Eye Single to the Glory of God

To be honest this area is the toughest I have seen yet in the mission. Its super easy to find new people to teach the hard part is getting them to church. We have a ton of support from the local bishop and other members haha but people here just don't want it right now. We have committed several people to baptism but when they find out they have to do things to be baptized they have 0 time all of a sudden. We have gone going around to our investigators houses with a car (seriously the members here are awesome) to see if that would help. Haha it didn't. So we got the bishop on board and he has met with several of the investigator families here to see if he was the missing link. Nope. Haha so then it just came down to accepting that maybe people here aren't ready.

I was thinking about it the other night, about how no body was progressing, no body was moving along, and I was pretty angry at God. We try harder to be obedient every day, try harder to get the members involved and do everything we can for our investigators and what was the point? As I was fuming all of a sudden I realized I wasn't angry because nobody was progressing I was angry because my pride couldn't take another week of 0's on our progress report to president. I wasn't angry because these people were accepting Jesus Christ, I was angry because they weren't accepting me. I was angry because all my work has been for me, to make me feel like Im a better missionary than the rest, not for God nor for these investigators. Sometimes it takes a month of 0's to learn a lesson. God has given me so much on this mission, I've had a lot of success, I've learned a lot, I haven't had a bad companion yet (And I hit 8 months in Mexico this week, holy crap!) and still all I can do is whine when my pride wants more than God is willing to give me. 

D&C 4:5 And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.

Eye single to the glory of God, not to a number on a progress report that I'll just forget by next Monday anyway. Haha so even if our investigators aren't progressing, I am. 

Other fun facts of the week. Something that is rare here in Mexico is dessert - they don't eat a lot of sugar here. So one day for lunch we go to a members house and along with a huge meal of roast chicken and other delicious foods we see 2 big cakes on the table, I was pretty psyched... As we were finishing up the chicken all of the sudden the member comes in with a cheese cake -  yeah that's right, there are three cakes in the room at this point... No invente... As we started in on one of the cakes the member comes in one last time with a giant jello fruit thing. Three cakes and a giant jello-fruit thing. Needless to say it was the fullest I have been since coming to Mexico, the members and the food in this area are unreal. Im going to be GORDOTE by the end of this transfer, i hope.

Also we (me, Elder A, the other two elders in our ward, and the bishop) sang in sacrament meeting this week. We sang a hymn in Spanish called "Oh Santo Dios" (Oh Holy God) that is pretty sweet. After we sung it I look over at a kid in the ward who is having a lot of problems with the church right now and hes bawling. Mission accomplished. 

So yeah just another week in ol´ Durango. 

Oh yeah also last Monday was Mexican independence day.

 Pic #1 ¡Puro Durango!

 

Pic #2 Dia de Independencia