The town of Tlacotepec now has Elders!!! That is the news from Mexico.

Great video chat with Mark!

He is being transferred to the little mountain town that he wanted to go to.  He and his new companion, Elder Medina will be opening up an area that only has one member family right now.  

Mark will be the Branch President, the Senior companion, the apartment finder, and they will be 4 hours from any missionaries in his mission, a little closer to missionaries in the next mission over.  

Had a tough time saying goodbye to people that he very well might never see again.  At least when you leave your family in America you know you will get to see them again. 

Mark gets the challenge, on the last 4 months of his mission, of learning a new language.  the language of the indigenous tribes in this area of Mexico before the Spanish showed up.  Nawatl is the language.  He has been going up to this town every once in a while from his current area and they do have one family investigating the gospel, and hope to have a bunch more in the next two weeks.  I am so excited about him getting to be able to do this.  

He would like everyone's prayer for the gift of tongues, he is going to try hard to get good communications skills ASAP.  For now, Spanish will have to suffice.  

Trying to avoid blisters

Traded ties, and snapped a picture with boy from branch

Mark got to experience saying goodbye to a very special family in his area!

Mark and E. Osorio carving out a backyard in the mountain lot of this family

Nap on the bus on the way home

Another day in the life . . . of a Mexico Missionary

Monday 15 April 2019

Today we got to talk to Elder Smiley.  He had a ton of stories to tell us.  He told us about going to an area call Tlacotepec.  It takes a 4 hour bus ride to get there.  They got up at 5 am to catch the 6am bus.  They waited until 7am for the bus to arrive and decided to walk to where the other four missionaries were waiting at the next bus stop.  By 9:30 they were debating what to do when the bus "passed by".  The three companionships got on and there were no open seats.  The bus was packed with people and packages and no open seats.  After 2 hours all of the missionaries were able to get seats (Mark was the last to sit down).  When they finally arrived, they only had an hour and a half to work.  In that time, however, they found 16 people to teach before they had to get back on the bus to get home.  They were so excited that they founds so many friends to teach!  

Elder Smiley also talked about his area.  His branch is the biggest in the district.  They have 60-70  people attending church in their branch each week.  They are lacking in priesthood.   But he has a great district. When he was at Leadership Meetings he was telling the other Zone Leaders that their goal for April is 10 baptisms.  Another missionary from a different district said, "Zones like yours will never get 10 baptisms in April!"  It is super hot and has tons of Catholics and has not seen a lot of success in the past.  But, Elder Smiley and Elder Ororio are optimistic.  In fact, they have already had 2 baptisms and 8 more are scheduled to happen by the end of the month.  I'm so excited for them.  This Smiley Mama wants to shout to the mountaintops:  "Watch out world!!  Here comes another amazing Elder Smiley!!"

I asked him to tell me about the town and he said, "Mom, there are lots and lots of drunks.  In fact, he told us a story about a drunk man who came up to them and said, "You guys like to talk about Christ, right?  And then he looks up at the sky and screams in English, "Jesus Christ, I love you!"  and then just walked away.  They just shrugged their shoulders and walked away too.  Funny.

He looked good and sounded good.  He is thin and ready to eat American food.  I'm ready for August 26th to arrive.

Thanks for being a part of Elder Smiley's life

Love

Chris