Monday, 15 December 2014

Ocean Baptism

Hello Everyone,

     This week has been crazy!! I will try to remember it all. This past Wednesday, Elder Estrada was really sick. He was saying that his entire body was hurting. So Wednesday we just stayed inside all day...and it was soooo boring!! I have never been so bored in my life hah. So I just studied and read scriptures for most of the day. And usually we eat at members houses, but we couldnt leave the house. So the member family brought us food to our house. They bought us a chicken with some tortillas and a large drink. But the moment that we opened the container that had the chicken, oh man it smelt soooo bad!! 
 
     We checked it out and it was so rotten haha. We didn't eat any of it. We threw it out in our back yard and some cats enjoyed it. So we ordered pizza instead. It was pretty good actually! The pizza place is called Mario Bros. Pizza. Which is awesome haha! I'm sending a picture of the fridge magnet that came with the pizza lol.
 
      This past Saturday we had a baptism!! And because the church is being renovated right now, we had the baptism on the beach!! It was so cool!! As missionaries we are generally not allowed to go to the beach. But for baptisms, yes! So I took a good amount of photos and I will try to send them all! The man we baptized is 94 years old!! His name is Felipe Campos. He is so awesome! I'm so happy that he decided to get baptized! He has a wonderful testimony of he gospel! His example shows that anyone can change! No matter how old you are, or how out of reach you feel, you can always return to the right path with our Heavenly Father's help!! 
 



 
     My spanish is coming along really well. It helps when I have a spanish speaking companion! I really like it here in Playa del Carmen. Its beautiful and the members here are awesome!! They have a ton of food for us always. I actually think I'm starting to gain a bit of weight now...yikes!! I hope not! 
The way that we contact people is a bit different here in Mexico. We don't go around knocking on doors unless there is a specific person that we are looking for. Like a reference from a member or something. And right now we have a few so we are searching for their houses. There are always people walking in the street so we just talk to everyone. This is how we do most of our contacting. Its good. However, the majority of our sucess(in terms of baptisms) comes from references from the members. All of my baptisms that I have(which is now 6) have been references. But thats great, as long as the work is progressing, I'm happy!! There are a lot of less active members too. So we spend a lot of our time trying to re-activate them too. This is something really important. President Hinckley said that missionary work is not worth doing if we don't hold on to the fruits of that effort. We have a responsibility of members of the church to share the gospel with everyone and to help thos that are in need. Especially our brothers and sisters who have fallen off the path. We can help them in many ways! One of the most important of these ways is setting a good example for them. How we need to be strong faithful members of the church. And to look for ways to share our joy of living the gospel with those that need it!
     I love you all so much!! Keep writing and sending prayers!! 









     Love,

     Elder Strate

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