Jefferey R. Holland

so yesterday we went down to mcallen because Jefferey R Holland came. we all were in the gym standing in place for a group picture with him and as soon as he walked in.. idk it felt so unreal like woahhh an apostle haha it was so rad and special. so we later all shook his hand and told him where we were from. oh also last week we had transfers. Elder Acosta left to a place called Pharr. my new comp is Elder Birrell from Nebraska. he is super sick and loves ties more than i do haha. well yeah back to holland. it was super great and inspiring. talk about having the spirit with us and how we are going to be the future leaders of the church so its time to start getting ready for it. He talked a little bit about how some RMs when they go home walk away from everything that they did on their mission. pretty much like being less active and just not applying anything they learned or stressed so hard on with every investigator or member they taught. Gosh its crazy to see how people are after they go home. He said 'I cant live with an rm that doesnt maintain the faith" and its legit. like wow ive even seen it here in Laredo. Que barbaro you know. The importance of a mission this is life and its going to shape the rest of our lives. we come out as children and return as Men and Women. some of my favorite quotes. "You can rock the world" " Buck up and be strong" whoooo cares if youre sick or your head hurts. stop being a pansi and just get out there. the day of transfers. there is this stomach virus that has been going around. yeah well on monday i had it super bad. and the best part was we had like a million food appointments cause acosta was leaving. kinda made me sad cause i was sick and couldnt eat haha. usually people have this sickness for like a week around here but i didnt let it get to me. i rode my bike withe everyone else and almost threw up these tostadas that i ate. idk what im trying to say. by some miracle i was no longer sick the next day. it was crazy and weird. theres just been another huge change in my mission. its rad. the mission is the best and once again i dont have any more time to write. thanks for all of the support. but yeah I learned so much from yesterday. thats why i wasnt able to write you guys. there was something else i was going to say but im super unprepared for this weird email day. just that ive been studying a lot about prayer and faith and los dos put together haha. ive met quite a few cool people. heard many cool stories. the TMM is the best ever!! i wish everyone could come out here and see all these crazy people and hear their stories. Disfruta cada dia. cause everyday can be the best day. I also dont have any pictures to send this week. I will be sending more this week. you guys are all awesome. also you should read the intro to the hymn book. there are some promised blessings that will make you sing himnos more haha. My comp and i are singing more and more its great. just be good people okay!! just do it. its what our heavenly father wants. we are really working with the escalante family to get them all to the chapel. they are a great family. im still here in Laredo. its supposed to be like 100 this weekend. lets see if anyone dies here its so hot. there was a dead possum outside of the church on sunday and im comp and i had to break these kids up that were throwing rocks at it. it was pretty gross cause it had recently died ha. loco kids. chao chao. 

last supper at hmna Dominguez's 

chocolate caramel lasagna it was the best!

On Melancholy Hill

ah sorry again guys i dont have much time to write. hmm awesome things that happened this week. so last week was elder andersons birthday but we got a cake later in the week. he"s a very timid character and we wanted to mordida him which is when you shove their face in cake.. ha well.. we didnt have time to do it cause we were super busy. so we just dumped it on him when he was in the shower. AH! it was hilarious. hes such a trooper. and that brings me to what we all learned a lot about this week. choosing to have a good attitude. and also i had interviews with my mission president and they went very well. said he's seen my heart change about everything. thats key to my mission. for some reason it was kinda cool to hear that. im going in the direction that our heavenly father has for me. im blessed to be out here in the 90 degree heat. its going to be 120 in a couple months and people die every year from the heat. my comp and i are super pumped and hope we stay here for the summer to experience it. remember guys. choose to be happy. if any of you guys love Gorillaz. awesome! be safe out there. this world is a crazy place. i'll write more next week.

- postin up with the red sun. it looked like something from an 80's karate movie.

- the building on the left is a hotel in texas and on the right is mexico.. with the rio in between.. ha funny how that works out. ive heard stories of people checking in soaking wet. ha.remind me when i get home of this story of a guy getting tossed.

Barbarosa

a lot of sweet things happened this week but i dont really have anything to share this time. just a few things. we found Big Dog BJ Esparza, this long lost member. he's a stud. my comp had a dream i was possessed. many miracles. many tears. that's all.

we dig for ties. this is a bag full of ties. could be Versaci could be Nautica.

walked into a carne the other day.

the bodegas we dig ties in

a tie hammock

Outside The Gates Of Hell

A good hot week.
we were following up with families that we met a few days earlier and passed by this last young adult girl we set a bd with. there was kind of a weird feeling as we approached her. we see her and say hi.. and she was standing at a car window. the first thing we say is hi and then bam she says she is busy.. and we are like oh okay so its not a good time. we will come back later.. as we leave.. we see her deal a big sack of coke right in front of us. people have no chill down here.
as we were leaving the library last week. this guy walks past us and says you elders are in the wrong place. you guys are literally outside the gates of hell here. theres a lot of wickedness here. we turn back and say thats exactly why we are here. cause there is work to be done. that man is right. its almost like one of those things you read in the scriptures of a pueblito that is just bad. we found this family last week the escalante family. went out with hmna gutman and had a super great lesson and even met the husband who is rarely home. he works 28 days at the bottom of mexico and then flies over here for a few days. great family. E. acosta and i were in a trio with E. anderson one day cause his comp was in mcallen for a meeting. that day was pretty great. we found a couple families that seemed pretty interested, they asked for a book of mormon cause they really want to start reading it. how rad. and then randomly we get a call from the hermanas asking us if we can go give this less active member who is sick a blessing. we are like of course so we scoot on over there and meet this guy. we talked to him for a bit to get to know him. he had this wounds, boils, open flesh all over his legs. he said he has them all over and they hurt a ton. like he can barely walk. it looked pretty bad. he has 11 kids and cant work. he explained his life to us before he got sick...yeah he was a narc..he had it all, houses, cars and random buisiness and then approached a guy who owed him lots of money and that guy worshiped the santisimo muerte and "cursed" him and since that day he has been sick and backed off the guy. that was 6 yrs ago. his wife is starting to get the same thing.. just suffering man it looks bad. well we gave him the blessing. it was powerful. el poder was just so great i started sweating a ton. in the blessing it said that he would be healed from his sickness and will return to the way things were before if all he does is follow gods commandments and sigue the way god would want. so clear and so simple. we all get crazy trials in our life cause the lord wants us to grow and he knows we can. at the end we asked him how he felt. he said.. i feel good.. and you know what.,. i might try and go to church.. who knows..
it truly made me sad but it was quite the experience.
on friday we had a good zone meeting. it seriously was the best and literally changed the mission. just really learned the importance of expressing our love and gratitude to everyone just like jesus did. i guess for some reason i was really lacking it. it really set me straight. we saw this video of this single mother who was busy doing everything with her kids and her getting stressed and sad. but in the end realized how much she was blessing her kids lives. and thats how it is now. we can be stressed busy and helping and never see the blessings and the huge help we bring to others. its important to do things willingly as jesus christ did when he suffered for us. the meeting was really impacting but the most impacting part was when the zls played these recordings on the computer. as we are out here on the missions we are blessing so many peoples lives its unreal. so they started playing these recordings and it was recordings of all of our parents bareing their testimony of the blessings theyve seen while we are out here and how we've changed. it was the most spiritual experience ive had so far. like theres no greater animo booster than hearing that. everyone could feel it in their hearts. and then we all one by one got up and bore our testimony and for the first time in my mission i told everyone i loved them. it was strange. but nice. it was super good and i'll never forget it.

its all over laredo.

Burzum - Mystery Cat