikes all day. So there is always a bunch of guys with their bikes around here that have baskets full of little tacos. They also sometimes call them tacos de la muerte lenta. I¨ll let you all translate that haha. After we had a good activity in the ward.

Concilio (Council  Meeting)

Saturday we were in Puebla all day in the hospital with my companion and his knees. We also saw the cultural event broadcast for the rededication for the Mexico City temple. On Sunday we saw the last rededication session with Pres. Eyring and Elder Holland and it was sweet. Really powerful.

Well I have to go but have a great week everyone!

-Elder Hartvigsen

Mexico City Temple - rededicated September 13, 2015