Hello family! :)
I’ll start by answering some of your questions:
**When guys/girls leave on missions from Mexico, do they usually
stay in Mexico? Or do they go to other parts of the world? And, are most
of the missionaries in your mission from Mexico or are they from other parts of
Latin America too?
It’s definitely more normal that they stay within Mexico than that
they go to others countries. But, they do go pretty often to other
Spanish-speaking countries (the Branch President´s son here is currently
serving in Puerto Rico), and here in the mission most of the Latino
missionaries are Mexicans, but we also have a pretty some Elderes y Hermanas
from other countries. One of my zone leaders is from Peru, and one of the
sisters in my district last change was also from Peru.
**Will the transfer day for your mission continue to be every 6
weeks? I've heard of a few other missions where the transfer day is
changing (becoming like 4 or 5 weeks) to accommodate the increasing number of
missionaries going to each mission and the shorter MTC time. And, have
you begun to see an influx of more missionaries in your mission?
Yeah, I´ve been meaning to talk about that for a few weeks now.
This change is 10 weeks. I think that means I´ll be coming home 4
weeks later than originally planned as well, so in late March, but I don´t know
for sure. After this change, I have no idea how it's going to be.
I´ve heard all kinds of rumors, that they´re going to stay normal with 6
week changes or that we´re going to have one change of 6 weeks and then the
other of 3 weeks and then the other of 6 and so on, but I really don´t know.
But, when it affects us, I´m sure they’ll let us know :) although it may
only be the night before... that happens a lot here. Like for example,
Wednesday night the zone leaders called me at exactly 10:30 because the
assistants had just notified them that the next morning our zone would be going
to San Cristobal to have interviews with Presidente. We haven´t started
to see the flood of new missionaries yet. But, Elder Johnson (area
authority over Mexico) told Presidente Cárdenas to expect to have a total of
100 sisters and 150 elders in the mission by the end of the year. Last
time I heard the exact number, we had 22 sisters and 118 elders. So, wow!
Every sister in the mission will probably be training two other sisters
at the same time.
**Have you been well? With us being sick this past week, I've
wondered how you are feeling. I hear lots of crazy things through the
mission mom site… and know that mostly missionaries don't talk about their
ailments until they get home, but I'm just checking on you. Do you want
more probiotics in your next package?
I’ve been just fine. I´m pretty adjusted to how we live by
now, and I haven´t really been sick since Huixtla (I had a nasty stomach bug
there for a few days, but nothing really serious). Sharing a fun
experience quickly, I did have the wonderful opportunity today to take for the
first time what we call a "bucket shower". We woke up, and
there was no water coming out of the tap. We have a big tank of water
outside that we use to wash our clothes, so I filled up a bucket with
water. It was freezing cold water (but
I´m now getting over that, because it´s been a pretty common occurrence since
getting here that something malfunctions, whether it be the gas, the water, or
matches getting wet and hence not being able to light the boiler, etc).
Then, I grabbed a smaller container and took them to the shower, and
drenched myself in cold water. If it was in a hotter area, it wouldn´t
actually be all that bad. And, I think I´m doing fine without the
probiotics, so don't worry about sending more. :) Thanks!
So, in our interviews with President this week, we got packages!
Thank you very much to Auntie Sarah, and if you can please tell her I did
with the "hugs" exactly as instructed :) Also, thank you very much to
you for the awesome second birthday package! The little Preach My
Gospel´s are great, and I´ll tell you in a second what I´m doing with them :)
and I decided after seeing the Portuguese book that I´m definitely going to
learn Portuguese and other Latin languages after my mission. It´s
ridiculously easy because half the verbs are exactly the same and the other
half are similar, the grammar concepts are all identical, there are all the
same verb tenses and the conjugate almost the same, and I just love languages.
Also, I just wanted to let you know that the chocolates survived the heat
without any damage, and they were a big hit with the entire zone (but mostly me
:p). And the hand warmers are going to be excellent! I´m saving
them for a night that I know that I´ll be freezing to death. The Book of
Mormon stories book is pretty cool too, I´ll definitely be using it to teach
kids about the BoM (and I enjoy it myself. I´m a big fan of the drawings.
And, I also got a package that Dad sent from Afghanistan. And
that was also an awesome package. So much delicious food. The
favorite is definitely the two-pound bag of beef sticks, which definitely don´t
exist down here. I also reallllly enjoyed the root beer candies, because
root beer doesn´t exist here either, nor in the MTC. And, the Pure Trim
shakes definitely bring back a lot of memories. And have been really nice
for when I get a little behind in the mornings and don´t have the time to cook
something but don´t want to eat just cereal. So yes, that´s the summary
of the packages. And I´m very, very, very grateful for all of the love
and support :)
I´m quickly running out of time, but we had an really special week
this week and I want to share a little bit about it quickly. In short,
not too much had been happening around here, and something that we´d been
struggling on as a district is what we call "The Doctrine of Christ",
and helping people progress toward making baptismal covenants. Looking at
my planner, Elder Vargas and I had done 3 baptismal invitations the week before
and 1 the week before that. And the sisters had done 1 the week before
and 2 the week before that. So that was something we were lacking.
I was thinking a lot before the district meeting about what I could say
so that we would all invite more people to follow the example of our
Savior. (A side note: before my mission—we all thought it was crazy
for Elders to keep inviting people to be baptized "before they were
ready". But don’t judge the Elders
on that anymore, they know what they´re doing!). So, I randomly
remembered a fireside that we had in South Carolina where Brother Call told us
about his mission, and he told us that they used to go door to door inviting
people to be baptized like Jesus Christ. So I started thinking, why don´t
I ever invite people to be baptized in contacts? And I did it for the
first time last Sunday. And the lady said no. But I kept thinking
about it, and the magnitude of our calling, and our authority as missionaries,
and our call to invite people to follow the example of Christ. So,
Tuesday in the district meeting, I talked about being bold in that process of
inviting. And we decided that between us and the Sisters we were going to
have a competition to see who could do more invitations. And Thursday,
when I got the package, I put the mini Preach My Gospel´s as the prize. At
the end of the week, we finished with 13 invitations and 8 people with a
baptismal date, as compared to 0 the week before. The sisters finished
with 8 invitations, and also with 8 people with a baptismal date, as compared
to 2 the week before. Although we won the competition I´m still going to
give the sisters their mini Preach My Gospel´s tomorrow at our district meeting
for having an awesome week. I´ll try to go into more details with the
people we found and set baptismal dates this week.
I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!
Con mucho amor,
Elder Andrew Nickerl
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