Smashing Elder Escobar's head in his birthday cake!

Me and Acosta

Tortas (sandwiches), coake and grease!

On a bus

Elder Escobar's birthday party.

Killing two birds with one stone?

Hey everyone,

Well its time for changes. I found out yesterday that I’m going over to the other side of the hill called Santa Cecilia. From what I’ve heard it’s an awesome ward so I’m super excited. It’s the mission's example in work with the members. I know my companion, his name is Elder Contreras, he was my Zone Leader once and we didn’t really get along cuz he’s bossy but I’m gonna do my very best to make it work. That zone (tlanepantla) needs a lot of help...

Yesterday we had 5 baptisms. After last week’s experience I was hoping and praying and doing dad’s tap the forehead thing that everything would be a lot calmer with the baptisms. And luckily, they did! It was part of a family, the family Rico, the mom Graciela, daughter Yazmin, and kid Jose. Then a lady we were going to baptize a long time ago, named Josefina and her boy Armando. Everything went so well. There were tons of members in the service and I got to swim in the font for a while cuz we started and had to wait for someone to come... then I was so happy just to hear the US lost to Mexico in soccer in an embarrassing 5-0 loss.... then I realized and that put me in a bad mood because they ALL rub it in [when the US loses]. And now just packing my bags!

It brings me a lot of joy to hear about you all. I can’t believe school is starting again. You guys are awesome, keep it up. I downloaded all the conference talks and have been studying them. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been able to get a lot more out of the modern day teachings by slowing it all down reading and marking everything. I’ve learned a lot about my patriarchal blessing and other stuff. Study the teaching of modern day prophets. When I say study, I mean sit down and mark up your copy of the Ensign just like you would your own Book of Mormon. Remember in all thing hope. Faith is the belief, hope is the attitude, optimism, patience, enthusiasm, calmness. God lives. Reflect his love. I love you all take care.

-ELDER SOLOMON

A pretty hard week

Elder Escobar's Birthday Party

Can you see the temple?

Up high in Mexico City with Elder Roylance and who know who that kid is!

District Leader conference with Roylance, Pope, Sanchez, and Allan

The Banda at Wicho's baptism...Milton baptized him.

The Zone at Cuautepec

Hey everyone what’s going on? Well, if you’re gonna tell me all about the new pool at least send me some pictures so I can see what it looks like! Football camp is at home well that sucks… not enough money or what’s up with that?

Anyway, A pretty hard week for me and I still don’t know why. Yesterday we baptized a complete family and I’ve learned that when that happens Old Scratch throws a fit and the missionary receives most of the blow. We went to the temple on Tuesday and that was really good cuz I haven’t gone in a few months. The rest of the week was nuts. We started something new here that is visiting all the 4s (for those who don’t know the 13 steps of planning from Preach My Gospel, that’s the investigators who go to church) so between interviewing all from my district, the district leaders and having them interview ours, it was nuts. But the results were very pleasing we were able to improve very much so in the zone. And in our own area, we had 4 baptisms and one that fell for this week.

Now we had a big activity planned. Teaching the message of the Restoration but through songs. We called it a musical. It so happened that I was the director. So we practiced a lot and it was tough cuz a lot of elders are worse than the primary kids I once taught! So Saturday was going to be the activity. No one came… we had two investigators come and we put them in a baptism that was going on… lame I was down. I thought, “16 missionaries and we can’t bring anyone to a stinkin activity???” Acosta shared his vision of the activity with me. It was more focused on the Elders than the investigators. For one, we united the zone like none other, we saw who could be a leader, who takes seriously their responsibility and some other things, so I calmed down.

Then Sunday: the baptism. First it was ward conference. Then I went out of sacrament meeting to fill the font and …. No water………………………………………………………………………….

I called the elders of the nearest chapel and told them to fill their font… then after gospel principles class I tried again and water came out! For a half hour……… after services the Relief Society brought a bunch of food and everyone ate. We tried to get members to go with us to do the baptism, but service isn’t a word or action that exists here, so the best they did was drop us off at the other chapel… only one sister and her daughter went. But the service was special. Small but sweet. I was soooooo uptight but after I could relax and coasted out the rest of the day.

Well, I really don’t have much more to say. The word of my week was righteous. What an awesome word. It means so much. Straight unmovable, just, holy, virtuous, honest. I want to be a righteous person.

Love you all and your in my prayers I thank God for the best family ever.

Keep it up with DJ and Airom. You’re the only ones that can give them what they need. Don’t be afraid of anything, except sin, cuz Christ conquered the rest and gives us the opportunity to conquer sin.

-ELDER SOLOMON

Winner's Attitude

What’s up fam? How’s life? Things are going good here, another week flown by. I went on divisions with Roylance twice this week, which was fun. Tuesday we had our zone conference, that’s why my letter was so crappy. But it turned out being a really good conference. We arrived at 7:50 to find out the president had started early and without us. In all our meetings now we start by reading a chapter in the Book of Mormon and have a discussion about the lecture. We read Mosiah 5. It was amazing the things we could pull out of there and the wisdom of the president. We talked about a change of heart, the power and security in covenants, the taking on of the name of Christ and not being "asnos" (v. 14). Then i had the part of companionships and it turned really good.

The only bad part about the whole thing was Elder Cortes. He’s about to go home in two weeks and he’s been a problem his whole mission. We really tried to help him a lot he just has a crappy attitude about everything. Lately he won’t go to the district meetings and we wouldn’t even report his numbers. So in the interview with the pres, he told me and Acosta to give him a choice to either go home right then or change some stuff and see it through. We talked to him afterwards with the assistants and he decided to stay but told us "I'm sorry I'm Not going to change my attitude, I'm just this way." I wanted to just tell him yes, you could change, you just don’t want to. We always have the choice to be who and how we want to be.

Did I ever tell you about the "banda"? Its a group of teenagers future missionaries we’ve been teaching and baptizing. It started with Christian bringing Milton to play at the chapel; Milton is just powerful and got baptized in two weeks. Then Milton and Christian taught a cousin Luis who didn’t want anything to do with us and wanted to get baptized at the second visit. Milton got confirmed, received the priesthood, and baptized Luis all in the same day. And we are going to teach another friend Alberto today who is Jehovah Witness (TJ) they are just a solid group of young men who have launched the ward into action. It’s awesome to see the chain they have and their excitement to bring their most precious friends into the gospel (we even taught Melton’s girlfriend a lesson). They do it valiantly. They have a winner’s attitude; there is no "no" in their vocabulary. They don’t think of "what if" they think of "because I have been given much I too must give" and "I want to be the one who baptizes him" incredible examples.

Family, Share the Gospel!!!! Valiantly and with a winner’s attitude, if you think they will say no then they probably will. If you think" ill drop this pass" you probably will! No one can say no to you, no one.

God lives and loves us. An interesting thought, there are some of us that he misses as well. He misses us and wishes we would return to him. We all miss London. Imagine that feeling and even more for those have gone astray... Even in our own family. God misses you.

I love you all so much. There is nothing better than my family. Take care.

-ELDER SOLOMON

I feel like a real missionary!

HEY EVERYONE! 

WELL, ITS 9 AT NIGHT. WE WERE RUNNING LIKE CRAZY ALL DAY AND WE HAVE ZONE CONFERENCE AT 8 AM TOMMORROW. AAAAHHHHH. IT’LL BE ALL GOOD, BUT FORGIVE ME FOR THE SHORT LETTER... I'VE GOT A LOT OF STUFF TO PREPARE STILL... CRAZY WEEK. TUESDAY, DISTRICT LEADER COUNCIL, WEDNESDAY, WENT TO TOLUCA FOR A BAPTISM. TOLUCA IS THE CITY WAY OUT THERE AND I FELL IN LOVE. IT’S GOT A SMALL TOWN FEELING BUT NOT TOO SMALL AND THE LANDSCAPE... INCREDIBLE. ABSOLOUTLY GREEN. MY COMP AND ME WENT AROUND FOR A WHILE VISITING PEOPLE ON BIKES! I FELT LIKE A REAL MISSIONNARY ON A BIKE. WALKING IS JUST TOO SLOW. THURSDAY EARLY HEADED BACK TO CUAUTEPEC TO SAVE A BIT OF THE WEEK. WE DIDN’T HAVE TOO MUCH WORK. ONE BAPTISM BUT... THE ZONE DID REALLY BAD... I WAS A BIT DOWN FOR THAT BUT, HOPEFULLY THE CONFERENCE TOMORROW WILL HELPS US... 

LOVE YOU ALL BE CAREFUL AND HAPPY.

-ELDER SOLOMON