Intercambios, Victor's baptism, and the BEST REUNION EVER!

When we went to Hunucma’ for intercambios con las hermanas.

The sisters in Hunucma’.

Hermana Julianna and her daughter Mari.
Hermana Julianna does laundry by hand for a living, since she was 13 years old.

Victor’s baptism!!!!!!

He was SOOOO nervous but it all worked out so great. It was the smoothest baptism I have ever had and we even started early and that NEVER happens!

They had the primary program on Sunday and they all did just so good. These were some of the kids.

Some members in the ward and Hermano Victor!

We went and saw Hermana Silvia in the hospital last night.

This is my cute little hippie friend who is preparing to go on her mission. Her name is Mara!

Best Reunion Ever!

So I have come to find when you have so much to do and when you are never working in your own area, you week goes by nice and slow. 

This week I spent 3 days out of my area working in other areas with other sisters. It was a lot of fun being in other areas working with them but I just feel pretty beat by the end of the week. We went to an area called Hunucma’.  It’s a little pueblo and it was so pretty! It made me very grateful for the areas that I have had. Although it would be fun to be in a little pueblo, I just was excited to get back to my area into the city. 

This week we have been working a lot with Hermano Victor to get him ready for his baptism. We got his interview on Wednesday and boy, was this guy super nervous. He just has that type of personality to where he worries a lot and gets nervous super easily, but everything went really well. He passed his interview and we planned and invited everyone in a day and it was all so great! After his interview was all over and done with he felt more relaxed and happy. The day of his baptism it was all just really great! A lot of people from the ward came to support him and it was a full room. His baptism was very smooth and he only had to go down one time so that was real good! On Sunday after his blessing and all, he was just so happy. We went to go eat with him and his mom and he was just so happy, smiling and laughing with us, it was really great. He has changed sooo much since I’ve been here. Before he was a very serious, timid guy that didn’t like to talk to us a lot. But now you can just see the difference on his face and how happy he is and the spirit you can see in his eyes. 

So lastly, today we have the best p-day ever! We went to PACABTUN! I called and got permission to go back to see Vicente and I went and saw him today and it was the best reunion I have ever had. We get to his house, I yell at it and all I hear is this voice yelling at me and telling me to come in and I just bolted in and the first thing he said was "can I hug you yet?!" and I said “no, still no, not yet” but we had a good hand shake! Ha-ha! He told me that he is doing great and he is loving church and he is very active and goes to ALL the activities, ha-ha! He also told me some great news that he has of yesterday received the Melchizedek priesthood! I was so excited! It was a great reunion and I just love this man so much! He’s like the best little grandpa ever! 

Well, this was my great week and I had so many other great experiences, but I have to have some things to tell you all when I get to talk to you on Christmas! 

I love you all and hope you can see the blessings of the spirit in your lives! 

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! 

Love, Hermana Velasquez!  

Prayers between Home and Mexico

They were power washing the temple...

We had interchanges with these great sisters this week!

Hermano Pascua and I a couple of weeks ago (before the haircut).

This guy, Danial rides by us almost every day and every time we see him we invite him to church and he never shows up, but we have faith that one day he will!

These are some fun little kids that are in our ward. They remind me lots of the grand kids!

This is Hermana Esther. She is a member from one year ago and she is super great! And this is her son Victor. We have been working with him and he is progressing really well! It is so fun to see his progress!

We went to a duck pond the other day.

Hello family! 

I hope you are all enjoying the cold weather there in Idaho because I sure am here! It has rained all weekend and rain brings cold air into the house at night.  And guess what! I slept with a blanket the other night and it was great! Usually we are dying of heat in our hammocks. Oh, and ya know what? Our great landlord lady turned on the hot water last week and ya know what that means!!!!! NO MORE COLD SHOWERS!!!!! Also we now have a scale to weigh ourselves in the house. Safe to say… we have the best house in the mission.

This week was a pretty great week! Every week here has just gotten better and better! I did my first intercambio this week and it was really, really fun. I was with this new Hermana. It was her first week in the mission and she had LOTS more confidence than I did at the beginning! She is really nice; she’s from Mexico City. I was a little nervous at first but it was all fun. We walked in the rain for a good hour and a half, but we got a little bit cleaner because of it. Friday night we had an activity where we watched “Meet the Mormons” as a ward and we invited our investigators to it. Martin, Hipolito and Victor came and they all liked it a lot! It was fun to watch it again! We watched it outside and we ate popcorn and pan and other good Mexican things. 

I want to tell you guys about something cool I realized the other day in a lesson. One of our investigators was saying the last prayer and he prayed for you guys. He prayed for your health and that you are all happy. That’s not the first time that’s happened. Most of the lessons we have people pray for you. They don’t know you or even know what you look like or how you are, but they are praying for you. I think that’s a big reason why missionaries’ families get so many blessings. It’s not just because I’m here but many people are praying for you. More than once a day actually. I thought that was pretty neat to think about and I thought that you should all know that many people here in Mexico are praying for all of you. I pray for you guys every night and I feel your prayers every day I am here. Thanks so much for all of the prayers and all of the emails and support! 

Les quiero mucho! 

Hermana Velasquez 

Changes, baptism, oh - and a fire too!

We had a sisters meeting this week and it was pretty fun! They gave us all flowers and just showed us some love.

I cut Pasqual’s hair this week. He didn’t feel comfortable going to church with his hair like that so I told him I could cut it and boy was it hard! I give you more credit Anne!

An ice cream bike came by so we had a little ice cream break in the middle of the haircut.

The final turn out!

Hermana Priscila got baptized!

I just love this family!

The wind was really strong the other day!

We went to a museo! That’s a human hand with a chicken foot!

We went and bought some doughnuts today! They were good!

Hermana Manzano ended her mission and another, Hermana Montoya

The hammock wait for our cambios to come.... we got them in the morning because they were still changing things out.

Hello my beautiful family! 

Just on a side note: everyone who sees our family just loves to tell me how beautiful you all are! First they say WOW- your family is huge! Then they find that I’m the only one not married and then they just kind of laugh at me for a sec, then they move on just looking at all your beautiful faces, but really the people here just love ya. 

Okay, well first, this week was super crazy, but in a really great way! We saw so many blessings and it was really great! I LOVE BLESSINGS! Anyway, just to start we went over to Pasqual’s house and he is a less active and he is reactivating, but he told us that he felt bad going to church with his hair how it was so I just told him, “go look for some scissors and I’ll just cut it right now!” So he did and we had a good lesson while I cut his hair and it looks pretty good in the front… I can’t say the same for the back side, but it’s okay… he wears hats... ha-ha!

Also Priscila Allendes that’s from Chile got baptized on Friday and it was soooo good! We were able to go back and help her get ready to get in the water and it was so cool. She was really nervous, but it all went good! She didn’t really plug her nose, she just kind of smacked her face and then went down, but in a very graceful way. It was cool to see her husband’s face as she got baptized; he was really excited. She was the last one in her family to get baptized. And now they are preparing to go to the temple and be an eternal family in the next year! 

On Sunday we had a wonderful lesson with the son of a member. His name is Victor and he almost got baptized before I got here and then decided against it two weeks before, and from then on he just hasn’t wanted to do it.  He goes to church, but didn’t want baptism. So we went to his house to go talk with his mom, but she wasn’t there so we talked to him. We talked to him about why he didn’t want to get baptized the last time and the lesson was really great and we felt the spirit really strongly. He really opened up to us and shared his worries and one of the biggest ones was that he didn’t want to be a bad member and mess up anything. That just showed us that he really was ready because he wanted to do it all so perfectly and be the best kind of member he could be. So at the end of the lesson we invited him to be baptized again and we let him wait it out in silence for like a whole two minutes and you could just see the fight of it all in his face. It went from no, to maybe, to yes. It was cool how you could just see it on his face. Then he accepted it and got so excited about it all that he just shot right up onto his feet and said “YES, YES I WILL DO IT!” We got him to sit back down, and we set him a date for two weeks and we will see how it all goes! He is really great and he is just such a good person and is ready, he just needs to feel ready for himself.

So we had changes and we were scared. The good news is that we will be staying together! We are so excited about that! The other news is, is that they made us sister training leaders and we have NO idea what we are doing, but we will learn together. Normally they put you with someone who has already done that, but not us!  We are just gonna figure it out and see how it all goes. We are really excited to be together and keep working together! I love this gospel and I love missionary work! I hope you all have a great time seeing all the blessing poor into your lives this week! Have a great day I love ya all so much! 

Oh, PS: Our stake center literally burned down on Friday. It was really sad. We were walking and I saw smoke clouds and I was like “look - there’s a fire somewhere” and Hermana Hoggan was like “no, those are just clouds” and I was like “NO.  I know smoke when I see it!” And yeah, it was the stake center right next to the temple. But nobody got hurt. 

Les quieres mucho,

Hermana Velasquez

Living Close to the Hospital

 

These were our Halloween costumes this year. I was Hermana Hoggan and she was me! We thought it was pretty good!

We did a service project and painted for a pregnant member.We painted her closet! She’s super funny!

 

Reca came to town...

This is the great Indalacio. He is a hoot!

This is our great mission leader.

He has a fanny pack full of folletos and cards to give out to people! He also sells cookies on the back of his moto! He is great! 

We made waffles with the Allendes family!

A little baby turtle!

Hey Fam! 

This week went by soooo, soooo fast I really can’t even explain it! For these past 2 weeks we have had other missionaries staying with us for health reasons, because we live close to the hospital. (I’m sure you’re all happy to know I live close) so we have had 3 pairs of missionaries and now these ones that are with us will be with us ‘til the end of the transfer, which is next week. It’s kind of tiring, we just want to be alone, ha-ha, but it’s okay! 

This week we had our interviews with President and it was really good! We have seen A LOT of progress in our area! We have great people that are progressing really well and it keeps us going really well. This week we had a great lesson with Hipolito and it was really great. We taught him and his son Martin about the Restoration and he believed it all and he knew it was true and had no doubt about anything. We explained the Trinidad and that was a little hard for him at first but this guy is so in tune to the spirit that he just felt and knew what we were teaching was correct and true! On Thursday night we went to go visit his neighbor and we saw him and his son sitting outside on the ground talking with Testigos de Jehovah and we just felt so sad. We were really nervous about it. We then went behind this little house and said a prayer that they could remember the lesson that we had the night before and the feelings that they had there. On Friday we passed for them to go to an activity that we had in the church and the dad came with us, and at the end of the activity he tells us “I feel good here in your church and I want you to know that I plan on staying here. I believe what you have taught me is true and I plan to follow it." We were both just so happy and excited for him! He is really great and we are hoping that we can help him continue to grow and come closer to the Lord! He is really great and wants to change. That really just testified to me again that the Lord listens to us and our prayers. At the end of the lesson we had with him the next day he said the prayer and it was so great and he is a wonderful man that is willing to change to become a better person. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! 

So like I told you there are two sisters staying with us this week. On Saturday night we lost our phone and couldn’t find it, so we figured we left it with the family Allendes.  So before we went home we went to their house, but they weren’t home and we had to get back to the house. We got back and planned and we were waiting for the sisters to come back. We are supposed to be home at 9 but then 10 comes along and they still weren’t at the house. We were debating to go to a member’s house to call them, so we ended up going and leaving the house. We were a little freaked out cuz we have never been out that late. So we went to a member, but they weren’t home. Then to the next and they weren’t home either, so then we are in a little bit of a panic because we are out late and we don’t know where these sisters are! So we go to one more member and we are yelling for him to come out and we asked for his phone and he’s like "yeah, sure!" We are trying to do this as fast as possible. He brings out his phone and starts showing us this weird video and Hermana Hoggan's like "we don’t have time for this we’re not supposed to be out this late!" and he’s like “yeah, you’re right - what are you doing?!” But then we got his phone, called our leader and he said to go home fast because the assistants and Hermana Garcia are driving the sisters to our house. Well, we ran home and saw them all waiting outside of our house all freaked out because we weren’t home. It was all just one big show! We had to explain ourselves of why we weren’t answering our phone and why we weren’t in the house, but all is well in Zion and we have our phone and we can just laugh about this horrible night! 

So this was my week and I loved every minute of it! Hubo mucho mas milagros y bendiciones durante la semana pero esta carta en muy grande entonces hasta la próxima! Les quiero mucho! 

-- Hermana Velasquez