May 21st-28th, 2012

hey whats up fam!

hey it was great to hear about your hawaii trip terra, sounds like fun. and everything else seems to be going great as well. i got to the city of aleman by bus mom, we do lots of travel by bus and we went to tuxtepec this morning to do some shopping with the other two elders in our district. it was a good time. hey pops thanks for the letter, as always i love em. and i wanna wish you a happy birthday this upcoming week! i love you and hope you have a great day, try not to do too much yard work on your b day haha. thanks for being the best dad an elder could ask for i love you so much. also if you want a mexican birthday gift for later just tell me what you want and i´ll get it ok!

well we had a good week this week, i went on splits to aleman and i´m going back again this week to work with the district leader. things are really spread out there and there is not very many people so we do a bit of walking. the elder slade that i was serving with there is new as well and he was really really really nervous when we started out the exchange. he´s a little bit shy and so i got to do most all of the talking and teaching, it was a good learning experience for the both of us. after a few lessons and when he realized that we were still missionaries entitled to the help of the lord and he relaxed a little haha. we even gave a blessing to one of the members. but the highlight of the week is that we´re going to have a baptism this next saturday! it´s going to be my first one and it has been ever so elusive. it´s a cool story though and added to my testimony of the power of working with members. his name is efren, that´s going to be baptized, and he is an investigator that comes to church every week but didn´t want to get baptized. he´s fifteen years old and loves to talk to me about lady gaga cause i´m american and he thinks i know all her songs haha. but the branch president invited him to go on a camping trip with the other three youth in the branch and so he went, this was last friday. when they got back he told us that now he wants to get baptized. and it´s all thanks to the examples of those other youth and the branch president. efren was able to see their examples and also see how the gospel blesses all aspects of life, not just on sunday. i´ve learned more and more how importnat the members are to missionary work. so we´re working really hard to bring members to lessons and to try and organize a ward/branch council and get a ward/branch mission leader called, to help us. it´s tough to fulfill all the callings here in mexico cause there is a lack of priesthoods holders. the majority of the curch is women here. i think in part to how much the men have to work, even the bishoprich take turns working on sunday, and also the fact that women are more open to things. either way we need to find some more men to teach, and activate the inactive priesthood holders. there are tons of inactive members here haha. but we have a lesson with an inactive family scheduled for tonight, they have two boys that are awesome kids and will strengthen the ward a ton if they would just come to church. one of the harderst parts is to get investigators to come to church, but we had a family come this last week and they had a great experience, they could only stay for sacrament meeting but they liked it and should be baptized on the ninth of june. we´re going to have an open house activity on the 23 of june and also we are organizing a class where i teach english. both of these activities should bring in lots of references and new investigators as well.

well everything is going great here and we are working oh so hard. only after the trial of our faith comes the testimony, as it is written in helaman. and just like what happend with alma, success comes after MUCH labor, which means we are about to have a ton of baptisms here in tres valles! haha also my spanish is coming along, i am able to understand people a lot better now, made progress with that this week.

i love you all and wish the best for you. i keep you in my prayers always and love ya peeps.

-elder broadhead

p.s. i had my first pants crapping (pooped my pants) experience two days ago haha. sorry mom, i only include it because tara ash dustin and probably dad, and maybe you too will get a laugh out of it.