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.

April 18, 2011

Hi mom!

Elder in Spanish is the same as in English, but you pronounce it with a Spanish accent (of course).

We had Stake Conference yesterday and Saturday.  I played the piano for the two sessions on Saturday, and a sister in the stake played on Sunday.  Also, there was a musical number on Sunday - two sisters from another ward sang "Learn of Me," from Janice Kapp Perry (in Spanish, of course).  It was awesome!  I wasn´t sure if I was listening to a CD, or actual people.  It´s not very often that I find people here that have an ear to stay in tune (that sounds terrible, I know, but it´s true...).

Oh, and President Spannaus came to the Stake Conference, with his wife and two daughters, and spoke (his wife spoke, too).  His wife spoke on ideas for missionary work among the members, and he spoke on the gospel from Adam down to Noah, with the end result that no one can live with God again without baptism. 

Not much to write this week.  I´m glad that everything is going well there.  We forgot to fast last Sunday, too, so we´re fasting today.  I´m hungry.  We´ll eat at about 4:00 (it´s 1:40). 

That will sure look good - a painted kitchen.

I´m still in my first area, Iguala, a city about an hour drive from Cuernavaca.  And it´s still hot-hot-hot!  And getting hotter.  I´ve never sweated from my arms before (not that I´ve realized). 

Hey, I saw rain!!!  And lightning!!!  I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It usually only rains at night, so it´s still deathly hot in the daytime, but still, I love the storms!  I haven´t seen rain since the MTC, and when it rained a few nights ago, my companion didn´t wake me up (grr.... I slept right through it).  But it rained last night, and I love the lightning!  When a storm comes for the first time after I get back home, I´m going to find a patch of nice grass outside, lay down, and just enjoy it.  I don´t care if I catch a cold by doing it.

The church is true - keep strong in the gospel!  It´s the only path the has all of the truths that we need to return to live with God again.

Elder Bartlome

Hey, mom -

 

I´ve got a couple of stories this week.

 

First.  We had an earthquake!  It was small, and a lot of people didn´t even notice it, but we did.  On Thursday, and about 8:50 in the morning, Elder Romero said "Esta temblando" (It´s trembling).  I looked, and sure enough, the house was slowly rocking back and forth (slightly, but surely).  Lullaby!  That´s the first earthquake that I´ve ever noticed in my life.  It was 6.2 in Veracruz, and 5.something here.

 

Second.  I´m sure you probably already saw the photos - not something you see everyday, huh?  We were walking to our next appointment, and we turned a corner, and there´s a flaming car right there!  Wow.....  It looked awesome (maybe not to the owner of the car). Nobody was hurt.  Apparently, the owner had just taken it to a mechanic, and the idiot left a block of some sort in the exhaust.  So it heated, and heated, and heated, and heated, and BOOM!  Luckily, the houses in front of the car had cisterns (huge containers of water, because the water doesn´t come to the houses every day), and one of the houses had a whole bunch of buckets.  So we, along with a whole bunch of neighbors, helped to put out the fire.  Then the policemen and the fire truck showed up.

 

What was funny about that, was that when we saw the car on fire, we stood there for a couple of seconds staring at it.  Then the first words that my companion said were, "Your camera!"  - not "where´s some water?"  or something else like that.

 

I´ve been on the mission for almost seven and a half months!!!  Time flies!  I´m old.  I´m going to die in a few short 85 years... I´m depressed now..... :(  Just kidding. :)

 

Nothing much else to say.  I still haven´t seen a drop of rain here (except a couple of times that it seemed that an angel sneezed - a drop here, and a drop there).  But the last time I saw rain was in Provo, in the MTC.  It´s a treat when we see clouds, especially when they actually cover the sun.

 

The church is true!  Keep smiling, and keep following the Lord.

 

Elder Bartlome

4/4/2011

Hey mom!

 

All is going well.  I absolutely loved General Conference - yes, we saw all of it.  I even got to see one of the sessions in English.  Did you know that Elder Richard G. Scott speaks spanish?  He recorded his own talk in Spanish, so we heard it in his voice.  A few other people did that, too. He certainly has an American accent when he talks Spanish - I can hear it.

 

By the way, I´m jealous of the organ workshop.

 

My companion is awesome.  I don´t know why I´m called a trainer, he´s a great missionary already.  Except he gave up trying to learn English for a while.  Seeing as it says in Preach My Gospel that you should learn English on your mission if you don´t already speak it, and also it´s a rule in our mission, I threatened him (in a way).  I had already tried making a plan to help him learn in a nice way - that plan failed, and for a time, he refused to try to talk in English.  So on Friday, I told him that if he doesn´t make a plan that I agree with by Tuesday (tomorrow), I´m going to completely ignore him when he speaks Spanish, and I´ll only speak Spanish with the members and investigators.  He´s making a plan. 

 

I don´t think the music program thing is going to make it.  We haven´t practiced once as a group yet.  We´ll see.

 

The church is true!  Keep pressing forward in the work of the Lord!  And invite someone (a nonmember) to church, everyone that reads this.

 

Elder Bartlome