hey fam,
awesome pics from your trip! looks like you had so much fun! did you
get video of the alligators? wow jack and slate look so cool.
this week has been pretty good. we found a lot of new people to
teach. it was awesome because i felt like the lord was helping us to
find the people we needed to find. i feel like the people we´re
finding are those that really want to accept the gospel and change
their lives. the majority of the people we´ve taught this week have
accepted to be baptized in the first lesson-- and i mean a lot of those
fall through because theyre not married or they have problems with one
of the comandments, but we´ve got a lot of people that are definitely
progressing!!
the couples we´re teaching are really progressing. idk if i´ve told
you about the people we´re teaching right now-- i dont think so.
right now we´ve got a couple named p and y -- and another
-- A and his wife. all four came to church this week along
with two other new investigators. p and y were
progressing really well until we read the proclamation to the world
with them this week and found out they´re not married. bah. but
they came to church and they´re pretty faithful in completeing the
commitments we leave with them. we have to focus this week in getting
them excited to get married haha. A and his wife are
awesome-- and they´re married woot. A i think has had a pretty
rough past, but he´s definitely super escogido
because he is making some big changes. he loved the church meeting
sunday and his wife as well, we havent talked as much with her but i
hope by the end of this week to have a baptismal date with both.
i seriously love sabancuy. its a simple place but i love the members.
i feel like i know them better, we see almost everyone everyday. ha.
and i´m starting to get to know A LOT of people from the town from the
contacting we´re doing. we stand out quite a bit-- because we´re
both gringos. ha.
mmmm what else happened this week------ we got locked out of the
house because the door was broken and we had to break a window to get
in, that was cool.
idk. its been kindof a normal average week other than that. just
working.
i feel like every week i learn a little bit more about missionary work,
i think one of the things thats helping elder hansen and i to have
success here is sincerity, i feel like here in sabancuy i´ve felt
a lot more love for the people and i teach them with the purpose that
they can understand and apply the doctrine. not just because i want
them to be able to be baptized. some times we focus so much in
baptism because we know its essencial for their salvation that we
forget the process of conversion. this week as we´ve made
commitments i´ve felt the spirit so much. when we commit someone
we first invite, then we promise blessings and testify. and sincere
comitemnts have so much power. everytime i promise someone that the
spirit of the lord will answere their prayers and they will know that
the things we´ve shared are true i feel the spirit testify again that
the message is true. and i feel such a strong desire that others can
know it as well!
well i´m gunna go so we can chat in a min. love ya.
bye!
elder lloyd
Letter #79 4/09/12 Mondungo!!
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| bautismo!! |
hey fam!
good to be writing you again, i enjoyed hearing from my two bros
this week! and i loved your letters. man my brothers are studs.
holy cow. so much better than i was! i´m pumped to hang with them
in 6 months. we´re going to have some sick lacrosse fun. and they
can teach me all i need to know about music and movies and vocab and
everything. ha. it´ll be great--
but thats in 6 months! i´m so grateful for the mission that the lord
has allowed me to serve. i´m so grateful that he sent me here to
villahermosa in this time, i am awed by the infinite love and wisdom
of our god. there is no doubt in my mind that he knows his children
and their needs and he is continually preparing his children to be
able to return to him. i feel as if all my mission he has been
guideing me and giving me the experiences that i´ve needed to
progress. and now i´m here in sabancuy and i know this is where the
lord needs me. there are so many people here that are ready for the
gospel. saturday we invited three different people to be baptized and
all three accepted -- now we just need to get them to church!! haha.
This is going to be a powerful month. our mission has some big goals
to accomplish things that have never been accomplished since the
mission was formed. and i know my companion and i have much work to
do. this week i´ve felt the lord seriously direct us to find his
elect. this week we´ve found a lot of super good investigators, i
felt prompted to contact some of them and others the lord prompted
them to speak with us. this sunday we had a lot of people who said
they would come, and there were trials and some couldnt make it, but
we ended up with two in sacrament meeting. and they´re super excited
for their baptism!
also this week
i loved the ensign from this month-- there was an incredible talk by
elder bednar on the atonement. he talked about how sometimes we focus
so much in the power of the atonement to clean our sins that we forget
that the atonement can give power to become better and power to
complete what the lord expects of us.
-- also, have you guys seen the bible videos in lds.org?? AH they´re
soooooo good.
also this week,
my companion is a bit of a greeny-- haha. man i love him but geez he
made a mistake this week. ha his dad has been telling him this past
month that he needs to eat something thats called Mondungo, -- its
the inside of a cow stomach-- his dad kept telling him "its so good"
and i told him no elder, its not. i promise-- haha. because i´ve had
it. but no he wouldnt listen. ha so when we were in the house of a
member he asked the hermana to cook him mondungo. aye. mondungo
basically tastes like a rubberband-- only covered in hairs. wakala.
ha. i´ve got some funny pics i´ll send you of us eating it!
well fam. love ya a bunch. hope your vacations goin´ well.
i´m excited to see pics
tell kam i´m thinkin about him. i´m so excited for him to get his
call.
-elder lloyd
Letter #78 4/02/12 Tarantula!!
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| A reunion with beloved converts!! |
Jackson says that Matt is looking thick and bulky in this picture, and that
he needs to get on a weight loss program of some kind -- that maybe a tape
worm would be helpful. (haha, right jack)
Matt is in the poorest area, and pretty much surviving on eggs and beans
once a day from the members. At least he's so so happy there!!!!
(Hopefully my Easter package full of food/candy will arrive soon!) Have a
great week, all! - marci
Subject: Sabancuy!
Dear Family,
its been another great week here in Sabancuy. a bit crazy, i feel
like we´ve been running around a lot, but its been a good learning
week, a week full of the spirit!
Hna. G was interviewed thursday and baptized this friday!,
this means that thursday we did divisions, and i spent the whole day
in puerto real, Cd. del carmen!! -- my old area!!!! ah it was so
awesome, i ate lunch with the members, visited the people that the
elders are teaching right now, and some less actives that i know. ah
it was great. i felt right at home ha.
then friday, hna gwas baptized. the baptismal service was
really special, we had two of her friends in the ward give talks, she
already knows the relief society president well, and the counciler in
the ward that confirmed her a member is the dad of one of her friends
so it was really special. she´s going to have plenty of fellowshiping
in the church. hna g is super excited to be a member,
she´s reading the book of mormon and she came to conference, even
though its an hour and a half bus ride from her house-- and she
learned a ton in conference. we visited her yesterday in the night
and she told us her 4 favorite talks and what she learned from them. i
was impressed. i know she´s going to be an active member.
also this weekend it was super sweet -- i got to see all my converts,
or almost all of them from puerto real! i have a pic with j
e and their family that i´m sending you, but i also saw o,
and p.(converts) and they´re still active and doing great,
actually o told me that his mom converted to the church, she lives
in monterrey -- he went all the way there to baptize her in february!!
awesome eh? and the mom of o already has 2 callings, secretary
of the relief society, and ward missionary-- awesome awesome awesome.
i feel great because when you leave an area, you hope so much that
the people you helped get baptized stay active, and it was a feeling
of great happiness this week to see many of them there in the
conference!
i loved general conference, we saw all the sessions, IN ENGLISH.
woot. 4 other gringos from our zone and i watched in one of the
branch presidnets office. it was great, every talk was so powerful
and uplifting, a lot of talks about teaching children, and i applied
a lot of that to investigators. i loved when one of the speakers spoke
about the importance of not only teaching the doctrine, but helping
others to understand and apply doctrine. i loved every talk about
parents teaching children and i felt grateful through every one of
them. i´m so grateful for parents who helped me -- one of the
seventies said -- wise parents help children prepare to be ok without
them-- i´m grateful for parents who helped me to gain my own desire to
live the doctrine in my life. who taught me by example what things
matter most. who never forced me to make correct choices, but always
were there when i needed advice and council.
i also loved the talks of elder uchtdorf and elder holland, its so
important that we are careful not to judge, and that we who so much
need the mercy of christ look for ways to show mercy unto others.
i´m so excited to read and study the talks in the coming months.
on a less spiritual note
i had a run in with a tarantula last night. it was in my apartment on
the wall by my bed! we had a pretty dramatic moment trying to kill
it. my companion with the broom and me trying to smash it with a
shoe. .. i hate spiders.. haha. i had a hard time sleeping
worrying about waking up with one in my bed.
thats the first run in i´ve had with one in the house
also this week i ate cow brain - yum...
and also this week we watched a little bit of mexican rodeo. pretty
intense stuff!
i hope youre all doing well. --getting close to 6 months, geez it
goes fast. i have 4 transfers left-- they´re going to
ffffffllllllllyyyyy by. but i´m going to use them with all my heart
to do the lords work. this branch needs our help!
love ya´ll a bunch.
elder lloyd
Letter #77 3/26/12 Sabancuy!!
hey fam! hows it going-- ah, those were some awesome pics you sent
of jack playing lacrosse. they look like they could be in a lacrosse
magazine! -- good to hear you beat lehi-- haha. i´m super jealous.
and i loved the pics of the family party. everyone looks like
they´re doing well. its interesting to see how everyones changed in
the past year and half-- you do look different! i´m pumped to
hear about jacks eleccions! and everything! woot.
its been a great week here in sabancuy, we´ve been working really hard.
Sabancuy is an interesting place. yes it is small! its not on
the island of carmen. and its not on the island after carmen thats
called isla aguada, itst right after the two islands, its a little
town in Campeche! its an old mexican fishing town, its right by
the ocean! almost everyone here is a fisherman or a field worker
(someone who works all day cutting grass with a machete) life in
sabancuy is super relaxed super super relaxed. its way easy to find
people in their house because theres not much to do ha. a lot of the
time when we go to our investigators houses we find them sleeping in
their hamocks haha. -- the people are pretty poor here though.
they barely have enough to feed their families. the branch members
provide lunch for us like in the other areas, but its usually eggs and
beans. but the members are super nice.
and its basically one big family, and i say that because
seriously they´re all pretty much related here haha. the president of
the relief society, the primary, the elders quorem and the branch
president are all the Reyes family -- cousins. but they help us a
ton. it seems like every day i´m in the house of one of them!
our investigators are super great as well. we´ve got an investigator
named G thats going to be baptised this week. shes the friend
of a member and i think she might be one of the best investigators
i´ve had here. she recieved her testimony of the book of mormon her
first time reading it! the second visit we taught the gospel of jesus
christ and she accepted to be baptised. -- and shes made some
seriously big changes in her life. she´s stopped drinking, smoking
and using bad language, all in the past week! ha shes been
completeing all the assignments we leave and she´s progressing really
well.
also we´ve got a couple that we´re teaching that wants to get baptised
but we have to get them married first. we tried to do it today but
we´re missing some papers that they need, they have to go to the
hospital to have a blood check-- but other than that we´ve got
everything ready. this week we´re going to get them married and maybe
we´ll have their baptism this friday! but we still have to check
elder hansen is my new companion-- he´s from minnesota, but went to
school in Utah state, turns out he knows a lot of people from lone
peak that went to utah state-- he served in the military driving
trucks ha, and he´s got a girlfriend thats waiting for him and writes
him without fail every week!! he´s got almost 10 months in the
mission and i´m like his third companion. this is his second area.
he´s a nice guy and he works pretty well. we get along well, the only
thing is that he gets us lost like seriously 3 or 4 times a day. seriously.
like just a half hour ago-- with the lunch appointment-- haha. but i´m
learning the area and i know pretty much where everything important is --
the house, the leaders of the different organizations, the church, the bus
station. the apartment is nice.
well thats all i´ve got time for i want to send you some pics!
love you all and talk to ya next week!
-elder lloyd
of jack playing lacrosse. they look like they could be in a lacrosse
magazine! -- good to hear you beat lehi-- haha. i´m super jealous.
and i loved the pics of the family party. everyone looks like
they´re doing well. its interesting to see how everyones changed in
the past year and half-- you do look different! i´m pumped to
hear about jacks eleccions! and everything! woot.
its been a great week here in sabancuy, we´ve been working really hard.
Sabancuy is an interesting place. yes it is small! its not on
the island of carmen. and its not on the island after carmen thats
called isla aguada, itst right after the two islands, its a little
town in Campeche! its an old mexican fishing town, its right by
the ocean! almost everyone here is a fisherman or a field worker
(someone who works all day cutting grass with a machete) life in
sabancuy is super relaxed super super relaxed. its way easy to find
people in their house because theres not much to do ha. a lot of the
time when we go to our investigators houses we find them sleeping in
their hamocks haha. -- the people are pretty poor here though.
they barely have enough to feed their families. the branch members
provide lunch for us like in the other areas, but its usually eggs and
beans. but the members are super nice.
and its basically one big family, and i say that because
seriously they´re all pretty much related here haha. the president of
the relief society, the primary, the elders quorem and the branch
president are all the Reyes family -- cousins. but they help us a
ton. it seems like every day i´m in the house of one of them!
our investigators are super great as well. we´ve got an investigator
named G thats going to be baptised this week. shes the friend
of a member and i think she might be one of the best investigators
i´ve had here. she recieved her testimony of the book of mormon her
first time reading it! the second visit we taught the gospel of jesus
christ and she accepted to be baptised. -- and shes made some
seriously big changes in her life. she´s stopped drinking, smoking
and using bad language, all in the past week! ha shes been
completeing all the assignments we leave and she´s progressing really
well.
also we´ve got a couple that we´re teaching that wants to get baptised
but we have to get them married first. we tried to do it today but
we´re missing some papers that they need, they have to go to the
hospital to have a blood check-- but other than that we´ve got
everything ready. this week we´re going to get them married and maybe
we´ll have their baptism this friday! but we still have to check
elder hansen is my new companion-- he´s from minnesota, but went to
school in Utah state, turns out he knows a lot of people from lone
peak that went to utah state-- he served in the military driving
trucks ha, and he´s got a girlfriend thats waiting for him and writes
him without fail every week!! he´s got almost 10 months in the
mission and i´m like his third companion. this is his second area.
he´s a nice guy and he works pretty well. we get along well, the only
thing is that he gets us lost like seriously 3 or 4 times a day. seriously.
like just a half hour ago-- with the lunch appointment-- haha. but i´m
learning the area and i know pretty much where everything important is --
the house, the leaders of the different organizations, the church, the bus
station. the apartment is nice.
well thats all i´ve got time for i want to send you some pics!
love you all and talk to ya next week!
-elder lloyd
Letter #76 3/19/12 Cambios! Ciudad del Carmen!!
Cambios! Ciudad del Carmen
hey fam!
good to hear from you this week. tell grandma a big thanks for
writing me. it was great to read her letter! sounds like the family
is doing well. thats awesome that slater sang in the choir!, he
should join up and be an official member! and i´m super pumped for
jack and student council. i´m pumped to see his video when i get
back. make sure to be taking plenty of video with jackson and
lacrosse. i want to be able to watch when i get back! i hope his
knee is feeling better!
well, the big news this week is that its time for transfers again!!
and i´m going to back to Ciudad del Carmen, --kind of-- i´m going to
be in the zone, but-- i´m going to be in the area Sabancuy, its a
little pueblo in campeche. my new companion will be elder hansen.
i´ll be leaving for there tomorrow! i´m excited because i´m going
to be able to focus myself more in the area and in the people. i wont
be zone leader there, its a tiny little city with a small small
branch, i think the attendance is like 25 ha and they meet in the
house of a member i think-- but i´m excited to get working with the
members and see some progress there. the best thing about this change
is that i´ll be in the same zone as elder tlachi!! woot. super pumped
to be with him again. maybe we´ll do divisions and work together!
this week went well-- we worked really hard and we had 5 investigators
in church and 3 others that couldnt come but are super excited to come
next week. elder clarks going to have a ton of success here in april!
seriously, we´ve found a ton of good people. little bit bumbed that
i´ll be leaving before i get to see these families baptized but i know
the lord knows where i should be. and my desire is to help others come
to a knowledge of the restored gospel. wherever i´m at. i loved what mom
shared about lifting others around you and leaving them better than you
found them. i´m going to apply that in the next few days. my goal is to
arrive in sabancuy with a good attitude and faith to be able to do the lords
work.
you guys should check out the lds.org site and look at the bible
videos! they are soooooo powerful. watch the ones about christs
sufffering, the last supper, the intercessory prayer. -- actually
you should watch all of them-- sooo good. they´re quiet. but if you
listen and watch prayerfully the spirit will touch your hearts i
promise.
as for questions
-i really think the shoes will keep me well till i get home, dont you
worry about sending new ones. save those till i get home.
-my health is good. i´m feeling well!
-in the mission we dont have bikes or cars, the mission has 1 car and
1 van, the car for the president and the van for the offices. so the
rest of us walk =) i would seriously love a bike though
anyway. gtg!
i´ll send some pics next week of the area!
love matt
hey fam!
good to hear from you this week. tell grandma a big thanks for
writing me. it was great to read her letter! sounds like the family
is doing well. thats awesome that slater sang in the choir!, he
should join up and be an official member! and i´m super pumped for
jack and student council. i´m pumped to see his video when i get
back. make sure to be taking plenty of video with jackson and
lacrosse. i want to be able to watch when i get back! i hope his
knee is feeling better!
well, the big news this week is that its time for transfers again!!
and i´m going to back to Ciudad del Carmen, --kind of-- i´m going to
be in the zone, but-- i´m going to be in the area Sabancuy, its a
little pueblo in campeche. my new companion will be elder hansen.
i´ll be leaving for there tomorrow! i´m excited because i´m going
to be able to focus myself more in the area and in the people. i wont
be zone leader there, its a tiny little city with a small small
branch, i think the attendance is like 25 ha and they meet in the
house of a member i think-- but i´m excited to get working with the
members and see some progress there. the best thing about this change
is that i´ll be in the same zone as elder tlachi!! woot. super pumped
to be with him again. maybe we´ll do divisions and work together!
this week went well-- we worked really hard and we had 5 investigators
in church and 3 others that couldnt come but are super excited to come
next week. elder clarks going to have a ton of success here in april!
seriously, we´ve found a ton of good people. little bit bumbed that
i´ll be leaving before i get to see these families baptized but i know
the lord knows where i should be. and my desire is to help others come
to a knowledge of the restored gospel. wherever i´m at. i loved what mom
shared about lifting others around you and leaving them better than you
found them. i´m going to apply that in the next few days. my goal is to
arrive in sabancuy with a good attitude and faith to be able to do the lords
work.
you guys should check out the lds.org site and look at the bible
videos! they are soooooo powerful. watch the ones about christs
sufffering, the last supper, the intercessory prayer. -- actually
you should watch all of them-- sooo good. they´re quiet. but if you
listen and watch prayerfully the spirit will touch your hearts i
promise.
as for questions
-i really think the shoes will keep me well till i get home, dont you
worry about sending new ones. save those till i get home.
-my health is good. i´m feeling well!
-in the mission we dont have bikes or cars, the mission has 1 car and
1 van, the car for the president and the van for the offices. so the
rest of us walk =) i would seriously love a bike though
anyway. gtg!
i´ll send some pics next week of the area!
love matt
Letter #75 3/12/12 Hello Utah!!
 |
| Matt's awesome zone!! |
 |
| Anyone know a cobbler? |
 |
| This is what seventeen months of tracting looks like. No wonder Matt has toe issues! |
Hey family hows it going!
its been a good week here in Cardenas. This week we also had stake
conference! our stake conference was held in our stake center, but
our stake center isnt very big. over 600 people showed up and it was
packed! there werent enough seats in the building for people to be
able to sit, but they squished in as many seats as they could into the
chapel. it was stuffed. and after stuffing in as many as they could
there were still like 30 people who had to just stand in the hall and
listen ha. but it was a good conference. the mission president
came, and the temple president. they´re both powerful speakers.
the family that was going to attend with us sunday couldnt come, but
we had two investigators that came to priesthood session saturday
night. it was pretty sweet. one of them was an old man, 70 years old
actually, who sells cheese in villahermosa. -- he doesnt have a cell
phone so its hard to communicate with him, but he told us thursday
night that he was going to come, and that we should meet him in the
bus station and we´d go together to the church. -- because he didnt
know where it was at. we arrived saturday at 5 at the bus stop,
and he didnt show up, we waited and waited. and he didnt come. so we
went to the church and about 5 minutes into the meeting he showed up.
he had arrived late to the bus stop, but said he didnt want to let us
down, so he asked directions from people in the street of how to get
to the mormon church and he found it! and he loved the meeting.
this was his first time in the church and we´re going to keep working
with him this week.
also this week, we had an awesome zone meeting, we got the whole zone
together and talked about what we had learned in the conference. it
was super powerful. the spirit was so strong there. each of the
district leaders talked about diffferent topics that we asigned them,
-- how constant prayer sanctifies us, how love for the savior
sanctifies us, how our covenants help us to purify our hearts. we
focused the whole conference on being sanctified as a missionary. i
think every elder left with more desires to be pure and dedicated to
the work. and to try to become more like christ- whom we represent.
also-- kind of scary. a companionship of missionaries in the zone got
robbed in the street! they took their phone, money, belts,
everything. yikes. but the good thing is they didnt hurt them. but
he president felt the impression to take missionaries out of the area.
so now there arent missionaries in one of the wards. yikes. but
hopefully in the next week he´ll send us some new missionaries!
as for your letters,
looks like jack had a blast in his day date. those pictures look like
he had a good time. i´m pretty jealous. i would have loved to go to
a dance with a group of the girls-boys lacrosse teams.
tell grandpa and grandma that i love them and hope they´re doing well.
grandpa Bingham will be in my prayers especially this week!
well i gtg so i can write the pres.
have a great week-
¡elder lloyd!
Letter #74 3/5/12 Marzo!
Hi all, here's Matt's email. When we "chatted" he said that he loves his
new comp, Elder Clark. Apparently he's "way chill" and they have a great
time together, and are working super hard. He sent this shout out to his
cousins:
"tell my cousins i love them. especially parker!
i´ve been thinking about him a lot this week -- tell him i love him a
bunch and hope he´s doing well. tell him he should write me!"
Subject: marzo
hey fam.
good to be writting you all again. thanks for your letters of
encouragement this week. big thanks to rachel and aunt ronette. i
always love to get emails from my cousins and from my aunts and uncles
and grandparents! i love hearing how you´re all doing. i´m so
grateful for my family. i wish i could write you each a letter but
just know that the letters that i write every week are truly for
everyone in the fam.
this week we worked especially hard with two families. a and
y, who came to church with us last week -- and a man named
r. a and y are seventh day advents -- i think
thats what it is in english -- not sure-- they believe the sabath day
is saturday! we´re working with them on that haha -- but they´re
reading the book of mormon and are pretty interested. they were going
to come to church this week -- but the member that promised to pass by
and pick them up didnt even come to church. so they were waiting and
everything but their ride didnt show up-- yikes. but i know they´ll
come next week. the other man is named r, he´s a guy who´s
had some problems recently and we visited him and he´s taking steps in
his life to change. his family is super supportive because they want
him to change some of his vices and start coming to christ. we´re
visiting him, his wife and his mom. they´re all pretty receptive and
r is preparing to be baptized. but we´re not sure when-- he
needs to come to church first ha.
elder clark and i are doing well. we seriously get along great.
we´re working hard. this week we had Zone Leader council in
Villahermosa, that was neat, always the best part of the mes. we
spent the whole conference talking about sanctifying ourselves for the
work. we talked of how a miracle is a manifestation of the power of
god, and that one of the greatest miracles god can do is the change
he can make in someones heart. to be able to see miracles in the
mission field we first must be completely converted to the gospel and
to this work. so the goal of this coming month will be that all the
elders in the zone can become more pure and more consecrated to the
work. we´re studying the atonement, memorizing the Living Christ, and
focusing on repenting constantly to become pure instruments in gods
hands. i know that as we become pure we qualify for the
companionship of the spirit, which is so critical for this work, as
it says in D&C if you have not the spirit, you shall not teach.
also in the conference i got to see elder tlachi. i had a special
spiritual experience with him there in the conference, i truly love
and respect him. he is a true representative of jesus christ. he has
helped me a ton in the mission--
i´m super excited for this coming month. the ward here needs some
help, the assistance is weak. and the ward isnt having the activities
that it needs to have. what makes a ward great is the participation
of its members. and if there arent activities there arent chances for
the members to grow and develop their testimonies. that was evident
this week in sacrament meeting. this ward needs a spiritual boost.
my companion and i are going to start visiting more less actives and
start visiting as well the bishop to get him more excited about hte
work.
well thats it for this week.
hope youre all doing well
-love
elder m.d. lloyd
new comp, Elder Clark. Apparently he's "way chill" and they have a great
time together, and are working super hard. He sent this shout out to his
cousins:
"tell my cousins i love them. especially parker!
i´ve been thinking about him a lot this week -- tell him i love him a
bunch and hope he´s doing well. tell him he should write me!"
Subject: marzo
hey fam.
good to be writting you all again. thanks for your letters of
encouragement this week. big thanks to rachel and aunt ronette. i
always love to get emails from my cousins and from my aunts and uncles
and grandparents! i love hearing how you´re all doing. i´m so
grateful for my family. i wish i could write you each a letter but
just know that the letters that i write every week are truly for
everyone in the fam.
this week we worked especially hard with two families. a and
y, who came to church with us last week -- and a man named
r. a and y are seventh day advents -- i think
thats what it is in english -- not sure-- they believe the sabath day
is saturday! we´re working with them on that haha -- but they´re
reading the book of mormon and are pretty interested. they were going
to come to church this week -- but the member that promised to pass by
and pick them up didnt even come to church. so they were waiting and
everything but their ride didnt show up-- yikes. but i know they´ll
come next week. the other man is named r, he´s a guy who´s
had some problems recently and we visited him and he´s taking steps in
his life to change. his family is super supportive because they want
him to change some of his vices and start coming to christ. we´re
visiting him, his wife and his mom. they´re all pretty receptive and
r is preparing to be baptized. but we´re not sure when-- he
needs to come to church first ha.
elder clark and i are doing well. we seriously get along great.
we´re working hard. this week we had Zone Leader council in
Villahermosa, that was neat, always the best part of the mes. we
spent the whole conference talking about sanctifying ourselves for the
work. we talked of how a miracle is a manifestation of the power of
god, and that one of the greatest miracles god can do is the change
he can make in someones heart. to be able to see miracles in the
mission field we first must be completely converted to the gospel and
to this work. so the goal of this coming month will be that all the
elders in the zone can become more pure and more consecrated to the
work. we´re studying the atonement, memorizing the Living Christ, and
focusing on repenting constantly to become pure instruments in gods
hands. i know that as we become pure we qualify for the
companionship of the spirit, which is so critical for this work, as
it says in D&C if you have not the spirit, you shall not teach.
also in the conference i got to see elder tlachi. i had a special
spiritual experience with him there in the conference, i truly love
and respect him. he is a true representative of jesus christ. he has
helped me a ton in the mission--
i´m super excited for this coming month. the ward here needs some
help, the assistance is weak. and the ward isnt having the activities
that it needs to have. what makes a ward great is the participation
of its members. and if there arent activities there arent chances for
the members to grow and develop their testimonies. that was evident
this week in sacrament meeting. this ward needs a spiritual boost.
my companion and i are going to start visiting more less actives and
start visiting as well the bishop to get him more excited about hte
work.
well thats it for this week.
hope youre all doing well
-love
elder m.d. lloyd
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