The reality of the mission

January 13, 2014

Hello friends and family :)

A lot of new things going on with me. I met a ton of new people this week, with being in a new ward and all. We have an awesome bishop and all the ward members are way cool. Our area is a lot smaller than the last area that I worked in and there are hardly any hills. It`s a little bit different but so far I love it:)
This week we were walking down a street and a guy yelled something in english. We went and started talking to him and he had lived almost his whole life in the US but had moved back to mexico like a year ago. He spoke really good english and I tried to do the same, but I just can`t do it. I was stuttering and struggling for words to say and I just sounded way dumb. After a while he just looked at me and said "ay man, just speak spanish". haha. So I spoke in spanish and he spoke in english and we had our conversation like that. It is the wierdest thing, I feel like english is becoming my second language.
This week we had our zone meeting and I think it changed my mission. Our mission has new goals, and each goal is like four times greater than what we have had before. With our other goals we could hardly meet those so at first I was like there is no way!! But someone said something that just really made me rethink things. Our zone leader said "I know these numbers aren`t realistic. But what we are doing isn`t realistic either.. It`s not realistic that young men and women are called by a prophet of God to leave their homes for two years to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the whole World"... Wow!! It`s so true. Missionaries are not realistic, and they do not do "realistic" things. Missionaries accomplish what the Lord asks, because with the strength of the Lord we can do all things. My whole attitude has changed and I have complete faith that the Lord does not ask us to do something without providing a way to achieve it. We have been working even harder and my faith has increased so much. We got home one day and I could hardly walk up the stairs in our house. I sat down and thought about the day and started to tear up. I don`t know if I have ever been so tired in my life but I don`t know if I have ever been so satisfied in my life either. We didn`t reach all of our goals that day but we had reached the majority. And just the day before we had thought it was impossible. The Lord is truly on our side.
Everything is going well. I love being a missionary :)

Love,
Elder Del Toro