Week 32

It was great to hear from you this week!  I am always inspired then I read you letters.  You make me a better person.  That is so cool that Cameron had another random friend over at the house! How did JT come to know the church.  Is he the one in the picture when Can opened his call.  The one that I don't  recognize? 

Carter sounds good!  I still can't believe that he is already home and at college!  

Tell President Merrill hi for me, and tell him how much I admire and respect him.

Okay these that four days have been a little crazy.  Elder Oyola, an elder in my district is sick with chicken pox and we are having to do intercambios to keep the two areas open and working with all of the investigators.  Well I took too much time writing Cameron so blame him but I am out of time now!  Write you next week.  Love you all!

Elder Quist

Week 31

Dear Family,

WOW that is sooo awesome ( referring to Cameron's mission call)!  I love hearing everything!

I have soo much too tell you!

  This week has been one of the most spiritual weeks of my mission!  It was amazing.  We had many crazy experiences and I learned and grew so much.  I´ll just tell you one of the many amazing things that happened this week.

(Adam told a wonderful experience that he wants to share himself when he gets back - so I guess you will have wait - haha)

  

I couldn't be any happier right now!  I don´t doubt that this is where I need to be!  It is so peaceful! Love the mission so much!

Love you so much mom!  I can not tell you how happy it makes me to see how good of a father I have and how much you love him!

Alex that is so cool that you are going to be on the field for byu game!  Who are they going to playing?!

Love Elder Quist

Week 30

Wow the weeks go by so fast here!  I can not believe everything that has happened in the last 7 months. It has been so great!  Life sounds good at home!  It was weird seeing Carter in the picture of Brooks birthday..I feel like home does not exist, but is just a fictionary place of babies and parties!  hahahah.  

This week has been so amazing and inspiring!  On Thursday we had a mission training conference with ELder Pieper.  He is a area seventy!  President Bird divided the mission into 3 groups so that it would be more personal training!  I learned so much!  He taught about eternal progress and how our goal in the mission is to help people have eternal progress.  We are going to start working more with recent converts and the people that haven't made covenants in the temple, so they can prepare to continue progressing!  The Lord wants quality convert and therefore I do too.   We have found alot of people this week that are so ready to receive the gospel.  Tenemos que "comenzar con el fin en mente".

We had a ward activity this week for the Mexican indepence day!  It was great! There were alot of new investigators there.  We are going to have alot more work with the members now!  My companion and I made the ice cream as part of our service hours for the week!  They put chili sauce on their ice cream! It is actually really cold!  In Monterrey they call ice cream "nieve"  which means snow.  Shelby how do they call ice cream in Peru?  

On Wednesday Melisa was baptized!  She has been working so hard to repent and be ready for her baptisms.  So it was so amazing to finally help her be baptized!  She felt so good after the baptism!  She said that when she came up from water, she saw that everything was brighter and happier then she had seen.  She has been so burdened down by past mistakes that she was literally living in darkness and when she was baptized these sins left completely!  I can't tell you how good it is to see how happy she was.  And somehow the baptismal services always turns out better then we plan.  Alot of the Relief Society sisters showed up at the baptism and sister Aburto brought a cake to eat after!  Melisa felt really good to be able to have so much support!  I think she is going to marry Pablo and then get sealed in a year!  It is amazing!

What else...

I think that is it for this week!  Off to play Quitich with the zone!  I don't know how that is going to work, but we´ll see!  

Love Elder Quist

Week 29

The new Elders in the ward are way cool.  They divided our area in half so now our area is alot smaller.  It is nice not to walk so much but we lost alot of our progressing investigators...well I wouldnt say lost but we had to hand them over to the Elders.  It is sad not to be able to visit them anymore but i know that they are good hands.  Elder Shakespeare and Elder Oyola are the new missionaries in our ward!  Elder shakepeare in from southern utah. he is way cool!  he is really good a american football and was going to go and play football for the university of utah because he got a scholarship to play there but he dicided not too. He is really shy and timid for a big football player.  It is funny to see his precetion of mexico because I was just in his shoes 6 months ago but now I am completely acostumed to the mexican life.  The new elders are sleeping on the floor in our house so everything is pretty hectic but it is fun.  

That is such an awesome quote that you sent me "Love God and He will enable you to love others even when the disappoint you". It was perfectly inspired for me this week!  I need to love the Lord more so that I can show more love for my companion.  It is really hard sometimes because he never wants to talk about things that we can do better.  It is hard being a trainer but I know the Lord wants me to learn to be more patient with him when he is disobedient and be able to show my love for him no matter what he does.  Sometimes I am really direct with him and I think that I know what is best, so I try to control him, but that is just the pride that is in me and I am learning to be humble.  But really I do love my companion so much and we have sooo much fun together working really hard.

Yesterday we taught one of our investigators a 9 year old kid named Axel!  He is a part member family and he is sooo funny!  We found him because our recent convert Lizbet who is also 9 years old told us that we could visit her neighbors.  We usually teach Axel in the house of Lizbeth.  Usually lizbeth is at school when we teach Axel, but yesterday was Sunday so we planned to teach Axel with Lizbeth present so she could share the feelings she felt when she was baptized.  She got sooo excited and couldn't stop asking when we were going to teach Axel!  So when we got to her house with Axel before we could sit down and say a prayer she started sharing the scripture that she wanted to share.  We let her calm down and then said the prayer.  After she went off again with reading random scripture in the book of mormon and trying to make sense of them!  Axel just sat there listening really intently and the father of Lizbeth was busting up laughing the whole time because after everything Lizbeth said she would say, "and I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen!"  She said that like 5 times in the lesson!  After she was done, my campanion and I shared a short message  and then Axel started in saying " well Lizbeth I would like to share something with you too...and he started saying something like the moon helps us to pray to God and then he shared it in the name of Jesus Christ amen.  Then Lizbeth started to share another scripture and shared it in the name of Jesus Christ amen!  By this point my campanion and I were laughing pretty hard too...  It was so funny to just see them, two kids, bible bashing with the book of mormon not even knowing what they were saying.  And then to finish it off, Axel said "brothers,  are you going to be in the street at 10:00 because there is going to be a meteor shower.  I just wanted to share that with you. and then the Dad of Lizbeth said " and are you going to share it in the name of Jesus Christ? "   

Well other then that the week was really good!  We are going to change houses this week so it is going to be really busy but I am so excited to be here in Mexico and to be learning and growing so much!  

I know my Savior lives!  When I pray fevently He answers my prays in the best way for me! 

Love you!!

Elder Quist

Week 28

Wow that letter from Micheal Merrill was awesome!  He is such a great example!

This week has been such a good week!  We are getting a new pair of missionaries in our ward.  It is going to be great! They come tomorrow!  I hope another white missionary will come so that I am not alone not understanding the Mexican jokes that they make...I am learning little by little!  We are having lot a sucess with a few of our investigators.  It is great to see the progress in them and see how they are changing their lives!  We had another training meeting on Saturday in the offices and we have to go back to the offices tomorrow to pick up the new missionaries, so a lot of traveling!  But nothing compared to what Shelby is doing!  I could go to and from the offices 20 times in the time she takes to go there and back once!  

Good story- On Saturday we had lessons planned and then alot of them fell through so we called our progressing investigator Manuel who is going to be baptized in 2 weeks!  He picked up the phone and said yeah come on over.  So we quickly went to his hermanador (don't know how to say in English) Hermano Cerda so he could come with us to the lesson!  We got to Hermano Cerdas house and it started pouring!  It rains so hard and so suddenly here!  So we waited 10 minute and the rain stopped. and we thought that it was all clear to go to the lesson, but then we started walking and realized that the streets were still rivers even though it had completely stopped raining!  For the next 30 minutes we went on an adventure with Hermano Cerda the old first counselor in the stake presidency.  What should have been a 5 minute walk turned into a 30 maze to find what streets were not rivers and what speed bumps we could use as bridges to the other side!  It was pretty awesome!  We used rocks as stepping stones to cross some of the rivers!  We finally got to the lesson and it was literally the best lesson that I have ever been in on my misison!  Wow that was a great day!

I think you all are going to look at me weird when I get back because I am starting to adopt some Mexican habits that are gross...like pizza with alot ketchup.  Yeah it actually is good.  Or maybe I just think that it is good!  haha

That is so crazy that you are going to get carter. It went by so fast!  It seems like just yesterday that I said goodbye to him!  and now the time is going by even faster that I am on the mission!  Tell carter I say hi!  I cant believe he is home!  Is Gracie just so happy!?

Abby is soo cute!  She is getting so big!  I miss hanging out with you and the McCay family.  I loved Abby's video, she is going to be a good panio player!   

Well I am just loving it here in Mexico and loving every one of the experiences that I am having!  I feel so blessed!  I love you all so much! Tell Carter to write me now that he is home!  

Love you mom and dad so much!

Elder Quist.