Usted es misionero, verdad??

December 23, 2013

Hello everyone!!

Ah man, the mission is literally the best. I am absolutely loving every single day of it. Things are going really great here in Morelia :) We still don´t have water but yesterday I told our landlord that we are going to move if he doesn´t get us water today, so hopefully we get water.. if not, I´m not exactly sure if we are aloud to move. But it sure got him moving, he came to our house this morning to talk things over and promised that he would send a plummer our way. We have lots of hope!! Since we can´t use the bathroom in our house, the plants out back get plenty of watering. And two times this week while we were out in the street I had to take off running for the closest bushes. Nobody in Morelia is going to have to water their plants if we don´t get water back soon!!

We are way stoked for our investigators right now!! Pedro gave up smoking and drinking and will be baptized this Saturday. Ramon decided to leave his girlfriend and is still planning on being baptized the following Saturday to start the new year off right :) We are so happy for Pedro and Ramon. They have truly become converted. Ramon told us that everyone keeps asking him what happened to him because he looks so much happier. He tells people it´s because he got a haircut! hahaha. Pedro is still planning and wearing a tunic for his baptism. we will see what happens this week haha.

We were in a store today checking out watches and we were chatting with the guy and he asked me "Usted es misionero, verdad?" or "you´re a missionary right?" and I was like yeah we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have you talked to missionaries like us before or something? He said "no, I knew becuase I could hear your american accent". I said ahh the name tag and white shirt wasn´t what gave it away?? We both had a good laugh. Hopefully by the end of my mission my accent won´t be what gives it away that I am a missionary.
Feliz Navidad to everyone :) may you remember the the most important gift that we have received, the life of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Del Toro

 Our gifts wrapped up and ready to be gifted at the gift exchange... Out of 50 elders who were there from our two zones I received Elder Bowen's gift!!! I was so pumped! It is a rice heat pad :)

 The district, with two elders missing

Feliz Navidad de los DelZalez :)

December 16, 2013

Hello family and friends :)

Oh man, Mexico is so great!! I think I am starting to get some serious mexican pride. I am loving the culture and the people more and more each week.

So we are at day 19 without water or something like that. We had water last saturday and sunday but other than that we have been enduring our trials :) This week we got to do a lot of service! We painted a gate for an hermana in our ward and friday we swept our street for almost a whole block. We have every friday now to do community service for two hours. And it´s the only time that we can contact people in the street so I really like that part about it too :) People were way confused of why we were sweeping their part of the side walk and asking them if we could sweep their entrance. We got to know some of our neighbors a lot better. Service just opens peoples hearts! This week we were at the bishops house teaching his him and his wife and we started to hear screaming. It was his daughter locked in the bathroom haha. The lock was jammed from the inside and the outside and poor Caren was stuck in there. After about 10 minutes elder G and I were able to bust the lock with two screw drivers. Our bishop was just about to have me kick the door in hahaha. Caren thinks we are the best now, and wants to be a missionary some day.  We made gifts today for a gift exchange that we are going to have this week as a mission. I made a pretty good looking pillow case :) It is blue with white starts and moons and on the side it says "Did you pray?" in spanish :) Our relief society president helped us with our projects. She said that she might be able to help me make some shorts with the left over material next p-day :)

This week we had such an awesome lesson with Ramon. He has a girl friend that he stays with sometimes so he knew he wasn´t ready to be baptized but we talked about the law of chastity and how he needs to either marry the girl or start living the law of chastity and he said he was going to figure everything out. He said the closing prayer and after he finished, he stood up and said that he would be the first baptism in our church in 2014!! Elder G and I almost cried. haha we were so emotional. we have been teaching Ramon for so long! like 3 months Elder G got here. Ramon is such a good guy, he has attended church 9 times already and has an awesome testimony. That day when he accepted to be baptized was one of the happiest days of my life. Ramon has been one of my favorite investigators and we had gotten really close with him. I wrote in my journal that night, "my joy is full". I have never in my life felt so much joy. I absolutely love serving the Lord as a missionary :)

Hope all is well with everyone :)

Love,
Elder Del Toro

Querido Juan

December 9, 2013

Hello family and friends!

Elder Gonzalez and I had another good week in Mexico. A lot of really good things happened this week! We got our water back yesterday!! And we now have a brand new boiler! But even better, we received a bunch of references this week and Pedro and Ramon are just about ready for baptism. They are both clearning up a couple things but they have been progressing so much and they both said they want to be baptized pronto. They funniest thing is that Pedro wants to be baptized in a white tunic, like the greek gods wore. hahaha he has some crazy ideas but we will try to make every accomodation we can to help him feel comfortable. My poor companion received the "Querido Juan" (Dear John), or in other words his little lady called it off. He has handled it like a man, but we are still going to burn the tie that she gave him. I think that will make us both feel better :)
This week I was also asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting. We called our Bishop saturday night to see if he needed anything and he told me that I would speak in church. I was asked to talk about Activation in the Work of Salvation. I read the first line of the Hymn "The Spirit of God"... Like a fire is burning apears the Holy Spirit of our Grand Creator (rough translation). I related this to my days in Tacoma steel.  I worked with a torch cutting scrap for the whole summer and learned quite a bit about steel. I spoke about how are a lot like steel haha. Steel has to be heated to about 2000 degrees celcius before it can begin to melt, this is done with the flame. When it reaches that temperature it turns bright red and at this point you pull the trigger for the oxygen. It is much different than air because air only has about 97% oxygen and the rest is other gases. When you spray the pure oxygen on the melting steel, the steel basically starts to burn itself because the oxygen is feeding it the fuel that it need to continue to burn. The steel keeps melting as you spray the oxygen where you want to cut, you don´t need to keep burning each spot on the steel. Oh man the congregation looked so confused after I got done telling them that. Members of the church are like the spot in the steel that we begin to heat up. The flame is what we need to build our testimony, reading the scriputres, praying every day, attending church, etc. And when the steel begins to melt in that one spot, or when that one person has built up their testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you spray the oxygen, or you share your pure testimony, you give the other people what they need to feel the spirit and begin to burn in their hearts of our Savior. The thing is that if you spray pure oxygen on steel, it doesn´t do anything, and if you heat up every part of steel along where you want to cut it just doesn´t work, but when you have heated up one spot and then begin spraying the oxygen, it is all just so beautiful :) It is the same with us, we have to have our own testimony before we can help out those who are around us, and when we have that testimony we share it with others to help them grow in the gospel. Activation :) By the end, I think the majority of the people got it haha. You might wonder how but maybe it was just a "you had to be there to get it" kind of a thing.
I love this whole mission thing :) I know that I am a son of God and that He loves me. I know that I am sharing the Gospel with other children of God to bring them eternal happiness.
Thank you all for the support you give me.

Love,

Elder Del Toro

 Mexico has their OJ Simpson too

 I got my shoes shined :)

Basically Thanksgiving

December 2, 2013

Hello everyone :)
I hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving!! To be completely honest, I forgot it was thanksgiving until 9:00 at night when our american zone leader called to wish a happy thanksgiving. How ungrateful am I?!?!?! It was just another day in Mexico and I forgot all about it. I didn´t realize it but my thanksgiving feast was pozole and tacos de chicharron. my pozole had chicken which is basically turkey and chicharro is fried pig skin which is basically like a spiraled ham. happy thanksgiving from mexico :)  This week has surely been an interesting one. I received karma for not being thankful on thanksgiving, our water shut off on friday. So it´s been a little tough. We realized that we didn´t receive the bill in the mail so we went and paid it at the water place on saturday. And then I guess we just thought everything would be fine. But we returned home and nothing changed. So if you think it´s hard to talk to a real person on the phone in the US, you better think again. It is impossible here. We went in today to ask what´s up and they said they would try to send someone to check it out tomorrow. In the meantime, we stink. Haha just kidding we walk to the other elders´ house in the morning to shower. But it´s real tough not having water in the house.
This week our ward had a sweet activity. Everyone invited their friends to a tour in the church. It was very well organized, there were four different stops where they went and listened to different topics of our church. There were snacks, beverages, and quite a few people who came. We also had an awesome lesson this week. We have been teaching this lady named Lucia and we went to teach her and she was like look guys, your really sweet and all but I don´t want to waste your time because I know that I´m not going to join your church. We told her that we aren´t just there to make her get baptized. Our purpose is to help others come unto Christ. And we talked about how before we started teaching she didn´t know how to pray, she didn´t know that she lived with our Heavenly Father before this life, and she wasn´t studying the scriptures. Right now she is studying the bible, praying every day, and knows where she came from, what she is doing here, and that one day she can return to live with our Heavenly Father. We had an awesome lesson after our little chat about the sacrifice that our Savior made for us. It was a very spiritual lesson, and Lucia was very touched by the spirit. At the end she was crying at said that she would like us to keep teaching her. I believe her 100% when she says she knows she won´t change religions, she has what we call a "corazón muy duro". But that´s not what is important. She is growing closer to her Saviour each time. I told her that we aren´t there to change her religion but we are there to change her life. And that is exactly what this message does :)

Love you all!

Elder Del Toro

 "sopa feliz"

 We went to the zoo this today! they let you get really close to the animals here! ;)

One of Pedro´s puppies