Spencer Translating Video

I hope this works because it is so fun.  

We Went to Juarez! Again

So this week we went to Juarez.. Again.. So in this transfer we have gone to Juarez 4 TIMES. Almost once every week... It's fun, but I miss being a normal missionary. It usually takes all day Thursday and Friday becasue we leave early Thursday and come home late Friday.. but all the things we have been learning are important.

Tuesday we did divisons and I went with Elder Wilson from Spanish Fork, and we had a good time. He is kind of new so we tried contacting and other things like that. 

Wednesday Elder Wilson and I went to go running to a river. And when we got back home I was dead tired and for the rest of the weeek was sore.. But also on Wednesday we found a super cool investigator! He is a shoe shiner and he is awesome. We taught him a little about the restoration and invited him to stake confrence. We even offered him a ride! When Sunday came we went to his house to pick him up and he had already left walking to go to the conference! I was very surprised when I heard that. Especially because the church is like a half hour walk! But he made it there and I was very happy!  

Thursday and Friday we learned about contacting, being friendlier people and stuff like that. While in Juarez I ate green enchiladas (my fav tipe of enchilada) and then we did lots of other things, like wait in the offices, walk around Juarez and stuff like that while waiting for the meeting to start. 

Saturday, we had to deliver a cell phone to an Elder whose phone broke. He is in a little town like an hour away from Casas Grandes.. and we had no way to contact them. We only had their address. So we left Saturday morning and got there at about 11:30. We looked at the address and asked people if they knew where it was. We were lucky becaue the house was like 3 seconds away from the bus stop so we found it super fast. But.. the only problem is that the Elders weren't there... Luckily we had a knife and Elder Camacho knows how to use it, so we broke in.... We left them their phone and then left to eat some chicken while waiting for our next bus. It was a fun day. 

When we broke into the house of the Elders in Buenaventura. 

Sunday we had stake confrence and because we have some only English speaking members in the stake a translator was needed. and.. I and two other Elders from the Zone were lucky enough to do it.. I was scared but in the end it turned out well, and I realized that I am slowly forgetting English.... 

So that's about it for the week! I hope you all enjoyed and have a great week this week! 

Love,

Elder St John

Happy Leap Year

Hello everyone! This past week was pretty good!

We did lots of contacting like always, and we had lots of lessons. And we really don't have many stories for this week... it was very average... But Saturday we had a meeting with the President here in Casas Grandes.  It went well.  

This week we also had to record a video of a contact that we did in the street, and that was really uncomfortable... But I helped us out. And uh.. well there isn't much to say. 

It's starting to get hot now.. even though it's cold at night... but I'm getting used to it... umm. Next week we go to Juarez and have Stake Conference so I will tell you all about that... umm but that's all! 

Love you all!

Love,

Elder St John

Tambor

This week was a very good week! We did many fun things. like:

Contact, A lot! 

We caught a rabbit in our back yard.

We went to Juarez.

I met the Pope.

And many things more.

So we had to contact a lot this week because we don't want to visit members, less actives or anything that has been baptized, so that we could bring many unto the waters of baptism. We spent almost the whole day on Saturday contacting and i loved it. We met many people and set a lot of appointments. It was worth it. 

While studying one morning this week, I was thinking about how it's almost spring and I thought about Easter and while looking out the window we saw a bunny! What a lucky early Easter surprise! And naturaly as any other human, we decided to catch it. After about 10 minutes of hunting and chasing we finally caught the bunny. The owner of our house (also our neighbor) told us the night before that she had been trying to catch that very bunny the day before. So we gave her the bunny and she invited us to eat with them. The best part is that she gave us burritos made from bunny meat. So our reward for catching the bunny was a big bunny burrito. It was a good day. 

We went to Juarez AGAIN this week and had another meeting. It was good to go back and I even got to meet the Pope. I even got a picture.  It might even beat the picture my dad got with Will Smith`s son. 

This week went by really fast, and it was a very good week. Our investigators are progressing, and we keep on finding more people to teach.  Also in our mission we have a weekly bulletin and every week the President chooses his favorite spiritual experience to put in the bulletin. This week Elder Camacho and I were chosen. (I wrote the experience.) And even though it is in Spanish I will send you all a copy so that you can see what our mission bulletin is like! Katelyn and Luke can translate it so you might be able to understand. 

That is all for this week.  I hope you enjoyed my letter! Love you all!

Love, 

Elder St John

La Papa Mas Grande

This week has been good! It is my second week with Elder Camacho, and it's awesome! So if you remember the person that I told you about last week, who said that she wants to be a member of the Church and all, we visited her this week and she had finished the WHOLE Book of Mormon including the guide in the back and everything.  We put a baptismal date with her for the 12th of March. So we will see how that goes! We are super excited. 

On Thursday we got a call in the morning from the assistants and they told us to get on a bus and go to Juarez that same day.... So at 5:00 p.m. we left for Juarez... There was a Military check point on the way there and we waited there for an hour while they checked the trailers in front of us. So we got to Juarez at about 11:00 at night. We were hungry but all the food places were closed and we had nothing to eat, so they let us go buy some stuff at a store nearbye.. so we bought sandwich stuff and got home, ate and went to bed at like 1:00 a.m. We had a meeting Friday morning about the changes in the mission and we will be going back this Thursday.... It's a good thing I love traveling or this would kill me.

But big news! The Pope is coming to Juarez this week so that should be interesting.... I'll let you know how that goes next week... Love you all and have a good week!

Love,

Elder St John

Week One with Elder Camacho

Elder Moya

Elder Camacho

This week was awesome! On Monday Elder Moya left ):  And then on Tuesday Elder Camacho got here at like 5:00. Wednesday morning we had a meeting with the 2 zones in Casas Grandes and then we went out to preach. We found a super cool person who told us she wants to be a member of our Church!  I will let you know more about her if it goes well. On Wednesday night they told us we had to leave on Thursday morning to go to a meeting in Juarez, so at 9:00 a.m. Thursday morning we took the bus to Juarez.  We got there at about 1:00 and then ate and had a meeting with the President for ZLs and Sister Training Leaders. it was a really cool meeting and we took a test to see what kind of leaders we are.

Friday we got back home, and we visited Ivonne Carrasco.  She is the investigator who went to church last week.  We set a baptismal date with her for the 5th of March (you're all invited) and we invited her to a bapism that we had in the zone on Saturday.  She loved the baptism and was talking about her baptism the whole time. It was great, and after the baptism we ate tacos de tripitas which, if I'm not mistaken, are made of intestines... but they were delicious.

Sunday we watched the Superbowl all day and... Just kidding, we actually didn't even watch a second of the Superbowl... but it would have been fun.... And that's all for the week! 

Love you all.

Love,

Elder St. John

Elder Camacho and Spencer

Elder St. John and Elder Camacho

Good Morning!

I'm staying here in Alamedas, and Elder Camacho from Monterrey Nuevo Leon Mexico is going to be my new companion.  Tomorrow he will get here so I will send you a picture next week! 

We taught the Young Women's class yesterday and it was... awkward because we had to teach about temple marriage and stuff like that.. but it was good too. We also brought a family of four to church yesterday which made me super happy! They told us they want to be baptized so we will be working with them over the next few weeks to bring them closer to Christ. 

I'm glad that Hayden is filling out his mission papers. You have no idea how happy I am that he will be going on a mission. It is really the best thing ever. 

Love,

Elder St John

TEMPLE

This last week was super good.  We had a few meetings.  The assistants came over and did divisions with us. And lots of fun stuff.  But the coolest part was when we went to the Temple of Ciudad Juarez. Elder Moya has a convert that is going to serve a mission, and she went to the temple on Saturday and invited us. We talked to the President and he gave us permission to go. It was amazing. It was cool to hear a session in Spanish, and the coolest part is that I understood EVERYTHING and actually I understood better than I did in English when i went before the mission.. It was the coolest thing. I was very happy to go especially because we don't usually go to the temple in this mission. But I would just like to remind anyone who reads this, if you have a recommend, GO.  You never know how much of a blessing it is untill you go.

But that's it for this week.  Today is the first day of the last week before Elder Moya goes home! Thats also super crazy. But that is all.  

Love, 

Elder St John

El ayuno es numero uno

Mexico is good. It's getting hot in the day and cold at night, typical desert weather. There are 19 missionaries in the zone, and only five are sisters. All are doing well, and I love helping all of them. 

This week was pretty uneventful untill the weekend. 

We were pretty low on work this week so we decided to fast. On Thursday we fasted and on Friday we contacted. And on Saturday we had an appointment with one of the people we contacted. Her name is Melissa. When we knocked her door on Friday she was with a bunch of family and didn't seem too interested.. But on Saturday when we went to the appointment, she opened the door and seemed pretty unexcited to see us.. But I think that God softened her heart and after thinking a little, she decided to let us in. We taught her and her son about church and the restoration really fast and invited her to church and she even said the closing prayer. She was verry happy after the visit and she told us to come back Sunday to meet the rest of her family. She didn't go to church because she thought she needed a dress or skirt to go.. But she read the whole pamphlet we gave her and taught her husband to pray!! It was super cool coming back Sunday and finding out that her husband wanted to know more also! It truly was an answer to our fast. I have been super happy since.

But that's the experience of the year so far. It's been pretty good!

I love you all!

Love,

Elder St John

17 Months

SO last week I hit 17 months  Pretty crazy, but sad because I don't want even to think about going home. 

This week we went to Juarez for a training meeting and we also had an area confrence that was streamed by satellite, which was also cool. We didn't get to do much this week because I was in Juarez for a few days, but we had a good time while we were here. 

The work is good here.  We are trying to work more with the members so that we can have references and it seems to be working well! 

But that's about it for the week, because I don't have much time! Love you all! 

Love,

Elder St JOhn

Happy New Year!!

So 2015 is all over, my only full year with the name Elder.. kind of sad to think about that. But 2016 has many more great things to offer. Who knows what lies in store. But basically this week was pretty good and normal.... Tuesday Elder Moya got to Alamedas so we got to start the year like we did last year, together.  It's good to be back with Elder Moya.  It makes me think back to my first months as a missionary a lot. But we get along well. 

New Years was good.  To start off the New Year I had a whole bowl of menudo. And the funny thing is that I liked it this time... Elder Moya says I'm very Mexican, which I take as a compliment because I've been here for more than a year and it would be embarrasing if I wasn't Mexican by now.  I even have the mustache. Also next week I get to go back to Juarez for another meeting so that means another four-hour bus ride and another stay in the real inn (the hotel we stay in) and that wil be fun. 

But that's about all for this week, we keep contacting and keep finding people so that's always a blessing. I love you all and hope you have a good new year!

Love,

Elder St John

FELIZ NAVIDAD

This last week was super good! It was really good to talk to the fam! It also snowed this week, and we couldn't leave the house on Sunday... so I'm less active in my ward for this week.... 

Also we had interviews with the President this week and it went really well. We talked about the zone and stuff like that. And also we have transfers tomorrow and Elder Moya, my trainer will be my next companion and I will be his last!  Because this is his last transfer it should be fun.  But I'm still a ZL in Alamedas. 

Spencer with his Mission President, President Rodolfo Derbez

And that's all the news for the week!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hello everyone, and happy holidays! I hope this week we can all stay focused on the true meaning of Christmas which is Christ. If we do that I know we will have the best Christmas ever. 

This week was good, but because I have a limmited amount of time I will tell you the highlights. 

This week we were contacting and found a young mother whose husband is a military man, and she is amazing, she listened to our message, accepts us well, and even said the payer her FIRST TIME, which like nobody does here, becasue they all are shy or embarrassed. We hope to see much progression with her, she has lots of hope. 

Also Saturday, in Casas Grandes all the missionaries got together and we had a lunch/dinner, from 3-5 and we played games, got gifts and sang.  We also ate posole and tamales. Super good. But that really put me in the Christmas spirit. 

Today I'm writing late, because we also did service this morning with a family of recent converts. They are carpenters and kind of old, so we got to help them make some kitchen cabinets, and we will be going back tomorrow, so service is the best way to spend Christmas week. And that's about it for this week..

Love you all and Happy Holidays!

Love,

Elder St John

16 Months

So i now have 16 months since I left home and that is really cool! It's crazy how quick time goes by. 

This was a pretty good week, it went by fast though, because Thursday I went to Juarez, and we had a zone leader training meeting, and got all we needed to give at the zone meeting today! It should be exciting. Today will be my first zone meeting and that's pretty exciting! 

But last week our neighbor was trying to light his gas heater and it caught fire and he almost set his house on fire. We had left the house when he did it, but came back to the house because we forgot something, and saw what had happened. Luckily he didn't get hurt, and we got there in time to call the firemen. So it all turned out fine. 

That's about it for the week.  Sorry for the short letter.  I don't have much time right now to write. But I love you all and hope you have a good week! 

Love,
Elder St. John

Thanksgiving

It was a good week this week! We did lots of good stuff!

But mainly we did divisions and I was with Elder Cottle from Oregon.  We went to his area, and we got to contact there, and met a few pretty crazy people, like a guy who straight up told us to never come back.... which doesnt happen often, but it was funny when it happened, because Elder Cottle asked him why, and he got more mad and went back to his house stomping his feet like a little kid. It was funny. 

I got back to my area and we kept on working hard, and on Friday The district leaders went to Juarez, and their companions stayed here in Casas Grandes, so we paired them off and there was one left. It is Elder Wilson, who started his mission like 3 weeks ago, and is super cool! Elder Castro and I worked with  him from Friday to Saturday, and even though he didn't speak Spanish too well, he worked super hard and even contacted with us and taught in the lessons. It was great.

Sunday we got to talk in church because the speakers didnt come.. So I talked about the attributes of christ and that was really.. good.  I still don't like public speaking, but I'm pretty sure if i can write a 10 minute talk in Spanish in like 30 minutes, I can do pretty well in English. 

That's all for the week! This week I go to Juarez, so I'll let you know about that next week! 

Love you all. 

Love,

Elder St John

I always try to take pictures of the prettiest stuff I see.

Frio Frio Frio

So this week was cold. It's usually around like 30 to 40 degrees! And we only have a little gas heater, that we can't use very much because gas is expensive here.... so we just use a lot of clothes and blankets. And I'm starting to get used to it now. 

But Tuesday, we went on interchanges or divisions or whatever you call it, and I was with Elder Mora and we stayed in Alamedas to work while my comp was in the area of his companion.. We worked pretty hard and we even found a new investigator! She read the Book of Mormon and liked it a lot! 

Wednesday we ended divisions and we later went to cut wood for some people we met. Nothing to exciting later.

Thursday, we went and found a few more new people to teach. We later had a meeting with the 2 stakes from Casas Grandes about the Christmas choir that I won't be in because I missed try outs.. But it doesnt matter.. We still have lots of stuff to do to help out with in the choir. 

Friday was a normal day, Saturday as well. 

Sunday we went to church, which was good as usual. and after that we went to visit a family that we found during the week, and we taught them lesson 1.  They loved it so they all became new investigators. It was a pretty good week! I enjoyed it all! Even though it was cold. 

Love,

Elder St John

Back in Dublan

Well I finally made it back to Colonia Dublan. And instead of coming back as a little district leader, I came back to take the whole ZONE. My plan to take over the whole mission is slowly taking place. Just kidding, But being ZL is pretty cool, My companion, Elder Castro, is super cool.  He is 26 years old and a convert of 3 years. He is also hilarious. But he is an awesome missionary.

Our area, Alamedas, is the smallest area in the whole mission I think, and Elder Castro has been here for almost 9 months. He was actually my zone leader when I was district leader in my last area here in Dublan. And it's pretty funny because he knows EVERYONE. We will be walking down a street and he will be naming everything he knows about every house. We contact in the street and he will have already talked to the person. It's pretty funny. But despite the lack of size in the area, we have a baptism planned for this month.  The man's name is Carlos and he is the father of 4 recent converts here in the area, and he is about 82 years old. He is the best. So if any of you think it's too late to change, you're wrong because Carlos is way older than any of you and he is going to be baptized. 

This week I basically got to know the area. I got here on Tuesday in the afternoon and since then we have basically just contacted 24/7, and I love it. Contacting is the best. We knock doors and talk to literally eveyone we see in the street and even though a lot don't accept us, we keep trying so that we can find the people who really need our message. And we have had some success which is a big blessing. Also they just made 200 new houses in our area and in these next two weeks they will be getting filled up, so don't be suprised when in a few weeks I tell you we have 200 baptisms planned. 

Sunday was good.  I went to church, and it's in the same building as my old area, so I saw a lot of my old friends that I made in Lomas. it was a good day. 

Thanks for all you support and love!

Love,

Elder St John