Baptisms!

So two weeks ago I didn’t write an email and last week’s was about 1 paragraph, so I will be writing a better one for this week and talk about some cool stuff that’s happened recently. 

The last couple weeks have improved lots. Being gone for Christmas had me a little down and nobody wanted to talk to us really so the days went by pretty slow. But now the holidays are over, and the work is picking up again which is very nice. 

We had 2 really awesome people that we got to baptized this week! Leydee is one of them. She had some questions about tithing and fasting after fast Sunday a few weeks ago, so a few days after that meeting we went by to teach her about it. I was kind of worried because she’s in a tough spot financially, but it went really well and she told us she would start putting away her 10% daily starting that day! She also fasted all on her own on a regular day (not fast Sunday) which was such a surprise! She is super great. And her baptism was so special! In the lessons with her we have had a recent convert come with us sometimes. His name is Max, and he and his family were baptized about 3 months ago. We thought it would be an awesome experience for him to baptize Leydee, and it was! It was a really great experience for both of them. 

We also had the baptism of Luis this week. His wife is a member but she is returning to activity. They got married in the morning and he got baptized in the afternoon! So cool! He invited lots of his family, none of which are members, and they were all super excited for him and showed a lot of interest so we will be going by to meet with them as well. 

Last week (5th of January) we had the baptism of Andromeda. She is the daughter of a member who was inactive but is returning to activity. She was honestly so ready! They’re such a cool family and they’ve seen so many blessings since returning to activity. I won’t really go into details but they moved here about a month and a half ago to live with family because they were in a bad spot financially, but since they’ve moved here and started going to church again they’ve been able to get their feet under them better and that’s been so good to see. 

Last week (3-10 of January) was so fun but also kind of sad because it was my last week with Elder Heumann. It was super fun to have him as my companion. We worked hard but also had lots of fun and it was a bummer to have transfers. But now I’m with Elder Cruz! He’s awesome. He’s from Oaxaca here in Mexico and he’s a super great missionary. He’s on the quieter side, but he’s really fun. He knows a lot from the Bible which is really helpful because that’s one of my weaker points. 

We’ve also seen so many miracles this week. Last week we had 11(!!) friends in sacrament meeting. All in person! And this week we have found 9 awesome people to teach, mostly through the members here. They are so helpful and just love sharing the gospel. It’s really such an awesome area here in Actopan. I could honestly serve my whole mission here and I would be fine with it. 

We had 3 really funny experiences these past weeks. One of them we were just walking through the city to our appointment and this homeless guy, who we could tell was very drunk, stopped us and started talking to us (Elder Heumann and I) about the US and probably told us 3 different times that he lived in Las Vegas and he loved it because… he stopped talking and made interesting hand gestures after that. But we kept trying to leave and he would like grab one of our arms or something. Pretty weird guy haha. The next one we were just waiting at a food cart for our food and this fat guy walked up to us literally licking his lips and basically said "hey sexy want to come over to my apartment" and I said no and laughed and he got mad and then proceeded to tell us we don’t believe in a god who loves us or something like that. We laughed a lot at that one. Then we were in the flea market eating and this guy came by and started talking to us. He told us he was a mason and that were like the only religion he has respect for which was cool. 

Well sorry for the very long email but I am going to end with a spiritual thought. This week I have been praying really hard to find people who are genuinely interested and we found so many new people to teach this week. It was really awesome and it was a great answer to prayer. This week has been different, adjusting to a new companion and changing the way we have been working, but we have been blessed with so much success this week its really incredible. I love you all! Thank you for reading all this if you got to the end haha. I hope you all had a fantastic week! 

Love, Elder Stevenson