June 6, 2011

Zone Conference with Elder Johnson

Hi mom!

 

I´m jealous of the cool air up there - yes, 90  Farrenheit is cool.  I don´t know what it is here, but it´s more than 90, and it´s pretty much 100% humidity.  I get drenched in sweat if I just sit there without a really good fan and/or air conditioning.  But we carry around hand-towells all day (actually, Elder Vasquez lost his - I felt really sorry for him, but he didn´t want to use mine, which had a week´s worth of my sweat engrained into it).  That helps.  And no, it doesn´t get cool at night.  Oh, and we don´t have a water heater, but I took a hot shower today anyway - I took the shower in the afternoon, and the sun had heated up the water.  

 

Oh, well, I really shouldn´t complain about the weather.  I´m getting used to it, and it does no good to complain.  Just do me a favor, and enjoy the cool air that you have up there in Utah. 

 

We worked hard this week - we found 9 new people, and one of them is part of a family that is awesome - I´m sure that they´ll get baptized.  We had 7 investigators in church yesterday - it was awesome!  And from what we heard, they all enjoyed it.  I´m really excited about the work that we have here, and my companion is, too. 

 

I´m glad that Elder Vasquez already knows the area and the members, because I´d be completely lost otherwise.  The area is HUGE.  It´s got to be at least 2 or 3 times the size of my first area in Iguala.

 

I´m glad to hear that everything´s going well.  Tell the family hi for me.  And I´m glad that you enjoyed the box.  The sirvilletas (napkins)  were made by a member in the Insurgentes ward in Iguala.  They are used to wrap up the hot, fresh tortillas, to keep them hot and fresh (so they´re used every day, because we eat tortillas every day).  You might think it´s wierd to use tortillas with every meal, but when I told someone in Iguala that we don´t use tortillas or bread with every meal, she thought that was crazy - "but it´s the bread that fills you up!"

 

Oh, I´ve attached a picture of my new companion, the only ones I´ve taken as of yet.  Also, a picture of an awesome family in my first ward, Insurgentes.  The hat that I have was given to me by the boy, called Hector.  The dad´s name is Oscar, the mom is Araceli, and the daughter is Monce-rat (they only say Monce). 

 

I look forward to recieving the pictures of Ethan in the mail - yes, I got them by email.  And I look forward to the letter that Brother Peadon (might) write me (hint-hint).  I´ll make it a goal to respond to handwritten letters faster, so that I might get more letters in the mission.

 

Oh, I saw the first prayer house that I´ve ever seen.  Here, in the Zapata ward, they don´t have a chapel.  They have a prayer house.  It´s pretty much what would be a normal house - downstairs is where they have the Sacrament, along with some classes (cement/tile floor), and upstairs, there are some more classes.  It´s a pretty good size.  From what I heard, it´s a nice one, compared with some other ones, because it´s big, it has more than one room, and there are fans.  No piano, no keyboard, but I´ll survive.  I like to sing acapella.

 

Nothing much else to say - The church is true!  I´ve grown more in my understanding of the church and it´s importance in the past 9 months than I have my whole life before, and I know that this church is the only church with all of the truth about God that we need to fulfill our purpose in this life.

 

I love you.

 

Elder Bartlome

May 30, 2011-on to Acapulco!

Hi mom -

 

I got transferred.  I´m now in Acapulco - I haven´t had a sweat-free moment since I got here at 2:00, except when there´s a fan on me (it´s about 3:10 right now).  I´ll survive.  My new companion´s name is Elder Vazquez - I´m his second companion, and he´s my third.  He´s from the same generation as my last companion (the one I trained). 

 

I didn´t die on the bus ride, thankfully.  I didn´t even have to throw up.  A miracle.  A 3-hour bus ride without too much car sickness.  And that was 3 hours of being alone - the missionaries from Iguala dropped me off, and the missionaries in Acapulco picked me up.  That was wierd.  I have a reference for the missionaries in Iguala, though.

 

On Saturday night, at about 10:15, Elder McKee (district leader in Iguala) called to tell us about the changes.  I stayed up until 12:15 packing, so that on Sunday, I could go and say bye to some families.  We also spoke in church.  We didn´t speak because we were going - we had actually asked the Bishop a few weeks ago if we could speak.  We get sick of all of the contention between the members, so we wanted to talk in church. 

 

I talked about the importance of the church.  Basically, I said that the church doesn´t need them.  All of them can go inactive, and the Church of Jesus Christ will continue on.  But they need the church.  And all of the inactive members need the church.  And just going to church isn´t enough, you actually have to be an active part of the work if you expect to return to live with God.  And finally, I asked them if they still have a testimony burning in their hearts.  And if not, they need to repent, study, fast, pray, and get that testimony again.  I also told them that I´m leaving, and I want to see that the ward is strong again in a short time (the ward was about to divide, but then something happened and now only half of the chapel is filled every Sunday). 

 

My companion gave some ideas in his talk about how to help with the work - how to invite and help non-members, as well as less- active members (we didn´t plan the talks together, but they worked out really well). 

After the meeting, various members came up to me and promised that they would work harder to help out the ward.  I hope so.

 

This is going to be wierd - getting to know my second area.  Iguala is the only place in Mexico that I know (I was there 6 months) -There I learned Spanish, there I learned to love the Mexican people and culture - you know what I mean, you´ve served a mission.

 

Now we live in an apartment on the second floor of a member´s house.  They have a washing machine, that´s nice.  Our clothes are washing right now. 

 

I´m excited to get to know this area.  Elder Vazquez says that the area is huge, and I believe it.  Acapulco is HUMONGOUS!  I would even argue that it´s bigger than Las Vegas (I don´t know, I don´t know either one of them very well).  It´s on the mountains, too, so it´s hard to tell.

 

And of course, they transfer you right when you´re going well.  We had just started to have some more success than normal this past week in Iguala.  O well.  That´s the work of the Lord - He knows what He´s doing.  

 

Glad to hear that things are going well over there.  Yay, I´m an uncle!  I know I was an uncle before, but, again!  Congratulations, Bonnie, that the baby was born.  Congratulations also that the easy part is over.

 

I´m also glad to hear that you´re feeling better.  Good luck at work on Tuesday, I´m starting work in a new area that same day.

 

Thanks for the pictures, I´ll send some to you next week, of parts of the area, of my new companion - OH - my trainer, Elder Nelson, is my district leader here in Acapulco.

 

I can´t think of anything else to say - except two things.

 

The church is true!  Keep pressing forward in the work of the Lord.

 

and...

 

I love you!

 

Elder Bartlome 

May 23, 2011

Hi mom!

 

I finally mailed the box - last week.  You´re going to have to sign for it - be prepared for that.  (Oh,... I didn´t even think that you´re not home during the day... I guess you´re going to have to go pick it up at the post office... oops... o well, it´s safer).

 

I´m glad to hear that everything´s going well - the kitchen wall looks great!

 

Stake Conference, huh?  We had two conferences this past week - one with the whole mission in Cuernavaca (Tuesday).  Elder Rasband, from the Presidency of the Seventy came.  He doesn´t speak spanish, but he had a translator.  I saw all of the other Elders that I had met when I first came, and that had since been transferred (except the ones that have finished their missions).  My trainer is in Acapulco, where the sun is REALLY strong.  His hair is blond, and because of the sun, it looked like he had bleached it.  When I told him that, he said "You´re the third person that´s told me that!"

 

Two days later, we had our zone conference, in our stake center, with the missionaries in our zone and President Spannaus and his wife.

 

I´m glad to hear that the end of the world was postponed, due to technical difficulties.  I still have a few things to do before the world ends, haha.

 

They are building a statue of the virgin Mary right underneath our apartment (the kind that they have all over the place).  Grr...  It´s right underneath the balcony.  We were joking about hanging a scripture from the Bible from the balcony right over it about not worshiping idols, but we won´t do that, because that won´t do any good.

 

The church is true!  Keep pressing forward in the work of the Lord, and share your testimony with someone this week!

 

I love you.

 

Elder Bartlome

May 16, 2011

Hi!

Thanks for the return kiss :)  And thanks for keeping up the blog, I enjoy it - Tiffany´s is awesome, too :)  Here´s an idea, if friends of Tiffany or me want to know about the missions, but don´t know about the blog - you could put the address of the blog on facebook - Tiffany´s address on her page and mine on mine, or something like that.  Maybe, I don´t know.

I`m going to mail the box today.  I finally got it ready this week to put in the mail, along with a few other letters.  

I`m glad to hear everything`s going well.  I enjoyed the pictures of Diane´s family - Holy cow, they look older (Nikki and Bryon)!

Yes, I would come from Oregon to play the Tabernacle Organ.  Although seeing as I´ve already played that (for only 2 minutes, but still...), the Conference Center Organ is higher on my bucket list right now.

Not much to write, nothing much happened out of the ordinary.  Oh, I think I forgot to tell you - a few weeks ago, when we contacted someone sitting on his front porch, his wife brought an English Bible, King James Version (but not the LDS version - it doesn´t have the references to the modern scriptures).  It´s white, and the words of Christ are in red.  Their son had recieved it as a gift in an activity, and they don´t speak English, so they didn´t want it.  So I have another Bible in English, the same version that we use, but without modern references.  They didn´t accept our message, though.

Ummm......

If I´ve ever said that I´d never get tired of Mexican food, I take it back.  I´m not completely sick of it, but it is kind of boring sometimes - almost every day tortillas, beans, rice or vegetables, and some type of meat.  Every once in a while, there´s something different, but mostly that.  But, it´s food, and I have to eat, so...  I love the mangos, though.  At this time of year, we get offered a mango almost every day, because the mango trees (there are a lot of those) are producing.  There are also lime trees everywhere.

Oh, I decided that I want to learn to dance when I get home.  My companion dances (folklore).  He was dancing in BenAmerito (the Mexican version of BYU - founded and kept by the church), and he really misses being able to dance all the time.  Also, there was a folklore dance program put on by the youth in the stake this week, to which we went.  So, I got the desire to learn to dance.  Besides, any wife loves her husband more if he knows how to dance (hehehe).

The church is true!!  Take care of yourself, and keep up with your testimony.

I love you.

Elder Bartlome 

May 9, 2011

Hey, mom!

It was sure nice to talk to you as well - oh, HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY again!!  Here´s a kiss for you...

SMACK!!!

We´ll see if you can put that on the blog, hehehe....

Not much to type, nothing much new is happening.  I´ve uploaded some of the photos of the baptism yesterday (this guy has been waiting 20 years since his family got baptized!  His wife, daughters, and granddaughters were all crying - it was awesome...)

I also uploaded a picture of me - this is what I look like when I wake up in the morning.

Also, we helped a sister in the ward move some plants from one house to another (they had to move).  And we got to ride their tricycle/cart thingy.  Pictures attached.

And watermelon.

And my companion when I punish him.

Oh, we had our ward conference yesterday, and we did a couple of musical numbers for it.  I played the piano, and Miguel (in the ward) sang with a couple of sisters in another ward that have really good voices.  We did "Consider the Lilies" and "In Quiet Grove," both in Spanish, of course.

Hmmm.... anything else? 

The church is true!  I love you.

Elder Bartlome

P.S.  Tell Bonnie that she looks a little pregnant.

May 2, 2011

Hi!

 

¿Comó Estás?

 

Things are going well, we had another earthquake (small, but worse), three weeks after the first one.  Apparently, it´s common to have small earthquakes here at this time of year, but they´re hardly recognizable.  This one was when we were still in bed.  My companion thought I was shaking his bed, and then I said, "Can you feel that?"  Then he realized it wasn´t me.  The other one was like a lullabye, rocking a baby´s cradle, but this one was a little harsher - not really stronger, just more... stiff... shaking more.  No damage.

 

Not much else to say.  I´m jealous of the Because We Sing chorus.  I´m sure that Bonnie´s baby is no where near as good looking as I am.  Tell Brittany congrats for me if you get the chance.

 

Mother´s Day here is on Tuesday, the tenth.  I had the idea of calling on Tuesday, but then my district leader (American) reminded me that Mother´s Day there is on Sunday.  So I´ll call on Sunday, and my Mexican companion is going to call his mom on Tuesday.  I imagine that I´ll call at around 5:00 there, 6:00 here, or maybe a little after.  Somewhere around there.  I look forward to it!

 

The church is true!  Keep pressing forward in the work of the Lord! 

 

Elder Bartlome

April 25, 2011

Hello...

How are you?....

Things are going well here.  Not having much success, but we´re working.  The church is still true, no matter how many people reject it.  They´ll regret that they rejected it one day when they realize the truth and it´s too late to change their mind, because they didn´t have the faith or the open mind to recieve it now.

One morning, before we left to work, a couple of Jehova´s Witnesses missionaries knocked on our door.  When they saw that it was us, they looked disappointed.  They tried to give us a pamphlet, so I tried to give them a Book of Mormon.  They didn´t take it.  They showed us a scripture in the Bible ("All scripture is inspired of God"), and tried to use that to explain that only the Bible is scripture.  They didn´t even understand that the scripture that they shared only proved them wrong.  That´s the power of the devil - he puts wrong interpretations of scriptures in the minds of men.  I´m curious to see how they´re going to react in later days when they realize that they were wrong and we´re right.

We went on divisions.  I went to Taxco, with the companion that I had in the MTC.  That was interesting.  Elder McKee (also from our stake), the district leader, came to this area with my companion.  It´s nice to have a change.

Ahhhh!  Lapreal!  That´s so sad..  at least we know where she´s going, and that she´s going to be with her husband again.  You´d better tell her that she´s awesome, from me (ahem... please).  I´d play a song for her if I were there - will you play one for her, from me?  You choose which one.

Not much more to say.  The church is true!  Never give up proclaiming the good news, to family, friends, anybody that will listen.

I love you

Elder Bartlome

P.S.  I attached a couple of pictures, taken in Taxco.  Taxco is built on a hill.  In one, you can see how unorganized they build the houses.  The others are of a sign that I really like.  There is a really big Christ statue in Taxco, and Acapulco is a city.  This sign makes me laugh, because apparently Acapulco is in the opposite direction from Christ.