Pictures: August 24, 2013

Presidente Cumple 50 Anos

Hola familia!!

So we had a pretty good week! We are still looking for the family that is hidden here in the area, haha but we are hoping to find them soon. Thanks for all of your prayers on our behalf. We were really busy this week and this next week will be the same! Lots of stuff to get done and lots to do in the area.

On Thursday, we went to the chapel in front of the temple and did a little celebration for President Treviño´s birthday. He turned 50 so the Hernana Treviño wanted to do something fun with all of the missionaries. So in the morning we got together all of the zones that are far away, like the Tuxtlas and Orizaba, and in the afternoon all the zones who are here in the city came. We started off by listening to President´s family talk a little about his life, what has happened in these last 50 years. Then we got to talk a little bit and say a couple of things about President, Elder Egbert and I asked all of the misionaries questions about President and then read their answers, it was fun. Then we did a couple of fun little games and ate some cake, and sent all the missionaries back to their areas. It was really fun and we are all really grateful for the Mission President that we have. He is so inspired and we can all feel the Savior´s love through him and his family. 

We didn´t end up baptizing Sindi last sunday, but her baptism is programed for tommorrow. She is really really excited, as is her family. We have tried to work with her parents alot, they are really nice and are going to go to church and to the baptism tommorrow, but they aren´t married and when we asked them if they had plans they told us they don´t want to be married. We will see what time will do but it would be really special if they could follow Sindi´s example and join the church. 

This week we have actually been able to vist Guadalupe a ton! And you guys wouldn´t believe how much she has progressed!!! We had a lesson with her last night and it was really really spiritual. Guadalupe told us some of the stuff that she had felt and she is starting to feel like Heavenly Father is answering her prayers. She has started to realy get into the lessons and has been reading and praying. We committed her to come to church this sunday and she said that she would be going with her family. Please pray for her so that everything turns out good sunday morning so that she can go to church. But we have seen a change in her, she is alot more sensitive to the spirit and looks a lot happier than when we first started to teach her. I love that family so much, it was such a blessing to be able to find them. This morning hermana Amparo (guadalupe and Eli´s mom)  invited us over to eat pancakes haha, so we went over and they had made pancakes with whipped cream and peaches, and chocolate milk. It was really fun and afterwards they gave us a ride over to the sports complex and let us borrow some tennis raquets that Eli had got from her friend. So Elder Egbert and I played tennis for a couple of hours! It was so much fun, let me tell you, we spent about an hour just shaking the rust off, haha. We played pretty bad but we sure enjoyed it. 

We have been visiting lots of active members and teaching them the restoration in like 10 minutes. We ask them to put themselves in the shoes of a friend or neighbor that they have and then we invite them to take us to visit their references. We have some appointments today to go visit references with members so we are hoping to get some good results! We are loving the work like always, often we wish for more time to be able to work in our area, haha but we know that the sacrifice is an amazing opoturnity to be able to serve the missionaries, to help the mission get better, and to take at least a tiny bit of the load off of President. 

I love you guys so much and enjoy so much your emails!! Work hard in your jobs, school, and your callings! (and your mission, for grandma :)

Mucho amor,

Elder Eastmond

Happy being a missionary

Hola familia!!

We had a great week! I cant wait to tell you about it! First of all, I just have to say that Devin is sooooo tall!!! no way! Dad sent me the picture of him with greg and the gang on the beach and at first glimpse I said "hey, I thought Parker wasnt going to go!" and then I realized that it was Devin, haha. Crazy stuff. 

To answer some questions, Elder Egbert is from Boise, Idaho. He´s a die hard Boise St. Broncos fan and went to BYU for a semester to study construction managment. He doesn´t have any relation to Dad´s friend that lives in orem though, haha I asked and showed him the picture and he said that he doesn´t know him. He likes to play tennis which is awesome, we were actually going to go play today but when we got to the rec center they told us that they didn´t have raquets that we could rent and we didnt have enough to go buy some. It was pretty heartbreaking, haha we could see the courts from where we were out but...not much you can do without a raquet. But we are going to go next P-day! But ya he´s an awesome companion and I´ve already learned so much from him!

We have hardly been able to teach Guadalupe this week. She was excited last week but then she got sick and couldn´t go to church, and she talked to some friends and stuff about the church and they told her a bunch of lies and it kinda got her unexcited about learning more. We haven´t been able to teach her since then because she has been out of town and sick and everything but her mom told us that she would bring her to church on sunday so we are hoping and praying really hard that everything will work out. It bugs me so bad when people say stuff about the church when they really have no idea. We have had a lot of challenges finding new people to teach this week. We feel like we did just about everthing but we havent found anyone. We have gone with members to get references, gone to visit inactive families, knocked doors, and contacted... zero zilch nada, haha. But its all good sometimes there are just weeks like that where for some reason there is nothing and then the next week new investigators just start coming out of nowhere. We would greatly apreciate some prayers so that we can find a new family to teach, thats something that were are really looking for right now, is a complete family that can accept the gospel. 

We might have a baptism tomorrow! There is a really neat member who gave us the reference of Milagros and her sister consuelo, and she has been bringing her grandaughter to church for the last month so we started teaching her and she loves church and wants to get baptized, Her name is Cindi.  We are going to talk to her parents today to get permission. We are actually teaching her dad, but hes really hard to find because he works alot. But her grandma takes her everyweek so she has a lot of support so we are excited for her. 

So this week in the offices was really neat! We had a bunch of ideas to help the mission and the missionaries work a little bit more effectively and efficiently, so we presented our ideas to President Treviño and he really liked them. So he told us to make a manual with all the techniques and tips so we can give them to the missionaries and help them improve. So every night his week Elder Egbert and I were working on the manual and we finally finished it yesterday and presented it to president. He loved it and we are going to start applying a bunch of cool stuff so that the mission can progress. Now we just need to set some goals to be able to verify the progress of the missionaries and to make sure that they are really trying to apply everything in the field. Should be fun to see the results! We´ll keep you filled in on it. 

On thursday we are going to celebrate Presidents 50th birthday!! Haha the other day Hermana Treviño kicked president out of his office and we had a planning meeting to plan his surprise party! Its going to be on thursday and we are inviting all of the missionaries to come, half in the morning and half in the afternoon. We´re just gonna have a short little devotional and then play some games and eat cake. Should be a good time, its been fun to plan everything behind his back haha, even though hes knows somethings going on he doesnt know what. .

I love you guys so much and hope that you have a great week!!! Be good and have fun!

Mucho amor,

Elder Eastmond

Still alive after transfers

Pictures: Aug 10, 2013

Hola Fam

Well we got out alive from the week of transfers!! It was a fun week and everything turned out really good! We got 13 new missionaries, 8 from mexico and 5 from the US. It was especially fun to meet all of the American Elders, they were just as excited as can be and they all look super prepared after only 6 weeks in the MTC! We got to talk to them coming back from the airport and we had a little training meeting on Tuesday morning to just go over some of the techniques and mission rules that we have here. But I was really impressed with all of the missionaries that we got, they will all progress really fast and I´m excited to see the growth that takes place in them these next couple of months. Mom asked if I met Elder Dial, the son of the nice sister whose has comented on the blog a couple of times. I talked to him a whole lot monday night and I really like him and know he´s gonna be a great missionary. He was really excited to be in Mexico, he has an awesome trainer and went to the hottest part of the mission haha but he´ll love it there. Elder Serrano is training again! I have got to see him alot these last couple of weeks, It´s probably a good thing we don´t get together too often because I think we get a little bit too crazy, haha!

So Tomasa´s baptism was awesome! She loved it and her son and her son´s girlfriend were there to watch. We have passed by alot this week to get her ready for her confirmation and she is really happy. We are also going to be working alot with the Relief Society so that they can visit her a ton and keep her company. She lives with her son but he is always working so sometimes she gets kinda lonely. But the church is going to be a huge blessing in her life so that she can feel the love of Heavenly Father even stronger every day. 

We found some great people to teach this week. I absolutely love being with Elder Egbert, I love how he teaches, the ideas he has, his love for the members and the investigators. It´s going to be a really good transfer, we´re excited! We got a message on Tuesday while we were eating lunch with the trainers and their new companions, the message was from Eli, (she got baptized like a month ago) and she told us to come over to her house because her younger sister Guadalupe wanted to listen to us! We got super excited and went right over after we got done with everything in the offices. She had never wanted to listen to us before, she was always friendly but didn´t really want anything to do with the church. But she said that she has gotten kinda curious as to why her mom and sister seem so much happier and why they have changed so much so she wants to learn more. We taught her the restoration and invited her to be baptized it she feels like it is true and she accepted! We are happy for their family, today we have an appointment with Guadalupe AND her dad, we have never taught him before so that will also be a great opportunity to teach. 

It´s been fun so far with the 3 new assistants, I haven´t felt stressed out at all trying to teach them everything that they have to do because they are all excellent missionaries and have picked up everything so fast. We actually had a little planning session a couple nights ago and brainstormed a bunch of neat ideas that we can use to help the mission have a little bit more success. So on monday we are going to present the plan that we made to president and see what he wants to do with it. 

Oh! I just remembered the best part of the whole week!! When we went to the airport on monday night to pick up the americans, we ran into the president and the assistants from the Xalapa mission, that used to be apart of this mission before we divided it. Guess who the 2 assistants are right now? Elder Lee (one of my companions from the MTC) and Elder Carmona (my second companion that I had in Poza Rica)!!!! I was so happy to see them after like a year and a half! They are both doing so good and we were there for like half and hour just talking about everything that has happened to us all on the mission, it was great! They both look really happy and it sounds like they´re just tearing it up. It was a blessing to be able to see them again!

well I´m out of time, but I hope you all have a great week! I hope Devin and Grandma have fun in Cali!! Love you guys!!

Elder Eastmond

Cambios (Transfers/changes)

Hola mi querida familia!

So we have everything ready for this transfer. This Thursday we did all of the changes with President and all the chaos starts tommorrow. My new companion is going to be Elder Egbert!! He gets here tommorrow in the afternoon and I´m really pumped about it! We left the MTC together so we have the same time on the mission and we have gotten to know each other really well during these 2 years. He was one of my zone leaders earlier in the mission and I learned so much from him. We´re really good friends already and he´s going to help us out a ton here in the offices, he´s got a lot of good ideas so its soing to be a great change. Also, we called two new traveling asistants, one of them is Elder Mata!! This is his last transfer so he will finish up here in the offices, and the other traveling asistent is Elder Lopez, who I have also gotten to know really well so we are all pretty excited. We called a couple of new zone leaders and it will be fun to work with them and help them in their zones. 

On monday all of the new missionaries get here, there are going to be 8 from mexico getting here in the morning and 6 americans getting here at night. Then on tuesday we are goin to have a bunch of meetings with them and the new trainers and we will present the trainers with their new companions before lunch. The mission continues to grow so much that every transfer we have to open up new areas and put 2 companionships in one ward, its great!

On thursday we are going to the airport to send 6 missionaries home. 5 Elders and 1 sister. Among them are Elder Fox, Elder Chico, and Elder Ortiz, who finished here in the offices. Its going to be really hard to say goodbye to them because we have worked so much together and had lots of experiences together. Elder Ortiz was the companion who I have been with the longest, 1 transfer in Magisterio and then 2 more in the Laguna. I enjoyed our time together because Elder Ortiz is always happy and always has a good joke to tell but was an excellent missionary who taught me so much. I´m really gonna feel weird now without him at my side but I know the changes are fun and good and I´m so grateful that I will get a companion just as good!

Tommorrow we have an amazing baptism planned!! After church we are going to baptized Tomasa! She has been such a trooper in these last couple weeks, it has surprised us how easily and willingly she has accepted everything and it´s going to be a special baptism, especially because its the last one for Elder Ortiz and the gang. Tomasa is a really special lady she has diabetes and sometimes is in a lot of pain but has so much faith in God and knows that everything will work out. I will let you guys know how everything went next week, pray hard so everthing works out well with her baptism!

I have loved hearing about all of the adventures of Parker and Devin. Sounds like Parker has taken over my role of being out of the house like 95% of the time, haha. And i´ve decided that the absolute first thing that I want to do when I get home is listen to Devin play the saxaphone. Its sounds like he´s just tearing that thing up, and as a freshman!! I´m proud of him for his hard work and practice to get to where he is right now! Well, my times up but I love you guys sooooo much!!! Behave yourselves and have a great week!!

Mucho amor, 

Elder Eastmond