2 Week Catch Up

well good afternoon all my family and friends. it was good to see
some of you yesterday, and to be able to write you today. there is
quite a lot to tell about because i have two weeks to catch up on and
a lot of great experiences that keep building my testimony more and
more every day. im not really organized in my thoughts, so please
forgive me if i starts to get pretty confusing and out of order.

well all is well here in cuernavaca, we just got back from a rigorous
hike to the tepozteco for 3 hours, we ate fabulous tacos of cesina
with itakates, and tlacoyos. haha, i probably wont even be able to
tell you what they are without my pictures, but i left the extension
cord at home. we also had tepoznieves. its pretty much like ice
cream but they have over 130 flavors and it was incredible. we went
with a family in the ward that has been really nice to us, and are so
much fun. they all say high, and also, later, i will send pics of
them. we will eat with them for new years. speaking of that mom,
could you somehow communicate with clarissa or her mom to ask for the
chocolate bunt cake with kissables. she knows the one. if not,
mention to her its the one we ate after getting kicked out of state in
high school soccer. haha. i told them how wonderful the cake was and
they asked if i oculd get the recipie. they are big chocolate fans
too.

these past two weeks have had their ups and downs. we have been
finding a few more than usual, but we werent having the lessons with a
member present that we were hoping for, then the next week, or member
lessons went up and our finding and challenging for baptism were going
down, so i think that after finding the two extremes, we will ahve a
great balanced out week this time around. elder sonntag and i have
gotten in little quarrels that were easily, usually, worked out, and
sometimes they lasted a little longer. i think its because i am too
meticulous(i cant remember how to say it) and i always let the little
things pick at me, and for some of those reasons, we had a few
arguements. nothing that we couldnt work out. we werent able to
baptize these last two weeks, but are hopefully planning one for this
week for miguel. yesenia had a problem, and we havent been able to
see her all week. a few members have talked with her, and they think
that she just isnt ready to leave her party life behind. but we will
keep working with her. in my personal study, i have been reading in
joshua of the old testament, and also in doctrine and covenants, and i
have learned a ton in d&c. maybe not so much about the story, buy i
have learned a lot of very important scriptures that have helped me a
lot. like d&c 42.61 I dont have them all memorized right now to write
their references, but if i remember next week, ill share them. this
week, we also have been working with an ex missionary and his wife.
it is a cool experience to be working with them, moises and stefania.
he got home from his mission, and was a powerhouse, he actually served
in the mexico north mission, and one of his last areas was apasco
hidalgo. he is elder ramirez ramirez. after a while, his non member
father, got to him by peer pressure, and got him to drink a little,
then in the end met stef, and well... they are now living together and
are not married waiting for a baby to come. he has been inactive
since hanging with his dad, and when we got with him, he shared that
he felt that we got there in the right time to make the difference.
stef is also progressing, and they went to church yesterday with us!
it was a huge success, and we are feeling the joy of bringing, not
only investigators, but inactive member back, and they are excited. i
really do love the missionary work, serving others always brings about
such a great joy that really changes who we were, into what god wants
us to be.

it made me laugh when you said that alyssa knew me in jr
high, because i thought about sticking pennies to my forehead in 7th
period english with mrs. jones and calling myself pennyman! haha. so
wow have i changed. also an emeritus seventy of our ward had his son
over and we ate with them. his son asked if i had been a leader in
the mission, because of how well i behaved and mature i acted. he
said that i was a powerful missionary from the scripture i shared.
its not to brag that i say this, but just to show that there really
has occurred a grand change in me, and i love it. i hope to be able
to continue with it all my life, and keep learning more.

so mom, can i be enrolled in uvu and be a partial student at byu for
the spanish class, or is it one or the other? i asked for ideas of
what i could major in, because i think i will need to put goals on
what i hope to achieve in 1 yr, 5 yrs, and 10 yrs. so if its possible
to get any carreer written down to to start with some kind of plan, it
would be nice. i dont need a lot of answers about it yet, but in
about a month, he will ask me to start thinking and setting these
goals.

well i lovce you all, and am thankful for your support, well for the
little you gave me yesterday, haha just kidding. it was fun to see
you, and motivating. ill keep working strong, and i ask that you also
give your best to the lord. i love you all. until next week.
elder facer

Darn that computer...

mom, im sorry, i had a lot of stuff written, and when i went to save
it, it was all erased. i didnt send it, and i dont know what
happened, and i dont have time to write any more...... so just to be
quick, i will be getting on skype at 3:30pm mexico time, which is
2:30 your time. i will also have my msn messenger account open, if
there are any problems, we can talk quick over it, or you can email me
at this account. im sorry it was a good letter, but for some reason
it was erased.... so i guess with this we will have to wait until
sunday to talk. im prayin for you all!
elder facer

Gifts of Service

hey! im really sorry for the last few weeks that it has been hard to write, we are still trying to find the time to do all that we needed to do, and it made it really hard. but this next week, i think we will have the schedule down good to be able to write with plenty of time. this week has been pretty crazy. we have been planning and rehearsing for our zone service project, and for a sunday night choir devotional. monday night, thursday in the morning, and sunday before the concert. thursday we had the service project and we went to a retirement home, a home with older people with problems, and their family just stopped taking care of them, so they are in a pretty rough state, but were very happy and fun to receive us, well those that were able to recieve us. we sang 4 hymns, and they asked for an encore haha, so we sang silent night in the end without any practice and with parts, so it wasnt so good. but they didnt know, they only heard the words hopefully. i sang the tenor part to the songs, and it was fun.
i really miss singing in groups like this. then after singing, we went and painted the two main hallways, and the kitchen, and the cafeteria. with 22 missionaries, and president with his wife, it went by pretty quick. we finished it all in about 3 hours and were out by 2pm. then sunday, we were running around like crazy with the assistants and the secretaries for our food appointment. we ate together, because a member from their ward lives in atzingo,(but goes to palmas) and the ladys daughter goes to our ward, so they scheduled the same day to give us all together, so we had to find the assistants and take them there, because i was the only one that knew where the sister lives, so we got there late, and ate mexican steaks! they have nothing to compare to dad´s, but it was meat and not chicken. so i was pretty happy. they are such a cool and good family too. but that means that we were really late getting to practice because the food was really far away. but the devotional was really fun. it reminded me of what we did in the ward when i was little every year, and it was a good reminder of the experience of the savior. we had a rough day at church, because all of the 12 really good progressing investigators that we were hoping would go to church, didnt go, so we only had yesenia. the good thing is she will be baptized this friday! we will also have a ward dinner on friday after her baptism. this week was pretty nuts with all the parties going on, and the festival of the virgin mary, or guadalupe, the lordes mother of mexico as she is known here. sad... it was pretty hard to sleep all the week because of fireworks and parties, bands playing in the street etc all night long. a lot of drunks and fights, but nothing happened to us. well as you all heard about, the earthquake was bad, but nothing happened to us. we had just sat down to have a fhe with a family, and as we were about to start, we heard it in the distance. it was by far the biggest one of the three i have felt, but it was only like .7 more than the other two, but it made a difference after getting above 6.0. elder sonntag was happy and laughing about it, because it was his first shake, but it took him a while to realize what was going on. but all is well, nothing happened in cuernavaca as far as i have heard, and all is well.
well we are still working with maritza and diana, they didnt go to church, so they will have to wait another week to be baptized, and neither did our usual frequent investigators go. its crazy to see how hard satan works on the people we teach. the husband of a member has gone with her to church for 8 years, not constantly, but the weekend that we teach him for the first time, they get in a big fight and he went with his family instead of going to church. so its hard, but we will hopfully see him tonight. he is luis, please pray for him too. we are really trying to find new ways to teach the members how to do their part in the work, and teach them how to find their friends and neighbors that are ready for the gospel. thats what we are focusing on this week, and the next month is teaching them their responsibilities as disciples of christ. well i thank you all for your letters this week, im sorry that i wasnt able to write back, because it didnt give me time, but next week, i will be on top of it.
and mom, i hope you could read that letter by alfredo, he had a rough experience of leaving the church, but is finally back, and recieved the priesthood this last week, with plans with his girlfriend to go on missions!! its so interesting how God knows when to convince some of his children... i love you all, and i cant wait to hear from you soon, or see you on skype!
elder facer

Reminders from home, except for the First Presidency message

well, im sorry to be writing so late, our new schedule is kinda rough with time. the only thing we need to do is go to costo to buy a lot of food for elder sonntag, and bring it home, so the other missionaries dont ask questions, complain etc. but wow did it eat up our time. it was really fun, because we ate there, and i had a hot dog. it reminded me so much of when we went to costco with mom and ate afterwards. good times. haha. we played a little basketball today, and also practiced singing a few songs for the zone.
we are doing a service project this week, and a part of that will be singing in a retirement home. also we will sing the same songs in a stake mission activity. they are oh come all ye faithfull, away in a manger, and two other songs that i cant remember the names in english.
haha. its funny to see how much im forgetting. some members in atzingo that speak english, said that i speak english with a mexican accent. haha it makes me laugh everytime i think of it. i have a feeling youre all going to make fun of me when i get home.
this week was a little bit harder, because we had lot of appointments fall that were important lessons with members present. but we did get many other lessons in. we had a few fhe lessons, and had a little success, but are hoping for much more in this week. we worked hard and had a lot of good success, but need to work on the other appointments so that they dont fall. we are also working out in the mornings at a near by park, and it has felt really good, but really tiring. after fasting, and working out in the morning, i about threw up, so luckily i didnt. we also made huevos a la mexicana this morning, and that was the best prepared breakfast that i have had in a long time. the stake president talked to me yesterday to plan and accompany us to a fhe this week with a family that he has chosen. its good to hear that he is interested in whats going on with the stake mission plan and wants to help. also yesterday we had a first presidency christmas fireside, and had a few investigators there. i dont know if they have it in utah, because i dont think that i ever saw one of those before, it was really good, but the transmittion is always a little sketchy.
it really is hard to think that it was that long ago when i started the mission, and i dont really remember you crying like you said sister day cried. haha but it has sure gone by quick. well mom, dont worry, after writing you last week, and getting to the district meeting, my package was there waiting for me! with all thirty two wonderful christmas cards in it, and what a suprise it was to find that book by elder oaks. that was a really nice gift, but the only problem is that in the mission we cant read those books, only the missionary library.... but i will keep up well reserved for when i get home. also the great pics of tara in the state championships. i was waiting for those! haha. well, i can actually call you at the time you want. the 25 we have changes, but i know that i am staying with elder sonntag, so if you want i can call at night, like 7 or 8 my time(because i dont know what time it is in utah).
well all is well here, and i just wanted you to please be praying for our invesigators, especially maritza and diana who might be baptized this week. thanks to all of you that wrote me a christmas letter in my package. it was very sweet, and i still need to finish reading the rest of them, but just know that you are thanked. well i have to go now. i love you all, and cant wait to see you on christmas, or hear from you soon!
elder facer