I haven't much time (we had to trek to Pachuca today 2 hours both ways), so I'll keep it short and simple. This week we simply had a lot of people lie to us. Very obviously as well. We received a reference from the trip to Hawaii activity that we were told was golden, so we went to contact her Saturday night. Her mother answered the door and said she wasn't home, but accepted to listen to our message. In the middle of our quick message, her daughter opened the door (from the inside) and said, "hi, Elderes!" Well... that was incredibly awkward. For her, anyway. They also said they would come to church, and despite the resistance of her mother, we told her we would come by so we could walk together. Upon arriving at their door Sunday morning, her mother answered the door and said, "she's not ready yet. We'll see you there."
"We can wait for you guys." "No! We'll see you there." Yes, it was that blunt. Upon leaving the door, we both pretty much knew her mother wasn't going to let her leave the house, and big surprise, they never showed up to church. We weren't able to swing by in the afternoon, but she will surely have some PG-rated dialogue coming her way the next time we see her. Seriously, her daughter is awesome; she accepted a baptismal date within like 2 minutes of knowing her. We'll see how that one goes. We also had quite a few people simply flat out reject us. I went on interchanges with Elder Bigler, a new missionary with about 2 months in the mission, this week. We knocked on a door, presented ourselves, and the older gentleman at the door said, "I thank you, but we're ahora si que Catholic," and promptly closed the door. Just so you know, "ahora si que" is a saying that so many people down here say and it literally makes no sense whatsoever (in English or Spanish). "now if that". What!? It bugs the heck out of me when people say it. I usually make a little bit of fun of them and start to stick it in wherever I want in my speech as well when I talk to them. They don't notice, but Elder Barrios and I have a good laugh about it afterwards. That's all I have time for this week! Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck
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So many cool things that happened this week, and there's no time to waste. First, there was pretty much nothing cool about our investigators that we taught this week; not a single one of them showed up to church. Super lame, but that's the mission; we'll keep working and see how it goes. First things first, my flashlight taser, Leticia, was broken by Elder Martinez, but this week, I had the utter pleasure to find another one that's even bigger and more powerful. I'll have lots of fun scaring dogs and killing bugs with Leticia 2.0. I call her Veronica. I was studying in the Book of Mormon this week, and there was a part that really called to me. It's in the book of Mosiah, and it said that the Lamanites fought like lions for their prey against the people of Limhi. But then it says that the people of Limhi fought for their wives, their children, and their families, and they did combat like dragons. I decided to dedicate a few minutes to these particular verses... and draw them. I felt like it would have been the coolest battle ever to watch. I don't remember if I mentioned this, but I've started studying the Book of Mormon in Chinese. I figure I've got Spanish down pretty well, so it's time to move on. Unfortunately, I don't have any sort of dictionary to tell me how Chinese grammar works or how to pronounce the symbols, so I've only found a few combinations of symbols that mean things like "desert", "jews", "history", and other basic/common words in the Book of Mormon. Elder Davis had been looking for a Book of Mormon in Chinese, so I think I'll trade him for his triple combination in French. French is at least a phonetic language, so I can piece it together along with the grammar. We'll see how that goes... So we're sitting in Ward Council Tuesday night, and the Stake President showed up. I had met him very briefly back in Presas, but he actually lives here in Mixquiahuala. He took a look at my nametag and said, "Where did your father serve his mission." I skeptically looked at him and said, "Spain." "...Madrid?" "...Yeah..." "I believe your father served his mission in Spain at the same time I did. Groesbeck isn't a very common last name." He left me with the potential doubt in my head until Wednesday afternoon when we ate with their family. As his wife was preparing the food, President Lozano came out of a room with a little trifold. He handed it to me and asked, "is this your father?" Sure enough, there was a little picture of Dad with the words "Elder Groesbeck" printed beneathe them. President Lozano said he'd been looking to connect with people from his mission for quite some time and hadn't been able to find anyone until now. Those are some pretty crazy connections right there. As we continued eating and making President Lozano trunky for his mission, his wife opened the fridge and said, "Hey, we have some of these left over from last night for dessert. I don't think they'll like them, though." Naturally, she sparked my curiosity. Upon asking what it was, President Lozano looked me right in the eyes and said something that sounded a lot like "root beer". My gaze maintained fixed straight ahead at him. He took one from the fridge and sure enough, there he held the most beautiful brown can of A&W root beer I've ever seen in my life. I had been searching for 13 months for root beer and hadn't found a drop of it here in Mexico. And there it was. Now, President Lozano owns a little ice cream shop beneath his house, so, you guessed it, we had root beer floats for dessert! My life was made. Last event of the week. We had a really awesome stake activity back in Presas this weekend, so I got to see all of my converts and members I had grown to love Friday and Saturday night. It was so exciting! I also got a picture with my grandson, Elder Alder, and my great-grandson, Elder Garcia. The family is growing quite quickly! When President Egbert gets changed, we're all gonna get together and take a large family photo. It'll be great! That's all I have for this week. Hope everyone else has a wonderful week as well!
Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck My, have I missed Tezontepec. I had forgotten how utterly stark of a contrast there was between Tezo and Tecamac. Back towards the inner city, the people are incredibly closed and don't ever really accept us. Here in Tezo, the people are far too open! Our daily standard is 10 different contacts with people every day, but it's super hard to get that when every door you knock lets you share a lesson with them! Tezo is the land of finding a bunch and dropping a bunch, because they usually aren't there the next time we swing by for our second appointment. Fortunately, it lets us know quite quickly who really is interested in actually doing something and who just wanted to listen to a pretty message about Jesus one time and not change a single thing about their lives. That's why one of the key points of the first lesson that we explain is, "our message cannot be fully understood in one visit." There's far too much to learn in the gospel to learn it all in a half hour! So much to teach and so little time to do so!
Speaking of little time to do so, we found the best investigator this week. Well, we sort of found her. Her name is Carmen, and she's been attending church for about a year and a half. My Elder Barrios and his previous companion, however, did not know that she wasn't a member until last Sunday. She's always been so involved in everything (including teaching the gospel principles class) that the missionaries have always just thought she was a member. The only thing missing was being thrown in the water and putting her name in the computer. So Elder Barrios and I swung by this week--various times--looking for her. In the process, we found and taught her two twenty-ish-year-old sons who are absolutely golden; super ready to receive the gospel. They already call us "Elderes" instead of "hermanos" (which we always love to hear), they have no problems with the Word of Wisdom or Law of Chastity, and one of them even went with us to an appointment to teach his aunt and uncle who lived close by. It was awesome! It wasn't until Friday when we finally found Carmen. She, too, is very ready to receive the gospel. She's been attending church for a year and a half, so she pretty much already knows everything. All we have to do is make sure that we teach all of the points of the lessons, clear up any doubts, get her a baptismal interview, and there you have it folks! Three converts all nicely and neatly wrapped up to go! The Lord works in mysterious ways, I suppose, and if that means discovering an investigator that's been attending church all this time, I'm okay with that! In other news, I got to see one of my old converts from Presas this past week. According to her, I've lost weight, but I think it's because all of the members in Presas feed us so darn much! Those three months in Tecamac did me good! That's pretty much all I have for this week. No assaults, no gun shots, not even a whole lot of fireworks. Just some guy in the local city square preaching apostacy one evening. I wanted to grab that microphone and preach something that could actually help people, but we figured getting to our appointment was a little more important than taking him down. Oh well. Maybe next time. Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck I wish to start my email for this week with a story that President Egbert shared with us.
God once appeared to a man and commanded him to push a large boulder. This man, being of the obedient type began, his work and pushed. He pushed and pushed for hours, days, weeks, and months, but the boulder didn't move. Notwithstanding, he continued to push. One night, the man lie awake in bed, and Satan came to him. He asked him why he continued to push so much if the boulder had not moved. Satan caused this man to think he had failed at the task God had given him and that he should simply give up. "He's right," thought the man. "I've been pushing all this time and haven't been able to move the boulder even an inch." He thought it better to simply give up given his apparent failure. Instead of simply giving up, this man turned to the Lord, asking for forgiveness for having failed Him. The Lord appeared to him and asked, "How have you failed me? Your task was to push the boulder, and you have done so. Now that you have done so, look at yourself now. Your arms are rugged and strong, your back has been strengthened and bronzed, and your legs can withstand the forces required of them. Your task was not to move the boulder, and you have therefore in no way failed me. You have accomplished your task of pushing the boulder. Now I will move it." I have come to learn over the course of the past few weeks that sometimes in life we are simply expected to push, and when we don't see the fruits of said labor, we are tempted to simply give up thinking we have failed without seeing the changes and strengthening within ourselves. We cease to wait for the Lord to move the boulder while we strengthen and fortify ourselves. In Venta de Carpio, I began to feel that way; why was I pushing if nothing was happening? Then President shared this story with us, and I learned to hold on a little longer and wait for the miracle. And said miracle came and hit me like a ton of feathers (because a ton of bricks would hurt...). I mentioned last week that there were some investigators who had come to church due to friends' invitations. One of them was named Elena. She's 20 years old and is currently renting a room in the house of a recent convert. We went to visit her for the first time last week, and from the very first lesson, she accepted the baptismal invitation as well as a date for the 6th of February. We placed a return appointment and taught her the story of the Restoration. Upon mentioning the Book of Mormon and pulling one out of my backpack, a light shone in her eyes that I really hadn't ever seen in any other investigator before. She looked at that book like it was made of pure gold and that nothing in the world could be better. She held it in her hands for a second, awestruck that we would simply give her the book, and when she accepted the fact that it was hers, she held it tightly to her chest and looked absolutely delighted. She said she couldn't wait to start reading and that she would do so upon our leaving. She absolutely was the miracle Elder Davis and I had been waiting for... and then I got changed -_- We received the email for changes yesterday afternoon, and the very first thing I saw was, "Elder Groesbeck -- Cambios". I packed up all my stuff and shipped off this morning for Pachuca to then head to Tezontepec... again. I'm now the zone leader in an area called Mixquiahuala in the zone I was in before Venta de Carpio. My other grandson, Elder Alder is still here, and I found out that he's actually training back in Presas! I have a great-grandson in the mission! My descendance is growing strong. We'll see how many generations I can come to see in this next year before I go home. Anyways, everything appears to have been going well here in Mixquiahuala thus far, so I'll see if I can not screw it up. I may not have wanted to get changed, but if the Lord tells me to simply push on a different boulder, I'll keep doing so and wait for Him to move it. Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck As you may have guessed from the title of the email, this was a quite average week. Elder Davis and I continue dropping lots of investigators, finding new ones, and not having anyone go to church. I've grown rather tired of it, honestly, but there's not a whole lot more that we can do. We'll just keep working and see what happens.
The second part of the email title deals with a said exploding face. The face of whom, you may ask, was mine. Saturday night, Elder Davis and I returned to the house, planned, made some calls to the zone, and went off to bed, with nothing special happening. At approximately midnight (more or less; I'm not sure), I half woke up feeling rather nautious. I figured if I simply went back to bed, the feeling would go away. A few hours later, I half woke up again, with the same feeling, but I again pushed it off and went back to bed. At 4:30 in the morning (that time I checked the time), I couldn't hold it back any more. I ran off to the bathroom. The very second I lifted up the lid to the toilet, my face exploded. I'll try to explain this in the least graphic way I possibly can while still helping the reader to understand the extreme discomfort that this was. I could feel the varied contents of my stomach coming out of my nose, and I sincerely believe it would have come out my eyes had I not closed them. I could hardly breathe afterwards... and then it happened again... and again... I certainly hope you can imagine how incredibly uncomfortable it was without having to experience it. Ever. The next day, I simply had no strength whatsoever. I still managed to haul myself out of bed and to church, rather miserable the whole way, but I was able to do it! I figured if I wanted our investigators to get rid of their excuses and come to church, I couldn't let anything keep me from going. Heck, I even managed to play the piano when I got there. The sickness only lasted a day, but it was quite the long day... In terms of the work for this week, we've been doing really well with our contacting and teaching; we're pretty much just waiting for a miracle to happen. That miracle may have happened this past Sunday, but we're not quite sure yet. I always thought said miracle would come in the form of knocking on the door of the most golden of all golden investigators, but I think it may have come in a slightly different form. We were sitting in sacrament meeting (I was feeling rather terrible) when the first councellor got up and gave a welcome to 2 different people that I had never seen before, and based on the way he gave said welcome, it sounded to me like they weren't members of the church. Upon ending sacrament meeting, a mixture of adrenaline and hope got me up and marching across the chapel to talk to those two sisters. I found out that they were indeed investigators that some members had invited to church! We couldn't talk much to them, but we have appointments to visit them this week. I certainly hope it goes well. As I said, this could just be the miracle we've waited for. It's been an interesting experience these past few weeks waiting for a miracle, and sincerely hoping that those friends of the members in church are said miracle has really strenthened my testimony about the work of the Lord. He doesn't always respond in the way we are expecting or sometimes even in the way we want, but He does respond. In the words of Joesph Smith Sr. in The Restoration video, "The Lord answers in His own way and His own time, but He does answer." I've really come to know that that's true, and I'm extremely excited to see what happens in this coming week with them. Iré y haré. Elder Groesbeck Once again, I'm not sure who started praying for us again, but it's beginning to work. Don't stop! Actually, this week was a pretty great testimony builder for me about fasting; Elder Davis and I fasted last weekend that we'd have a better week, and we did :D
Norma was finally baptized! We still didn't have water in the chapel on Friday, so we combined the baptismal service with the elders in Heroes. We discovered on Saturday that there actually was water in the chapel, but it was a little late. Either way, she's continuing on her way now. Elder Davis and I have also gotten a lot better at our street contacting abilities. According to Elder Davis, contacting in the street gives him "the willies," whatever that's supposed to mean. Therefore, we're working on getting rid of his willies. It's been going quite well. President has made us a promise that if we get 300 contacts in a month (contacting 10 people every day), we'll get 3 baptisms. Elder Davis and I have made the goal to test that promise by contacting a ton. Our street salesman skills are going up quite a bit. I'll be able to sell knives like a pro when I get back from the mission! We've also been changing our focus to be up in The Hill more; everyone is like, "no! Don't go to The Hill! It's so dangerous!" But Elder Davis and I have yet to see anything bad up there; all of the times we've had bad/strange things happen to us (like be assaulted, almost get assaulted, and have strange drunk and/or drugged men ask us for drug money), it's happened down here below by our house. Therefore, we're going to go up to The Hill. There are so many really receptive people up there! We were up there contacting for like 2 hours, and a pretty large portion of the people we contacted were totally on-board to have us come back another day to teach them! It was awesome! Hopefully they're home when we go back. In the words of Flynn Rider, "I'm not gonna lie, that woud be stupendous." Unfortunately, of all of the people that we invited to church and said wholeheartedly that they would be going, not a single one showed up... Even after we had a charla franca with a less-active family, they didn't show up. Oo! That's another fun story! I think I've explained this before, but a charla franca is when we tell our investigators that don't progress that if they don't start complying with their commitments, we can't teach them anymore. We've been teaching a less-active family for about 2 months now, and they still have not gone to church; the mother of said family has made excuse after excuse as to why she doesn't feel ready to come back to the church, expressing constantly that she doesn't understand. I've wanted for quite some time now to completely rip her excuses to shreds and lay it down straight for her. And that's exactly what I got to do. Long story short, I said in the middle of the lesson, "that's why we've invited you to come to church time after time." Then one of the daughters asked, "What happens when the people you teach don't come to church?" I then proceeded to explain what a charla franca was... while having a charla franca... It was one of the strangest things I've ever done in my mission, but it was strangely awesome. I then proceeded to invite them all to church again, and every single one of the daughters said yes. I then looked at the mother straight in the eyes and said, "and you, Sister?" She gave me this sheepish smile like she thought I was kidding. I had mistakenly in the past given in to said smile and smiled back, but I was certainly not backing down this time. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew what she needed to hear and feel. She began with the excuses, and as we tore them down, she said, "it's just that you don't understand!" That's what I was waiting for. I felt so spiritually empowered (like, you have no idea) when I said, "No, Sister. We understand perfectly. You don't understand the blessings you're missing out on and the condemnation you are causing yourself by not going to church." She still wouldn't give us a straight yes or no, so we ended with our testimonies and a prayer and left. I don't know that I've ever felt so spiritually comforted before than I did after that lesson. I was so stern with her, and I thought I would feel bad, but I knew afterwards that I told her exactly what the Lord wanted me to tell her, and it brought to mind something that President had taught me in an interview I had with him a few months ago. President taught me that there is a line with every single person we teach. On one side of that line, they don't necessarily know or understand what it is they need to do. That is when we teach with a lot of love and pacience until they understand. Then they cross to the other side; the side of understanding. If they are on that side of the line and still don't do the things they know they need to do, that's when we learn from the example of Christ when he throws the tables out of the temple. We need to be very stern with them and let them know that they are losing blessings and only gaining condemnation as they don't do the things they have come to understand. I applied that teaching very directly in that lesson, and I knew it was exactly what I needed to do. She didn't go to church, which was her choice, and there's absolutely nothing more we can do. This is a marvelous work. Sometimes it's a little hard, and sometimes it seems downright impossible, but with the Lord's help, it will progress. I confide in that promise and have dedicated two years of my life to it. Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas because I certainly did! Sister Egbert dropped off a pretty nice-sized box on the 24th with my name on it. Mom and Dad went full cylinders to make sure I had sufficient Christmas presents for myself and Elder Davis. The majority of my presents were candy, and we're gonna get so fat eating all of it; I already feel slightly sick, so I'll probably end up giving most of it away... I apologize for the creepy smile in the photo, but I was so excited! It was also quite nice being able to talk to the family for an hour and catching back up. As I started the Skype call, the first thing I saw was... well... me, actually. I really expected nothing less, but my family had managed to take a full body picture of me and turn it into a life-size cardboard cutout. I love my family :) So Christmas morning we went to our district class with the other misionaries, and then we set out to give some service! Our job was supposedly just paint the room of a sister's house, but she had us out front digging out a tree, moving some roofing, sanding walls, and all manner of random household chores. I figured she simply wanted to take advantage of having 6 missionaries helping her out around the house, and we weren't complaining. We were happy to help :D And that's pretty much everything that's gone down for this week. Apparently New Years is bigger than Christmas here in Mexico, and the night of January 5th is even bigger! Christmas was crazy enough, so I guess we'll see how these next two holidays go for us.
Although Christmas has past, we should always make that extra effort to remember Christ and what He has done for us; the examply He left us, the teachings He gave us, and the Atonement He suffered for us. May the Christmas spirit in that aspect last the entire year, and may we always celebrate the fact the Christ was born, and He lives today. If we can remember that all year, every day will be like Christmas. Every day we'll be able to remember why we're here, where we're going, and what we need to be doing. Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck Well... This week was just about as stressul as the last one, if not more. We continued working hard and trying to find people, but there was very little yield. We found some people that seem pretty receptive, but they didn't come to church. We'll see what happens when we're able to visit them this coming week.
The worst part of this week was most definitely Saturday. Our investigator Norma has been preparing for quite some time for her baptism, but for one reason or another (stake conference, temple dedication, etc), we've had to postpone it a few times. This Saturday was finally the firm date that we were able to put. We also had our ward Christmas party later that afternoon, so we thought it was perfect; everyone could go to the baptism and then stay to set up and have the party. We got everything planned out with our ward mission leader so he could fill the font and get everything set up. When we arrived a little bit early (Norma actually got there first), we found a lot of different doors open, but Leonel nowhere in sight. We then checked the font and found it completely empty... After toying with the knobs to the font, we realized that they didn't do anything. We went into the bathroom to try using the sink, and no water came out. We walked around the building to check the sisterns, and there was almost no water inside. We even found a way to get up into the roof to check the water tanks on top, and there was nothing in there either. We had finally arrived to the day to baptise Norma, and there was no water in the chapel. At all. I'd have to say, though, even worse than that was the fact that there were 6 people that showed up to the chapel: Norma, her daughter, her son-in-law (who aren't members), René (who was going to baptize her), Leonel, Elder Davis, and myself. Literally, not a single member of the ward showed up out of all of the people we invited. Not one. It just made it easier to tell everyone that the baptism was cancelled because no one went. We asked the first councellor about it, and he said, "yeah, no one in this ward ever goes to the baptisms." We absolutely don't want that to happen, so we went around on Sunday inviting everyone to the baptism because we need people to show up. We'll see what happens on Saturday -_- After officially cancelling the baptism, Elder Davis and I decided to go out and contact for a bit before the activity. We were going to take a small part in a skit during the activity, so we planned to do the skit and stay for maybe an hour. They had scheduled the activity at 4, and to make a long story short, they didn't start until 6. We would have left, but the entire time they continued to say, "we're going to start right now!" "Don't worry, we'll start right now." "Yes, right now we're going to start." For two hours, we pretty much just sat there. Of course, everyone showed up to the ward activity, but no one showed up to the baptism. Then, after wasting two ours of our day, I was pretty darn ticked. I absolutely could not believe it. Needless to say, it was pretty hard to feel the Spirit after we left the chapel, and the rest of the night was pretty rough. The spirit of contention really does drive away the Spirit of the Lord, so in short, don't have the spirit of contention. This week has already started off better, but we'll see how it goes. Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck I don't know who stopped praying for us, but you really need to start again. This week was just plain awful... in terms of numbers anyway. Appointment after appointment fell through this week, and my new companion Elder Davis and I were left to contact for (some days) 4 hours with no success. Every door we knocked on was either not home, someone with whom we put a return appointment and wasn't home, or straight up rejected us. I found some of the rudest people I've met in my almost one year here in the mission. I must be honest, I got pretty darn frustrated. I felt like Elder Calhoun from The Best Two Years: "We knock and we knock and we knock, and door after door after door slammed in our faces. And then this one door... nothin'"
In terms of my contacting abilities, I feel like I'm a lot more comfortable contacting now; when appointments fell through, we got pretty good at just knocking on some of the doors closeby. Like I said, we didn't have any success (yet), but we keep going. We'll see what happens this week. Hopefully it's a much more successful week than the last one. My new companion is Elder Davis from Utah. He's my second white companion (my trainer was the only other), and he's super quiet. Before Elder Grajales had changes, he was saying that there haven't been two white guys together here in Venta de Carpio like ever, and that we would probably get killed if that happened. Well... we'll see how it goes. Obviously, we haven't been killed yet, but we thought for a minute yesterday that we were going to get mugged; we were going up the same bridged where Elder Grajales and I got mugged the last time, and this guy comes up from the side with his hands spread wide saying that he wasn't going to rob us. Pretty big red flag right there, so we kept our guard up. I didn't really understand all of the slang he was using, but I'm pretty sure he asked for 10 pesos so he could buy some drugs. I didn't really care about the purpose; I was certainly not going to give this man any money. He walked up to quiet Elder Davis first, and he had no idea how to respond to him. I told him we didn't carry money with us at night and that we needed to get going, but he held a pretty firm grip on our bikes. Elder Davis told me afterwards that he got a little bit scared, but I figured it was two against one, he didn't have any sort of weapon, and I had my bike helmet on, ready to headbutt him pretty darn hard if he tried to do anything. Fortunately, a family walked passed us and up the bridge, and figuring he couldn't make a scene with them there, let us go. I feel like I may have started a tradition of having us white folk get at least close to robbed in our first week here in Venta de Carpio. And that's pretty much all that's happened this week. We had the Tijuana temple dedication yesterday, and I have to say that the Mexicans that live closer to the boarder are much better singers than those in the heart of Mexico. In the choir they had, there were all kinds of awesome harmonies going on, and it was really really nice to hear hymns in Spanish that weren't sung by tone deaf people. If you doubt it, come down to Mexico and go to any church meeting. Elder Hall (one of the newer missionaries) said that it sincerely scared him the first time he heard it... And that's pretty much everything going down here in Tecamac right now. We're gonna keep working and see what happens this coming week. Iré y haré. Elder Groesbeck This week has been quite fantastic to say the least. No time for beating around the bush, so I'll get right into it.
The first week of every other month, the zone leaders go to a training called the leadership council to learn about what we need to teach our missionaries in the zone training. Normally it's held in President's house with lots of food made by Sister Egbert afterwards, but back in October, they held it in the chapel (without food) because the zone leaders needed to "elevate their vision more." Every Monday we have the chance to talk to President, and he told us that the leadership council for this month would indeed be held in the mission home, and yes, there would be food. As I silently celebrated with Elder Grajales, I casually asked what time we would finish, so as to not give the impression we were entirely focused on the food. Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to be spiritually uplifted and what not, but when you get a break from all of the tortas and mole for a genuine american meal, it's pretty thrilling. And oh my goodness, thrilling it was. The council went well; lots of notes taken, doctrine learned, and spirits uplifted, and then we entered the kitchen. Sister Egbert had whipped up a full course Thanksgiving/Christmas meal for us with turkey, mashed potatoes, STUFFING, steamed carrots, and to top it all off, apple pie. I stacked my plate high with food... twice. I left feeling so fat. On Thursday we had the zone training, and everything went swimmingly; I thought we would run out of things to teach and just finish early, but we taught everything in the exact allotted time and even had time to sing "God Be With You 'Till We Meet Again" for Hermana Preciado who goes home after this cycle. We then headed out on exchanges; I went out with Elder Galo, my zone leader back in Tezontepec who's now a district leader in my zone for his last two cycles. I must say, that missinary is power. We had a super successful day out in the most dangerous part of the mission: El Cerro (The Hill). There are actually quite a few receptive people up there. Elder Galo says it's because they see all the bad things that happen and feel that they really need God. I'm okay with that. While we were up there, we walked into the house of some less active members to find a completely baren Christmas tree and all of the ornaments and lights off to the side. We immediately offered to help them decorate it. To my surprise and utter delight, they agreed :D Now, you all must understand that Mom is very particular about how a Christmas tree is to be decorated. There are layers that must be filled, beginning with the inside. "Depth, children, is the key to a good Christmas tree." That may not be a direct quote from her, but that's what I've understood throughout my years of helping her decorate it. Anyways, you have to put the some ornaments in the center, some on the outside, and some in the middle; "it's like depth, but not as much". Before, it was somewhat of a chore having to decorate our Christmas tree, but not having had the opportunity to do so for 3-ish years, I rather missed it. I was all over that tree. Elder Galo would go to put an ornament on, and I would normally move it to a better position. Elder Galo noticed this, so he instead placed hooks on the ornaments and then handed them to me to be placed on the tree. Sorry Elder Galo... But that tree looked absolutely fantastic when we finished with it! I'm thinking of going professional. We also started getting our own house ready for Christmas; last night I set up our little Christmas tree, and wrapped some Books of Mormon and DVDs of the Restoration to look like presents underneath. Funny story of the week: Sister Egbert totally spoiled the changes for us last night. Normally it's pretty anxious waiting for the changes, but last night, I told Sister Egbert I would probably go to the doctor to have him check out my finger (long story; it has/had an infection). Sister Egbert was like, "All right, you'll be traveling by bus for about 3 hours tomorrow. Your companion has changes, so you'll want to help him pack tonight." You're the best, Sister Egbert ;) So yeah, Elder Grajales has changes. This time tomorrow I'll have a new companion, and I haven't the slightest clue who it could be. I'm more worried about having to find my way around all the parts of our area; I have a really good general idea of where everything is, but there are still some recent converts that I don't even know. Ah well, we'll see how it goes. Have a merry Christmas season, everyone! Look up the video "A Savior is Born" and share it with EVERYONE! Iré y haré, Elder Groesbeck |
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LEARN MORE ABOUT ELDER GROESBECK'S FAITHAuthorThis blog is edited by Elder Groesbeck's amazing, beautiful, younger sister Aubrie. I will post any update I get. Enjoy :) |