Loving the Lord's work!

Being a district leader is a lot of responsibility. However, the missionaries in my district are pretty obedient. I am really blessed to be a leader here in the farthest part of the mission because when there is space between the elders there is less apostasy. I will use the “Three Legged Stool” Dad taught us in my district meeting. We are working hard to lift the district, zone and mission.

Last Sunday I was presented to the ward during church. Again the Bishop destroyed my name. I don’t know why they can’t pronounce my name---it is pretty funny. So here in el Barrio Chapingo, I am Elder “Chuay”. Some of them call me Elder Samuel. But its alright because I love this area.

I went to visit some of the Aztec ruins last week called Teotihuacan. It was my second time going there but this time I understood more of the tour.Teotihuacan is pretty awesome. However, there  are also ancient ruins from before the Spaniards. We work all around them.

The area is pretty dead which means there is nobody to teach right now but little by little we are finding some. When I showed up here there were not any investigators  because the previous companion didn't like to contact people. 

We have been working hard and we found 3 new investigators in our area this week. We hope to see them progress in the coming weeks.

We take showers with buckets of water and walk a lot in the rain but it is fun.Everything is great here in Mexico. It rains a lot and we often get stuck super far from home in the afternoon in a heavy rain without jackets….but the memories are great.

I ate a quesadilla of cow brains this week ... it was not too bad.

A cool experience that happened this week is that we went to search for a less active family that lives way up in the mountains in a village called Santa Catarina (my comp doesn't have a very good memory or sense of direction, so we were lost for a time but we eventually did find them. I already know the area better than him). But this family is super poor and doesn't have money to come to the church. They live in a one room hut and they have chickens and dogs that just wander in and out of the house as they like. The Mother shared an experience where her son was attacked by a dog and died a bunch of times. the kid still remembers his life after death experience and can describe what he saw in heaven. He has huge scars all over his neck and back, but he is healthy and can run and play. It is amazing to see how happy and content the little kids of this family are even though they don’t own anything. I found it sobering to see such poverty,  but I loved visiting them because it just proves that people can have abundance in their live and still not be happy, yet these little kids live in the dirt without beds, and are the happiest kids I have ever met.

Gracias por todo mama y te quiero mucho. Siempre estan en misoraciones y espero que todo esta bien con la familia y miss Daisy. Elder Shumway

Elder Shumway