July 7, 2014

Hey family!!

How was the 4th of July?? Well here most people have no idea about what tha date even is! Haha so there was not much that happend here! But it was a good week this past week! We are really trying to get this area up and running again! We need more investigators! But we have been doing our best working through the ward members and trying to find some more less active members who have family who are not members of the church! 

Our mission and our President has been really focusing on the way that we contact and making sure that we have 2 contacts that turn into new investigators daily! So my comp and I who do not have much experience in contacting have been putting goals so that we can make this happen each week! So we have not done any corner of the street contacting but we have been doing our best in between appointments to find people that maybe are like cleaning or doing something that in some way or another we can help them get introduced to the gospel!

It was a pretty disappointing Sunday!! We did have our investigators in church! it was pretty upsetting! When you try so hard all week so that they will go and they don't show up!! haha something that will never be easy to handle! Only imagine how Heavenly Father feels when they don't go! haha. But it was a really good fast Sunday! I bore my testimony and talked about the power of fasting! I shared with them that I really did not understand fasting before my mission. Really and sadly the first time that I think I truly had fasted for something was here in the mission! But I have come to love fasting. It helps me focus on the things that I am doing and really helps me see that the Lord is in control, it helps me to be a little bit more humbled each time that I do it. As hard as it is walking around in this dang hot weather and not being able to eat or drink it is something that it is really important to our Heavenly Father and I know that through the power of a true monthly fast we can be that much closer to our Heavenly Father!

Well for the 4th of July here we were not just gonna let it pass us by, we set up a soccer game with some of the members and had them bring some investigators if they could play and we could get to know them. But us 3 Americans against 3 Mexicans haha pretty much representing the Country! Don't worry haha I have gotten pretty good haha!! It was tough but we did come out on top! haha! 

I love all of you guys! I am having the best time here right now! The ward it great and the area is awesome! The Zone is doing really well as well as our district! I hope that you all had a good weekend! haha all we could talk about here was the things that our families do on the 4th! haha made us all home sick a little! But everything is good here! Love you guys!

Elder Liljenquist

June 30, 2014

Hey Guys!!

How is everyone doing? Man it was a good week this past week! But it was a burner!!! It was a really hot week! We are all nice and farmer tanned up! haha but the work was really good this past week!. We had our baptism on Saturday! It went really good! Aaron was really happy and really excited! And his dad was really happy and nervous when he did the baptism, but all in all it went really good! I have felt really grateful for the success that we have been seeing here in our area and the success that I have seen in my past areas, There is just something that that tells me that I can do more! I feel like I need to talk to every single person that I see! And this week its now my goal to take every opportunity that I get to help someone new understand how the Gospel has been restored here in the earth again. 

This past week and especially today and I'm not sure why but I have just felt really grateful to be here and to be a missionary to be able to represent our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. We have been working really well this past week. We started to go through our area book and look at ou rinvestigators that we have progressing and the next ones that are preparing for baptism. After cleaing up some of the old investigators that were not progressing really well we ended up with 3 or 4 progressing investigators and that can be ready to make baptismal covenants. But we need more! We have been working alot with Paulina whos aunt is in active and we are still waiting for her to come to church with us! We have been visiting then like 3 or 4 times a week, but we  need to be able to see them in church.

We had a really good conference with our mission President on Saturday also. He talked a lot about how important it is that we contact each and everyday. He put a goal with us that we have 14 new investigators each day! At the end of the conference we watched a video of when the Prophet announced The Work of Salvation last year. It was really cool, I saw faces there in the MTC that I recognized and to hear that we are a part of the most important work that there is made me feel really blessed to be here right now. I hope you all know that I love you so much! 

Elder Liljenquist

June 23, 2014

Picture jackpot this week!:) 

Hey Guys!!

Well it was another great week here in Coatza! The people and the ward here are great! We have been trying to get this ward that we have here turned around and working again! We have people with a lot of experience here in this ward. I guess that it was the first ward established here in Coatza. So there are a lot of members but there are a lot of less actives that have not been to church in years! We have been teaching a lot of less actives in this past week! But it has also helped us find new invesatigators to begin teaching. Through the less actives in the ward they usually have members of he family that are not members of the church yet. SO this past week we found some new investigators and helped lots of less actives get back and goin again!

We have been workin a lot with a family whose dad was just baptized. His son Aaron is 14 and we have been working with him alot this past week and he is preparing to be baptized for this Saturday! He is really excited! The only little problem is that his mom is what they call here Catholic to the bone, haha so she was kind of against it at first but seeing the change that it had in her husband she decided to let her son be baptized! We are really excited for them! The mom is a really nice lady but haha you can definitely see who wears the pants in the family because she makes all of the decisions! 

We have also been working with an other part family investigator Paulina, her aunt is taking care of her because her mom passed away and her Dad left her. Her aunt is a member but is less active, so we are trying to reactivate the aunt so we can baptise Paulina. She is a really nice girl, shes 14. Her story is really sad, We want to be able to help her so bad but we have to get the aunt back and active in the Church so that she will be able to go every Sunday! 

This past week a family got here from Nicaragua, they say that there are making there way up to the United States. But on there way they things got robbed and now they are left with nothing. They got here claming that they were members of the church, so the ward started to help them while they were trying to figure out if they were members or not. We got a call from the Stake President and he wanted us to go and meet them and ask them some questions and see if we felt like they were members of the church or only looking for money. So we went to get to know them a little and from what the mom had said to us we know for a fact that she is not a member of the church. We kept asking and asking questions and finally she came out and said that she was not a member of the Church but her son was. We met the son and started talking to him about some things and he seems like he knows what he ius talking about. The Stake got back to us and said that they had called the stake president there and he told them that they are not members of the church. So as of now we have been told to teach them and helo them in the ways that we can. They both seem really willing to be baptized we just need to be careful and make sure it is for the right reasons. 

We had a ward party for fathers day this past week, it was way fun! They asked me to lead it! It was reallly funny! Made me miss my family a lot! 

Today for P day we went to the beach and then we went to a all you can eat seafood restaurant!! and it just so happend that the owner of the place was a memeber of the church and let us eat for free!!! We were all so pumped!! haha it was going to be soo expensive!

Everything here is going so good! Miss you all so much! 

  

Elder Liljenquist