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

Hide and Seek

Well, what’s going on Queen Creekers? (I almost said Queen Creecians but that’s a bit sophisticated). hahahza enjoying the heat? At least its clean air. Come visit me and you’ll be thrilled to return :) Sounds like the summer break is going good, calm. They still haven’t left on summer break here even though examine were two weeks ago. Everything is so corrupt here. Elections are next week and there is so much propaganda everywhere but when you ask someone they all say, "No I'm not voting. Their all corrupt" but one of the ladies on one of the parties is pretty cute so me and Elder Acosta don’t complain:) The work is going all right. Not as fast as I want but we’ll have 5 baptisms this week. We’ve been doing a ton of visits to inactive. We’ve had some good experiences but it takes up a lot of time. They also feed us a lot... last night my comp was laughing at me because of the (temporary) gut I've got. I told him to look in the mirror. This week I passed a lot of days a bit frustrated... with him. He only has 5 months left and keeps saying, "it seems like I leave tomorrow” I say it seems like he left yesterday.

 

Anyway, doing the best I can right? Do you remember Toño? The gay kid we baptized? Well the drama continues... the other day he left a letter in our house about how offended he is because we don’t go and play with him and that we never answer the door when he knocks (never mind that we are never home) and that he’s not going to go to church anymore... drama queen crap. So we said that’s fine. He just couldn’t manage to miss the opportunity to miss seeing Acosta and showed up to church... later that night we passed by our neighbors house (members) late for a bit of dinner and all of the sudden he walks out of their bedroom! My comp jumped and said he thought he saw a ghost. And he did not go home! About 11 they took him home and we went to bed. (I slept super good we opened the window and it rained all night.) I woke up in the morning and my comp was angry. I guess that about 1 in the morning Toño showed up at our house and knocked the door like crazy. My comp woke up and saw him and ignored him but then he started banging on the bedroom window! Acosta was about to let him in when he slipped a note under the door and left. It said that his mom kicked him out for getting home late (we found out that was a lie) and he went and took advantage of the neighbors... in the morning we snuck out and played basketball. For all I know he’s waiting on the curb for us... my comp calls him a "pesadilla" look it up.

 Changing the subject now…

 They asked me to talk in sacrament meeting a week ago and I forgot until they announced my name in the program... I didn’t even have my scriptures. Luckily I was last on the program. I was so nervous but I received a lot of help. I shared about Zion. And talked about being united in heart and will. Forgiving one another, not doing anything to hurt anyone. I remembered about a talk President Hinkley gave about kindness and I love the questions he asked. Why do any of us have to be so mean and unkind to others? Why can't all of us reach out in friendship to everyone about us? Why is there so much bitterness and animosity? It is not a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We all need to reach out to those among us. Do you want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause. Lend your efforts to helping people.  Stand higher, lift those with feeble knees, and hold up the arms of those that hang down. Live the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

Love one another… serving one another with true desire and intentions bring real happiness

 Love you all; I rejoice that you are well.  Have a good week.

 -ELDER SOLOMON

 P.S.  when am I gonna get a package!?!?

 

 

Ay, papanwa!

Hey everyone,

            How is life Queen Creek!? Hope good. Sounds like it. I laughed about the boys getting dinner ready. Mom always made me prepare dinner so  I would be ready for the mission. Haha… all I needed to know was egg sandwiches and cereal... And Dad taught me both of those!!!! Anyway its good for them to do it and to give mom a break as well;) Someone tell Dad to cool down and not work so long of days. There is plenty of time for everything. Remember Mosiah 4:27. And mom, do your part! Don’t be so picky ;)

 OK, well here in Cuautepec everything is good. We had very little time to work in the area this week. Tuesday we had the transfers, which took up half the day. Wednesday a meeting with the zone which lasted till about 12, later, at about 6 took off to the offices for the zl council. Started at 9 am Thursday and ended the same day at 9 pm. We had to stay there over night again. And after traveling home in the morning, we only had the rest of the day and Saturday to work. The rainy season started up again. It rains every afternoon. And hard! All week long we had luck of being in a house when it started. Friday we didn’t have luck... We were about 20 minutes away from our destination when it started. We hid for about 2 minutes and said, oh well... We got soaked to the bone. Got to the house and the sister opened the door with two towels... We taught the lesson (luckily our scriptures didn’t get wet.)  Got to our house, changed fast and, lets go... Luckily we didn’t get sick... I was fully expecting it. Well, that and Wednesday night in the offices we played basketball in the freezing rain for like 2 hours (out of pride.)

 Ok, well, on to the spiritual part of the lesson (I'm tired of writing....)  The council was super good. The President started by reading in 2 Nephi 1. He always reads in the scriptures and explains everything to us. But we got to verse 21 and talked for hours about being men and being united. One of the main focuses was about unity in the companionship. But the part I loved best was talking about the hope. How it is much more than trusting God will fulfill his promises. In  “Preach My Gospel” it talks about how it is shown or manifest by tranquility, optimism, excitement and patient endurance. As missionaries it’s not necessary that we go crazy trying to do it all and wearing out our bodies. There is time for everything. There are so many who knock doors and contact people all day long all month long and get so frustrated because they can’t baptize. There has to be more relax. Visit inactives, visit old investigators, sit down and plan, sit down and plan out stuff. I'm having a hard time explaining it but we have to be calm and optimistic. That is true hope. Everything has its order. The true success is found in the PROCESS. If there is a problem in the results one must focus on the process and not result. Eliminate the problems right when they come up. With better processes come better results.

 I love you all so much. Take care.

 -ELDER SOLOMON