Week 22 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

This week was pretty good. I don't know when we will be calling on Mother's day but we will know soon, I will let you know when I hear more.

I heard about Caitlin leaving, that is pretty cool. I heard Quinn Read got his mission call, I haven't heard to where yet.

Everybody is getting married, I heard about Gordon and about Alex, that is pretty cool.

Wow, you guys are super busy, I am glad you guys are keeping up with everything, at least it sounds like you guys are.

This week was pretty good, we had some good lessons with people and we had some good food, as usual. So on to the highlights:

Monday:

We went to the doctor because elder Barlow has Krohn's disease so he had to go get blood drawn, so that was fun. After Barlow got blood drawn we went to the mission office in McAllen because we were in the area. One of the senior missionaries, Elder Valdez, said he would take us out to lunch so we went to Taco Palenque which is a super good Mexican restaurant, it is like Taco Bell to the next level, it is super good. After that and the usual shopping and emailing we just went to the apartment and took a nap. Then we had dinner with the relief society president and her family, we had grilled chicken, pollo asado, as they say in Spanish. We also had some delicious sweet corn and rice. I have really come to be less picky of food down here. I love guacamole, and corn and bananas and avocado and salmon, a whole bunch of stuff I didn't like before the mission, that has been nice.

Tuesday:

We had a super lit zone conference for pretty much the whole day. We talked a lot about personal revelation and it was super cool. We are all entitled to receive the same revelations that the apostles and prophet do as long as we have enough faith and want to receive it for the right reason. We had lunch at the zone conference, spaghetti and meatballs, it was super good. We finished up with some more training from President Torres, he introduced lesson zero. Lesson zero is basically the first lesson that we will now teach people and we will not teach anything in specific, just try to get to know the people and figure out what they need to learn or hear. After the zone conference we had dinner with the Hernandez Family. Sister Hernandez made us quesadillas but on the inside it was cheese and mashed potato, it was super good. After we ate with the Hernandez family we went out and found some people to try our new lesson zero on. We found 2 people and it went super well, the lesson zero was truly inspired and it helped everything seem more natural for just a casual knock on somebodies door.

Wednesday:

 Wednesday morning we had a district meeting with the missionaries in our district, they are in Rio which is like 25 miles away so we did it through video chat. We talked more about lesson zero and had some super good conversations about how to apply it better. After district meeting Eloy called and asked if we wanted to go to lunch so he took us to Pizza hut. We ordered a lot of food and felt awful. After that we had to go to Walgreen's to get some prescription stuff that Elder Barlow needs. After that we had dinner with the Villalpando family, we had rice with corn and a baked potato and pork tacos, delicious. During mutual we had a meeting with brother Guerrero, the ward mission leader and he want to have like an open house/church tour so we will see how that goes. The young women were making crepes so we had some crepes for dessert.

Thursday:

We did some family history and Barlow showed me how family search works so I am pretty into it now. I understand how to do stuff, so that is nice. We had dinner with the Buentello family and we had tamales, they were super delicious. We ended the day by sharing a message with Eloy and so that was cool.

Friday:

We had coordination and met Brother Guerrero at Wing-Stop, it is like a place to get fried chicken, it is pretty good. We had dinner with the Ramos family, sister Ramos made mole, one of her specialties, mole is okay. Not the biggest fan of meat with a chocolate and chili sauce but it is good. After dinner we did a scripture study with the Rodriguez family, that was super good. We then went to visit the Hernandez family because we remembered it was Katherine's birthday, we visited them and turns out they were having a party so we stayed and got fed burgers, can't complain.

Saturday:

It rained pretty hard Saturday morning so we didn't do much. We had some good lessons with people during the day so that was nice. We ended the day by getting food at McDonalds, because why not.

Sunday:

We had Church, there were 68 people there, it was pretty empty. We had super good talks in sacrament meeting about pride and forgiving others. During the 3rd hour the elders quorum President gave a really good lesson about having a better relationship with your spouse, everyone kept telling Elder Barlow and I to remember the things they talked about in that lesson for future reference. After church we had a quick ward council and that went good, a little long, but good. After that we had dinner with the Rivera family, we had some good tostadas. We ended the day by visiting Alexis who is an 18 year old who is less active, we had a really good chat with him.

This morning we played soccer as a zone and President Torres showed up, that was super fun. 

That is about all for this week, hope all is well at home.

Love

Elder Goodbaudy