Oct 29 2012

Hola familia
Ok pues, mi mama me pedio que yo escriba una parafo en espanol y lo voy hacer. Hoy fue bien suave. Hoy es nuestro dia de preparacion, y nosotros fuimos a al Parque Amistad a jugar futbal americana y a ver el perque. Esta muy bonito por alli. Hay un lago, muchas patos, arboles, y HAY PASTO VERDE EN EL PARQUE. Me parece como un parque en Minnesota. Cuando estuvimos alli, jugabamos futbal americana con los elderes del Barrio Otay y con dos otro miembros. Estuvo muy divertido. Quando estabamos jugando, algien la rumpio mi camisa negra porque la agarro y se cayo.

Ok back to english. I hope most of you can find some means of figuring out what i just said.
So this week we had a few notable things happen..one of them being that me and my companion E Zuniga are starting to go running in the mornings. There is this really nice park in our sector. Its something you would expect in like MN or something. Its go a pond in the middle and there are a bunch of ducks there. The grass is green and there are lots of trees. When i am there i honestly dont feel like i am here in TJ anymore, its that different to what i am used to. I have a few pics of the park.
We have also started contacting more. Our list of people to teach is dwindaling a bit and we need more people. We are going to areas that we havent really been to and we try to find little things that keep us interested or keep us from feeling a little tired of cantacking or tracking (samething), like look for interesting houses, cars, or even people. And we have actually been finding more people.
Another little thing that happened this week is that me and my companion grossed out a family from the ward when we ate the eyes of the fish that they had just cooked. It was really funny when one of the daughters tried eating the fish eye and just had the most dissected look on her face. Like she was going to throw up, luckaly she didnt. :)

So i dont know if you remember Oswaldo from the other emails and i may have even wrote about his family already, but we finally started teaching the rest of his family! They are all really cool. Up until now there hasnt been much of a chance to talk to them. Me and my companion thought they were all really shy or somthing. But now that we were able to talk to them all we found out that they arnt shy at all but really cool. The wife had a lot of questions for us based on things she has either heard about us or things that she believes to see our views on those same things. It just so happens that we were in agreement with just about everything, especially her believes on baptism. She told us that she believes that one should get baptised when they feel they want to change there live to a more JesusChrist centered life. Meaning she thinks one should try there best to be the best they can after baptism and not just go back to their old ways.....
to be continued..

Oct 22 2012

Hola que tal a todos!

So i promised i would have more things to write and pictures. Well i definitely have picks, now lets see how much i can write.
You asked the question about how those interviews normally go. With me it is something more of a "how are you". We talked about how i am doing in my area and with my companion that i have had sense the last interview and about how the family at home is. At the time i had a pretty sore throat and so we talked about that, it didnt really affect me much other then the fact that a lot of people couldnt understand my spanish with my quiet scratchy voice. Oh and yes the sore throat has passed. Then talked about the goals we but in the last interview and how i am doin with them. Everything was good. That was my 3rd interview with him. He does them every 3 months or so i think.

Thats awesome to hear all the missionary work that is happening in the ward. The Elders there must be really content. I hope we can arrive at that point with the ward. We are starting to a little bit of help from the ward though so i am happy.

So this week we meet this met this woman named Tana. She is member and so is her mom, they just have been away from the church about 3 yrs due to a series of unfortunate events. When she was younger and in the church she was very active. Apperently she even recieved a mission call but she declined it and moved to TJ. She stayed strong for a while longer but then she had an accident and lost one of her legs. More things happened and all and all she fell inactive. Right now she has a little girl (Katia, 9yrs old), no job, another child on the way, and is sepereted from the kids dad. Her mom works in Las Angeles and pays for their living expenses. Though she hadnt actually gone too church this past 3yrs she has kepted a pretty good testamony in the Gospel. She went to church with us this past week and she bore her testamony, and it was cool to see how much it made her happy to have finally been able to go back to church. She and the Grandma really want her daughter, Katia, to get baptized so we talked to her about it and found out she really doesnt know much about Jesus Christ. We are excited to be about to help this family out in the best way possible, helping them live the Gospel. My experience with them has also helped me remember how much i have and how greatful i am for those blessings in my life.

Oh and i dont know if you remeber Oswaldo, he got baptised about a month ago. Right now we have started talking with his wife. We have talked to her in the past a little but nothing much because she never seems to be there during the lession appointments. But! She actually went to church she week. Only for the last hr (Relief.S) because of work hours but hey its a start. I really hope all go's well with her, we put a time to meet with her to talk about the church. They have a family of 5 kids and i would love to see ever single one of them grow up with the Gospel.

Ok so a little update on our pet spider. Its dead. It got really boring becuase it doesnt like eating cockroaches and thats the only thing we can catch. So we let it go. E. Zuniga let it go close to the door, idk why, and it just walked right back inside the house on the door so i tried to catch it again and fell to the ground and Elder Zuniga freaked out and quickly stepped on it. Poor thing.

Oh one more thing, yesterday we were walking and some lady quickly walked up the us and asked if we had seen a young man run down the street. We hadnt. Apparently the man had robbed her from her bag or purse. That has been like the closest i have been to a crime inncidant (sp?) here in TJ. Apperently a lot of bad stuff happens here in TJ, but i guess it all happens behind my back.

Now i will talk about and make little comments about my pictures:
First of the coconut. So i had never bought a coco before and have never tried to open it either. So this week i did just that. It was very dificult, the knife didnt do a single thing.

 I decided i needed something a little stronger, like a 20 pound weight. I put the coco on the ground and hit it with the weight. The thing opened easily and i lost all the water from the coco.

Cellphone. That is our really old cell phone that we had. Its a Nokia and it Broke! I hope you get the joke. Now we have a better phone.

The two buildings. Well there is nothing interesting about the 2 buildings but the fence farther behind them is the line. Other side is Cal.

My area.

Gum wrapper thing. Learned that from Uncle Mike.

Opening the beans with a knife (E. Perez) because i forgot the can opener at the house. I am never going to eat beans again!

Love you all!
Elder Evans

Oct 15 2012

Dear Family,

First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATT!

It was great seeing the pictures of Matt and his friends. 

So this week wasnt too much different then the past. We still have the pet spider and we are feeding it the cochroaches that we find in the house. It ate one of them but i dont think it liked it very much because it hasnt touched the other 2. Its kind of a boring pet, doesnt do much more then sit on its web. 

Well this week we have started working a lot with the members. Going to their houses, sharing a message, and then seeing if they know anyone who would be interested to hear about the Gospel. We are trying to transition from knocking on doors to recieving references. The diference is that when we teach someone who has a friend in the church already they are more likely to stick around and progress and stay active in the church. Those that we meet knocking on doors dont know any one except the mssionaries and its the missionaries that come and go and when the missionaries stop visiting them they fall away.  So that has been our focus this week. 

We also had our interviews with our mission president this week. At the interview i recieved our package! Thanks for all the stuff! I actually wore a few of the ties haha. But we had the interviews this week and they went by pretty well. Our President is a really great guy, Presidente Carreon. He can be really funny and very serious at times. And he is very active with the missionaries. He was interested to see what we got in our packages and galdy accepted a little share of everyones candy sent from home haha.

Truth being we didnt really do a whole lot his week. Lot of time spent in missionary meetings or in going from one place to another.

I promise to have more to write about next week and i will remember to bring my connector so that i can sent photos.

Well i love you all!

Bye

Elder Evans

 

Oct 8 2012

Querido familia
Como esta todo? Me da gusto escuchar a todo que esta pasando a la casa!

Yeah i heard when the Profeta announced the new age requierments to go on a mision. I think that is soo awesome! I cant wait to see the jump in numbers of misionaries. And when they said that i actually thought spacifically of Paul and Morgan and how they could be out on the field really soon. I know both of them would enjoy and benifit a ton from going on a mision. 

Spacifically to Morgan: There are two sister misioneras in my district and it is really a blessing to have them in the district. This is my first transfer with sisters in my district and they are really cool. They often have really good ideas that non of the Elders think of, they plan better activities on PDays then the Elders, and last and Most Importantly... They are full of the Spirit and pure love for everyone (investigators, members, and all the other misioneros). So if you go, i know you will be a blessing to all in you mission.

Spacifically to Paul: Whether you go as soon as possible or work a little before hand, that is your choice to make. But as a Priesthood holder, you are given the opportunity/responcibility/blessing to go on a mission. And let me tell you, to go on a mission will be one of the biggest blessings in your life. You grow so much on a mission, spiritually and character-wise. You learn how to relay on the Lord to help you and you learn how to take challanges head-on. Oh and the mission is really fun too :)

Ok so now back to me :) I did enjoy Conference a lot! I did thougth have watch it in spanish which isnt as fun because you dont hear their actual voices, but me and my companion are going to download the talks in English to listen to.

Most of this week seemed focused toward Conference, we taught a lot about the Prophet and his role as Prophet and how we have the chance to listen to him this week. And then we ended up spending the whole weekend at the Stake Center for all the sessions. 

But other things happened to this week. First starting with tuesday. So this new convert brought us to this house of a girl that needed a blessing. The girl origanally couldnt hear or talk and because of that she didnt hear the car coming and was hit. Amazingly enough she only really broke here Femer (biggest bone in leg). Shes quite an amazing girl. Shes like 12 yrs old and when we came to see her she was all smiling and laughing. We gave her a blessing and letter started teaching her and the mom. It felt really great helping the familia in our priesthood service. Now to lighten the mood a little, when we left the house we were walking away and then say a chicken jump into a tree. I didnt know that chickens could jump/fly so high. I sent you a pic of the chicken.

Oh and another thing that happened. One morning we were about to leave the house and my comp walked through the doorway and then freaked out a little. So happened that he walked through a nasty little spider web. We then looked for the spider that made the web and there it was a nice big fat juicy viuda negra or black widow. Mom do you remember when us kids caught a spider and put it in a jar and tried to feed it? Well of course thats just what we did here. No worries we were very carefull, im actually really scared of spiders and so i took ever precausion availible and was ready to drop everything and step on it if anything went wrong. But all was good and now he is in a sandwich box. It was actually the first black widow i have ever seen.

We that is what i have to say today.

Love you all!

ELder Evans

 

There are chickens in the trees, yes, there are chickens in the trees...(a song from Sesame Street)

*scream*  *faint*

 

Can you see the red hourglass marking?

 

Oct 1 2012

Hola!
Ok so i have sent you 5 or so pictures and it just so happens that they all have to be of birds, but thats just how it is. About the hummingbirds, we were given an address to someones house and so when we went to meet them they wernt there but there was a house right next to it that had about 6 hummingbird feeders and so me and Elder Zuniga went over to there to see if we could get one of the birds to land on our fingers. Elder Zuniga is the one in the photo. We didnt have any success with the birds but it was still really cool because there were a ton of hummingbirds! All those birds on the telefone wires are humming birds. We also got to talk to them man who puts out those feeders and he says that in the morning and evening there are a lot more that come to feed. We set up a time to comeback to see the hummingbirds and of course talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
About the duck, there is a family in my ward that we went to visit because they wanted to set up a time for us to meet some friends of theirs. We went to the house and found that they had a pet duck. Well me and my companion just had to chase it done until we cought it, it was really fun. The family said it was ok and even thougth the duck tried to run away from us i dont think it minded too much either lol. Tonight we are going back to meet their friends and hopefully teach them!
Time is going by really fast here too. I was really surprised to find that it is already october too. I am also really excited for General Conference, i wonder if i will be allowed to see all sessions or just sunday. I also wonder if they will offer it in english. I know there is one guy in the ward who doesnt speak spanish and one of our converts (Tatiana) speaks english too. If they want me to watch it in spanish i will but I and my Companion would prefer english becuase its much cooler to hear their actual voices.
I am also looking forward for halloween or day of the dead to see what they do here in mexico for it.
This week has also been pretty great. Elder Zuniga and I are getting along really well and i am feeling a lot more confident in being the more expirienced one in this area. With Elder Pena, he knew all the members and were they all live and i felt like i was still learning all that. But now i feel fine and thougth i dont know where every member lives we will get by just fine i believe. I find that Elder Z likes to read and has actually read quiet a lot of the same books as me and we both like a lot of the same things. This transfer should be a lot of fun.
So this past week visited those that were just baptised to see how things are going and we are going to start to find that some Visiting Teachers or Home teacher and go with them to show them were they live.We also spent a lot of time trying to find new people to teach, not too much success there this past week but i believe this coming week will be a lot better. Update, Tatiana is now starting Alma already. It always amazes me to find out how far she is in the Book of Mormon and to talk about it with here and see that she is marking her favorite scriptures and getting a lot out of it. So she told us about the life she had as a child. [Mother's note: next few sentences are redacted because of sensitivity and privacy issues. I wouldn't even mention the fact that I edited, but I really liked the next sentence and I wanted to include it but it would seem out of place if I just put it in by itself. Suffice to say, the woman's childhood was not ideal. Now for the sentence I like a lot---->] I am just expecially greatfull for the time we got to spend together as a family.

Well Love you all!
Elder Evans

Elder Z tries to get a hummingbird to sit on his finger

all those birds are hummingbirds

EJ and a dirty duck