The Weeklong Adventures of Elders Chavez and Lacey Continue

 

Ok so about 8 months ago I was with an Elder named Elder Chávez.  But we were only together for a week which was sad  

BUT miracles are real and now Elder Chávez and I are back together again as Zone Leaders!!!  It has been such a great week and I am loving it!

I have had 4 amazing experiences in the past 2 weeks that have strengthened my testimony so much that God knows and loves us!  

So there was a family I taught in my first area that was baptized shortly after I left.  Well last week I was invited to go to a family home evening with them and it was so great to talk to them again!  One of the daughters is preparing to go on a mission!

When I was in Salina Cruz, Elder Pano and I taught someone named Jani.  We taught everything but then she had to move far away and she got baptized a few weeks later BUT she is in the new area i'm in so I was able to meet someone else I taught!  

Someone I taught in El Tule got baptized this week and El Tule is in my zone!  So I was able to go to the baptism!  It was such a blessing to see everyone there!

I have been wanting to go to the temple for a long time.  We were walking by the temple today and we stopped to take pictures!  The temple was closed for maintenance but the workers let us into the waiting room.  We sat there for a while and enjoyed the quiet peace.  I am certain the Lord knows us and answers are prayers!  I am also certain that the temple is the house of the Lord!

Monte Alban

 

Hi friends!  

This was an absolutely incredible week!  I learned a lot and I am extremely grateful for it!

Today we are going to Monte Alban which I have waited my whole mission to be allowed to go, so I am super excited!  Monte Alban are ancient ruins where the Zapoteco people lived.  I'm writing this before hand but I'll write how it went and send pictures below!

This transfer has been a little rough to be honest.  We haven't had much success and the area has been hard.  But I had a few experiences this week that truly helped me to see things clearly.

We visited a family and their son is a member and he went on a mission.  But no one else in his family are members the church.  They have never been interested.  But now the father has a disease and his partly paralyzed.  He can't walk very well and is usually in a wheelchair.  We invited them to church and the mom wanted to go but the dad said no because he couldn't walk.  We talked to them for awhile and promised we would help them do anything to help them get to church even if we had to carry him.  We also promised them blessing of coming to church.  Then my companion shared a scripture and it truly changed my heart and I felt the spirit so strongly.

This is in Acts chapter 3

1 Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.

   2 And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple;

   3 Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms.

   4 And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with John, said, Look on us.

   5 And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them.

   6 Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

   7 And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

   8 And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.

   9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God:

I absolutely love this miracle.  Something I think is so important is that he went there daily.  Every day he went to the temple I believe hoping for a miracle.  He went daily every day for who knows how long.  And then one day he was healed in the name of Christ.  How incredibly touching is that?  I don't know why he had to wait that long.  But I do now that God loves that man just like he loves everyone of us.  Please remember that and even if it feels like you've been waiting for your miracle for thousands of days.  Miracles always come to the faithful.

After that scripture we helped the father walk a bit and he finally said yes to coming to church.  

We took him to church and we did end up literally carrying him for some parts.  And it was a very spiritual experience for me.  I love this gospel!

Another thing I love about the gospel is the Book of Mormón!  I cannot count how many times I have read a scripture from the book of Mormon who I have shared one with someone else and I felt or they felt so much comfort and it was exactly what we needed to hear!  That is plenty of evidence for me that it is a book that comes from God! But that's just my humble opinion  

Side note that is not spiritual but pretty funny is that my pants ripped yesterday 

Another side note is that we just finished getting back from monte Alban and we all squeezed in a taxi and my leg lost all circulation and when i got out of the taxi I couldn't feel my leg at all and I was falling and tripping all over the place and it was pretty funny.  

  Also Monte Alban was super cool!  I obviously made lots of Nephite jokes

Zion

 

Hi yall!!  Hope you all had a great week!!

Last week we went to a place called Arrazola and it is where they make a ton of Alebrijes.  Alebrijes are the colorful little wooden carvings people make and they are so cool!  We talked to a guy for a while about making the alebrijes and it was so cool!  He loved his work so much!

This week we had stake conference and our stake was divided into two so a new stake was created!  It was such a special experience to experience that!  Zion is truly growing and the work of God continues!  How special is that!  A seventy came and his testimony was so powerful!  Something he said that really stuck out to me, he said "I know President Nelson speaks with our Savior face to face."  How cool is that!?

I think I have mentioned this a lot but I love that Jesus Christ knows us perfectly.  He knows every happy and sad moment.  Every struggle and triumph and he is there to help us through everything!  He knows us.  I love him!

Hurricane time

 

Oaxaca rain!

Zone

District with APs

Helping with some dog grooming

Saludos a todos

I hope everyone had a great week!  

So right now hurricane Agatha is heading straight for the coast of Oaxaca right now so I hope all my friends in coast are all right 

But one plus is that here in the city it has been cloudy and has rained a little bit so it hasn't been as hot so that's awesome!

Yesterday in our stake there was a devotional for people youth that can go on a mission soon and they invited all the missionaries in the Zone to sing and it was a very special experience!  I saw a family I taught more than a year ago in my training!  They got baptized shortly after I left the area and I watched their baptism over Zoom Zoom now they want to go on a mission   it was such a tender mercy to be able to see them!

A scripture I absolutely love is Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

I absolutely love this scripture, in this world there are many things that will make us feel like we fall short and sometimes we do.  But we have the promise of our Savior that if we come unto him and repent and be humble he will help us be better!  And our weakness will be our strengths!  What a blessing that is!

If you haven't listened to Presidente Nelson's devotional from last week, do so!  I know he is a prophet of the Lord!  Something he said that I love is "I plead with you to take charge of your testimony. Work for it. Own it. Care for it. Nurture it so that it will grow. Feed it truth. Don’t pollute it with the false philosophies of unbelieving men and women and then wonder why your testimony is waning."

I absolutely love that!  We must take care of our testimony!  I invite you to nurture your testimony and to feed it truth and not pollute it.

I love this gospel and I know it is the gospel of Jesus Christ!

I want to learn Mixteco

Zone

District

 Mixteco is a indigenous language that they speak here in some place because in Oaxaca they talk a ton of different dialects in the mountains and stuff.  Some people we ate teaching speak Spanish and Mixteco and they had me say a few words and they said my accent and pronunciation were perfect because apparently English and a bunch of indigenous languages here in Oaxaca have a lot of similar sounds so that's pretty cool.  Also it was also kinda nice to hear my accent was perfect for once HAHAH

Something interesting I have seen that here in this area Dogs like me a lot more.  Like we will just be in a lesson and their dog will just walk up and put his head on my knee it's pretty cute not gonna lie.  But I still have trust issues with dogs thanks to past experiences aka Güero.  

This week was great!  I have been trying to trust in the Lord more with everything I do as a missionary.  I know that he knows us and loves us.  Something sad we see a lot is that people will know that there church is true but they don't want to leave their old traditions.  It can be sad to see people you love not embrace completely the gospel of Jesus Christ because of their incorrect traditions.  The more I thought about it the more I realized we are all like that in some ways.  I've been trying to improve my study of the Bible and it's interesting to me that in the footnote when it talked about repentance it says that the original Greek word is a change of heart or mind.  

I think all of us have things where we can be a little stubborn and it is hard to change our hearts and minds.  But I know that if we put in the effort to truly have a lasting change of heart we will be truly blessed.  We also don't have to do this change of heart alone either.  Through the grace and atonement of Jesus Christ he will truly help us change and be better.  How amazing is that?  So I would like to invite you if there is anything that is stopping you from enjoying all of the blessings the gospel of Jesus Christ brings, repent, or in other words change so that that you can be closer to our friend and Savior Jesus Christ who loves you so incredibly much!

Love Yall!

Esperanza

 

Hola!  I hope everyone had a great week!  This week was very special!

So to start off I love my new area but it has definitely been the hardest area to find people in.  This area is a lot smaller so most people here have talked to missionaries before so we get rejected a lot more often.  After someone rejected us I had a book of Mormon in my hand and I randomly opened it to Alma 17.  Here it is talking about the sons of Mosiah and when they left on their missions to the Lamanites and it says.:

"Now these are the circumstances which attended them in their journeyings, for they had many afflictions; they did suffer much, both in body and in mind, such as hunger, thirst and fatigue, and also much labor in the spirit. And it came to pass that they journeyed many days in the wilderness, and they fasted much and prayed much that the Lord would grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with them, and abide with them, that they might be an instrument in the hands of God to bring, if it were possible, their brethren, the Lamanites, to the knowledge of the truth, to the knowledge of the baseness of the traditions of their fathers, which were not correct.

   10 And it came to pass that the Lord did visit them with his Spirit, and said unto them: Be comforted. And they were comforted."

I loved those verses!  When I read that last verse it felt like it was talking to me and I was comforted!  Also right after that we visited another lady and she couldn't talk to us right then because she was busy organizing her store so we offered to help her.  She was super grateful because she was stressing out about finishing everything.  It was a pretty cool experience because it reminded me with the story of Ammon and when we offer to serve people we can show our love for others!  I did not however chop off any arms nor was I offered a wife like Ammon however 

If you don't know the story of Ammon go read it in the book of Mormom!

This week I did my first baptismal interview.  At first I was pretty nervous but when I interviewed him we became good buddies and he invited me to his baptism!  So now whenever I see him at church we talk a lot!  Baptism is truly such a blessing for everyone!  Almost everyone I hear share how they feel after their baptism they always say they feel so light and clean!  

I love Jesus Christ and his Doctrine so much!

La Joya 💎

 

Hey Yall!  Hope everyone had a great week!  

This week was great!  I got to my new area and the ward is called La Joya and I love it!  It's in the same zone I was in during my training so it's been fun to see old places and familiar faces!

We had a baptism this week so that was awesome!  The ward here is awesome and they help us out a lot with missionary work.  

I have noticed something interesting in this area I have been getting a lot more of random attention.  I think it is partly because a Facebook post kinda went vital of an American missionary so now when they see me they always just stare at me hahahaha  we were eating lunch and some ladies in the kitchen would laugh and whisper to each other whenever I looked over.  It also might be because I bought some new blue light glasses and I've gotten lots of compliments with them

Yesterday in church they told us 15 minutes before hand that we were going to give talks of 10-15 minutes so we were scrambling to get that ready.  When I spoke worse Spanish I felt bad for my comps that I would speak less time so then they would need to talk more.  So this time I was determined not to do that so I was talking for more time and they ended cutting me off  I only talked for like 11 minutes but people from the stake presidency showed up and wanted to talk.  I have never been cut off for speaking too much in a talk especially in Spanish 

I think it is so special how much Our Savior and our Heavenly Father truly love us.  Their work and their glory is that we can return with them.  They want for us so bad that we can have the same happiness that they have.  They have prepared the way and it is our responsibility to find the path and stay on it.  They will always help us along the way as well!  How special is that?  I love them!💎💎💎💎