10/28/13 - DJ

Hola Everyone!

This week has been a little wierd weather wise.  As I understand it there was a hurricane that hit Mexico and was followed up by 2 cold fronts. The result of this was that last Tuesday was cold and wet. I pulled out my coat for the first time since last winter. Wednesday was almost as cold, but without the rain, and by Friday the sun was back out and temperatures were back up. 

 

In other news, the members are super excited for the work of salvation. We had some success these last couple of weeks with investigators in church, and the whole ward is starting to "catch the wave". It`s been fun.

 

Also we had an early change for one of the zone leaders last week. Now for the first time in my mission I have a zone leader with less time out than I have. (That`s not to say anything bad, Elder Ortolono is great. It just makes me realize how much time I`ve been out.) It`s definitely interesting.

That`s about all the news for now. Nos Vemos!

 

-Elder D Hill

10/28/13 - Jordon

Hello Everyone.

 

The work moves forward!...slowly. We're working hard to help get the members involved, but it 's not going very quickly at all. Each of our members have people they are working with, but for the moment, not a whole lot of movement. They say consistency is hard to find these days. Well, for each of the past 3 weeks, we've had 4 lessons with non-members. But, even though our numbers may be small for the moment, I believe our efforts will start to payoff soon.

 

This past Saturday, one of our wards had a Trunk or Treat. It was a lot of fun. I love Halloween, not for the candy, but for the costumes. As expected, everyone, or at least all the kids, were wearing costumes of several different varieties. It's fun to see how creative people can be. There were also some non-member friends there that people had invited. They all had a blast. We got to meet a lot of them. I love activities like this that can bring members and non-members together in a non-treatening way. We get to do it again on Wednesday for our other ward's Trunk or Treat.  I'm excited! And yes, I have a costume this year. I modeled it after my costume from last year. Everyone got a laugh out of it. I'll send a picture next week.

 

Weather Report

Time to get out your scarfs and sweaters everyone. It's getting cold out. On average, the highs are about 90º and the lows are now a "chilly" 70º. Brrrrrr. That's cold.  People have been telling us that the temperature here has been a bit colder than normal for this time of year. The temperature is actually quite comfortable for me. Even during the daytime, the only thing that makes it feel hot is direct sunlight. I must be adapting to the climate. I imagine that when I return home next year, I'll be freezing after coming out of an Arizona Summer. hehe. That will be interesting to see I'm sure.

 

That's about it for this week. Oh. For Halloween we're having a special Mission Conference. They're going to show us some video material and some other stuff that we can share with the members to help them invite people to the Temple Open House coming up. I'm so excited. Also, they want us off the streets and in our houses by 5 pm that evening. Safety reasons. Happy Halloween!

 

Con amor,

-Elder Jordon Hill-

10/21/13 - DJ

Hola Everyone!

Well, this week has been good. We have a new family of investigators who are listening to us. Their whole family are Jehovah's Witnesses, but they aren`t. The father knows the bible really well, but is open to what we are saying and teaching. It`s going to be interesting with them. 

That other family I was telling you about last week also came to our ward this week! All of the members made them feel really welcome and befriended them quickly. As it turns out, 2 of the young women were already friends with one of the daughters of this family from school. How great is that!

One more thing, this last week I had my first root beer since coming to Mexico. You just cant find it here. One of the members visited family in California and brought back a bunch and offered us some when she invited us to eat. It may seem like a little thing, but it was a nice surprise. 

That covers everything. Nos Vemos!

-Elder D Hill

10/21/13 - Jordon

Well, this week hasn't been too exciting.

 

District training this past week...To be honest, I think the first one went better. Upon reflection, I noted that for the first one, I was perhaps under prepared, and for the second one, I was over prepared.  We'll see if I can find a happy medium this week.

 

As I've said before, I'm back in Gilbert. As such, there is a meeting that takes place each month that I get to attend again...Breakfast with the Stake President. Each ward is supposed to prepare a stake report each month which explains what is happening in the ward--what the ward is doing, and what the missionaries are doing. This report is then given to the President Ballard (Stake President) when we, all the missionaries in the stake, go over to his house and have breakfast with him. Guess what...apparently, I did something right when I was here before because he remembered me. He saw me and had the realization that I was back and was happy to see me. And, I don't know why, but he seems a little more...eccentric?...than I remember, maybe that's because he now has 14 missionaries in his stake, and now, in his house for breakfast each month...at the same time!

 

Do you remember me telling you about Spencer last transfer? Well, this past Saturday, I had the opportunity to go to his baptism. They were so happy that I was able to attend, and so was I.  (Refresher:  Spencer was the boy Jordon and his companion were teaching, but Jordon got transferred before Spencer decided to get baptized.)

 

As for our area, we're starting to see results. This past week, we received 10 referals. Not a whole lot of them are intereted, but it's a start. The members are great, and the Wards are doing great things. Not a whole lot of progress on the investigator side of things, though. however, there are lots of activities coming up in the near future. Each of our wards has a Trunk or Treat coming up, the Stake is doing a Family History thing (open to the public), and the Gilbert Temple Open house is coming up early next year. They've annouced the dates of the cultural celebration and dedication. They are the 1st and 2nd of March, respectively. Even better is that they tell us that the missionaries might be taking part in the cultural celebration. I'm so excited!

-------------------------------

I had a bit of revelation this past week. I think I've figured out why babies randomly wake up and then start crying for no apparent reason. Dreams are based on memories of the past. Well, what do babies have for memories? Not much, or at least, not much from this life, anyway. Going on the thought that babies minds haven't been completely veiled yet, my thought is that they dream about premortal life and then when they wake up, they realize they're surroundings, and start to cry. We do it, too. How many times have you had a really good dream and when you woke up you were disappointed or perhaps "cried" a little? Well, babies do it, too. I don't know how accurate this is, but it's an interesting thought anyway.

-------------------------------

 

Oops! I'm super sorry for forgetting this again, but my new address is:

406 E Washington Ave unit A

Gilbert, AZ 85234

Other than that, there isn't much else to say.

Until next week,

Con amor,

-Elder Jordon Hill-

10/14/13 - Jordon

Well, This week wasn't really anything super special. A few interesting happenings though.

 

The work moves forward. We are working hard to get to know our members, and at the same time looking for more people to teach. We don't have a particularly large taching pool right now. We're trying to work with the members to help them with their missionary efforts, and hoping that our efforts with them will bring more souls unto Christ. Not a whole lot of success yet though. We follow up with several of them this week.

 

As announced last week, I am now a District Leader. I was given the opportunity to give my first district training this past Tuesday. I was very self contious that day. The reason being that I wasn't given my topic to train on until Monday Evening, about 9pm. I'm also training so, I didn't really even have much time during personal study to prepare either. But, the show must go on. And so, when the time came, I did my best with the preparation I had done, and, apparently, it was a pretty good training. It started out a little patchy, but those I asked said that I did a good job, and that they liked my training. I give credit to the Spirit for guiding me in what to say. I get to train again tomorrow, but this time, I know what the topic is. This one should go a little better, in my eyes, anyway. Everyone keeps saying I'm too hard on myself.  Am I?

 

It has been brought to my attention that I may have forgotten to share a bit of very important mission news. We have received word that we are one of 50 missions selected to pilot an new missionary tool. Soon, the missionaries in our mission will be receiving iPad Minis to use in our prosilyting efforts. With them we will be able to access the internet during lessons, so we can show people things, such as Mormon Messages, conference talks, Mormon.org, and so on. On top of this, they say that we will be keeping them when our full-time missionary service comes to an end. It is likely that we will be using them to do our social media prosilyting that was talked about in the Work of Salvation broadcast back in June. Lots of exciting changes are happening in missionary work, and we are in the middle of it all. I'm excited!

 

---------------------------------------------------

This past week we had dinner with the Hill family in one of our wards. We got to know them a bit, and they got to know us. They have 5 children. We met two of them: The middle child and the fifth child. The middle child is 21 years old, and her name is Jordan. Yes, Jordan Hill. The fifth child's name is Quentin, which just so happens to be my companion's name. --Middle children both named Jordon(an) Hill, and fifth children both named Quentin.-- We couldn't help but laugh when I found out. ......I think I've discovered what I would be like if I was a girl.

---------------------------------------------------

 

That's all for this week. Tell everyone that I return the "Hi" and add a "Hello" to it.

 

Until next week.

 

Con amor,

-Elder Jordon Hill-

10/14/13 - DJ

Hola Everyone!

Well I´ve made it another week. It seems weird, I´m seeing dates that I´ve already had here on the mission (not counting Year) so it´s weird. 

My Companion is doing Great! Elder Zapata is a hard worker and knows how to have fun without being a goof. He´s taller than me! By enough that my neck hurt the first few days. I guess all you short people would call it justice since I´m so tall. Oh well. He only has 5 months in the mission, so I get to put a good example for him.

We also have a family that is great! The only issue we are having is that all of their extended family members are in the next ward over, but we are trying to work with everyone so that there is no problem and everything goes smoothly. More info on them as it comes.

In other news, rumor has it that by the end of March, our mission will have 70 sister missionaries and that roughly half of them will be from the United States. Just to put things in perspective, the last mission conference we had about 20 sister missionaries and all of them were native Spanish speakers(none from the US) 

That´s pretty much all the news. 

 

Nos Vemos!

-Elder D Hill

10/7 - DJ

Hola Everyone!

Well here's the news from transfers: Elder Vazquez is training an American on the other side of the mission. I got to stay in the area and am still District Leader. My new companion is Elder Zapata. He´s 22 yrs old, has 4 1/2 months in the mission, is from Monterey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and is taller than me. He´s really cool, and I believe we will have success together. 

Conference was really awesome! It seems like everyone got a different theme out of it as a whole. I saw a lot of focus on Becoming Spiritually Prepared. (I also watched it in Spanish so if you didn´t get that, watch it in Spanish!)  Really, it was interesting to see how my understanding of Spanish has grown in the last year. or even the last 6 months. At the conference in April, I watched about 5 minutes of it in Spanish and didn´t understand anything except "welcome to conference." Now I watched full sessions and understood just about everything. 

That´s about it for this week. Nothing else really exciting happened.

 

Nos Vemos!

-Elder D Hill