Happy 2016!

A member gave me a Costco size bag of globitos! I was soooooo excited! I LOVE these things; they don’t have them at home I believe, so I’m just going to love & cherish them while I’m here.

Raul’s baptism!

We cooked on Christmas.

I made Hermana Cabrera wear these all day on Christmas while we were in the house. She clearly loved it!

Me and my companion on Christmas.

Hello family! Happy 2016! How weird is that!? This year went by so fast! 

So I was reading in this letter I wrote to myself last year and it was really funny. In the letter it said “well, I hope you’ve got the language down by now because you know nothing right now of Spanish” ha-ha. It also talked about how hard it was a year ago and how I hope I’m happy with all that happened this past year and how I hope I’m happy with where I am now. And I really liked reading that. I really do feel so happy and blessed with the year that I have had here in Mexico! I have NEVER learned so much in one year like I have in 2015. I really hope I can keep that up for this year. I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’m going to try! 

This week was a little hard for us because NOBODY was home for the appointments that we had planned for this week. So we walked a lot and talked with lots of people in the streets. New Year’s in this area was a lot calmer than last year! Everyone was shut in their house having their parties rather than last year all in the streets yelling and lighting off fireworks! It really didn’t feel like it was New Year’s, but all went well and it was LOTS better than last year. It really does depend on your attitude on how you want things to go. We may have not found everyone that we had planned on this week but we did have some great experiences! 

On Saturday we were looking for this part member family and we went to the house that we thought was them, but it wasn’t and they didn’t really help us to find her house either. We were about to turn and head back but then my companion saw her house number so we ran over, yelled at her house, and then she came out all surprised to see us. It was this young girl; she’s like 24 and she is a less active member. She invited us in and at first it was a little uncomfortable because she didn’t know what to say and it was just weird. When we started with the lesson it all got better. We taught her about the Santa Cena and the atonement and it was pretty perfect for her. She told us that she hasn’t gone to church for a while and that she had felt that Heavenly Father had left her and forgotten about her, and when she needed him the most we showed up. It was really cool to hear that and to see that the Lord once again put us in the right path to find her. She is really great just a little lost, and just needs a little guidance to get back. She is excited to get back to church. We also have this other less active family that we found that came to church this week and we were soooo excited to see them there and the members were too! I really have learned a lot this week. First the Lord is NEVER going to forget about us. He is aware of us and all of our needs. He wants us to be happy and he wants us to come back and live with him. So therefore he WILL put people in our path to help bring us back, or to help give us answers or guidance. We just need to be willing to accept his help and act on it. The other thing I learned this week in my studies about the charity and love was really how to love people like the Lord loved us and everyone else, even those people that hated him and crucified him. People will do us wrong or offend us, we just have to love them and if we don’t we’ve just got to pretend we do until we actually love them. I love you all very much and hope that you have a great year and make great goals for this year to come! I love you all! Have a great week! 

Con Amor, Hermana Velasquez

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Our 4-way Skype screen-shot!

Hello everyone! I just had a delight talking with you all this week! It was so fun to see all your faces! The kids look so big! Kyson looks about the same though, just taller I think. You all look great! And congrats on all the babies! Sorry you didn’t fool me. I guess I could have just let you all believe I didn’t know anything! Tia - good job on hiding it! Ha-ha, I’m excited to get to know all of these cute little girls! I hope you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed remembering the Savior.

This week I studied about humility. Something I liked from this was the opuesto of humility is pride and when we aren’t humble it means that we put more trust in ourselves than in God. He has really given us everything and thanks to him we can have happiness. Humility isn’t just for the people that are really cocky and know it all’s, but it’s for everyone. When we think we are really humble we’ve still got a long way to go! I really liked studying about that this week. I know that everything that I have done here is thanks to Heavenly Father. And I know that I wasn’t sent here to help them, but I was mostly sent here for them to help me. I love these people and I have learned so much of how to be humble by their examples to me. 

So Saturday I got to go back to Garcia Gineres to go to Raul’s baptism and it was SO GOOD. He accidently showed up at 7 in the morning because he got the time of day mixed up, ha-ha, but he was excited to get going a good 12 hours later and get in the water. After he was baptized he did this little dance in the water with his arms, it was pretty cute! Ha-ha, I just love this guy so much! He is a funny one. Thanks for chatting with me on Christmas. I LOVED seeing all of your faces and I forgot to remind you all about the 7 weeks of change. If you’re not doing it, well just repent now and start! Love you all so much!  Have a happy new year! 

Con Mucho amor,

Hermana Velasquez

Feliz Navidad!

What my area looks like. It’s pretty dang ugly, but it’s okay. I’m trying to get used to it. All of the houses look exactly the same and it’s just house after house. But at least the people are really great!

Here's me and Hermana Cabrera when we went to Hunucma.

Feliz Navidad!

Aqui es mi carta/foto por navidad que yo envié hoy para todos pero tangen un buen Navidad! Les quiero mucho!

What we eat when people forget to give us food! Beans and eggs. It was really good though!

Some nativities in centro.

Hello family! Feliz Navidad! 

I’m excited to see you all this week for Christmas! It will be good to see all of your faces! I will only have 45 minutes, so get some good questions or funny things to tell me written down! I’ll be writing you about 6 or 6:30 your time, so get ready with all of your smiling faces! 

So I hope you all were able to give this 7 weeks of change thing a try because I was very blessed for it! This week I studied about the fe y esperanza! I was able to learn a lot of how we have to have confidence in the Lord and His power. And how really the faith, esperanza and caridad really have to work together. There’s a really good talk called The Infinite Power of Hope and it is really good! In a lot of lessons I was able to use a lot of what I studied to help others. A big thing that happened was that Sunday morning the Obispo sent us a message asking if we could share a message in sacrament meeting; mine being on faith. It was pretty perfect actually, being that I had been studying it all week. I really enjoyed this week a lot! I love being with Hermana Cabrera. I really don’t even feel like I’m training her because she is just so good! We felt the spirit in the lessons and we found some really good people. The sad part is that all of them are leaving for vacation for Christmas and they ALL told us that they aren’t getting back til the middle de enero. So we will just have to wait and find some more. 

Well I’d write more but I’ll just tell you all on Friday! Have a great week and please be so safe with all of your travels! I love you lots! Have a wonderful Christmas! 

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Velasquez