January 21st-28th, 2013

hey guys,

thanks for the emails and updates. that`s crazy to hear andrew lloyd is already going and that cook is coming back! time goes to fast but that`s life oh well. who is tara going on all these dates with? are their marriage bells in the air yet? sounds like you guys had a good time with the relatives.

sounds like dad is content to be lounging in his g`s again haha.
dad your comments about the influence of the spirit made me think of an elder bednar story. a few years ago he was in a fireside with single adults and one of the kids their asks him, what can i do to have the spirit more in my life? elder bednar thinks a minute and then says the better questions is what are you doing to draw the influence of the spirit out of your life, because the gift of the constante companionship of the spirit was given to all of us after baptism. i got to thinking about it and it`s true. we all have the gift of the holy ghost, that awesome privilege. we just have to stop doing the things that alejar (can`t think of how to say it en english) the spirit and we`ll be fine.

mom thanks for sendin the package, i will be on the look out for it. it`ll be nice to not have to be wearing double holy garments haha.

well i have been trying really hard to help the zone out and it hasn`t been working, whatever we do we just can`t seem to have more success in the zone. even president treviño came this week to help us out, we had a class with him and all the zone on tuesday, but we had a blanque zona this week. that means no one in the zone baptizes. it was a big bummer, but what we have seen is that the elderes just don`t have that desire to baptize every week and i don`t know how to help them to have it. the two dates that we had both couldn`t get baptized because one confessed to us that he was only doing it for his girlfriend, so we said, well we better wait a bit then, the other still can`t get her nose wet because she got it operated on a few weeks back and the doctors didn`t take off the bandage on saturday like they were supposed to. but what i`ve learned in the mission is that sometimes the things just don`t work out. thanks to the fall of adam and eve (part of god`s plan) the world is full of imperfecciones, imperfect people and situations and sometimes no matter how hard we try it just doesn`t work out. that is when god steps in. there is a scripture that says to every man was given a certain measure, and we have to live up to that measure. the measure is what god expects of us, and everyone has a different measure. god expects that we live up to that measure and if we do it, and only if we do it and after we have done everything that we possibly can, according to our own measure, god steps in and he says, it`s enough. and thanks to the atonement and the grace of god things work out, god makes up the difference and in the end we can be saved. i know that i have a big measure, that i am capable of a lot and that god expects more of me than of others sometimes. but if i try god will make up the difference like he will do with everyone of of us if we do everything we possibly can to live his gospel.

well i`ve gotta get going,

thanks for everything and i love you all very much.

love, elder broadhead

January 14th-21st, 2013

hey guys,

this week the big news is that Elder Alonso of the first quorumn of the seventy came to visit the mission, his companion was elder ortiz, another seventy, and their wives. we met, the four zones of the city, with them on friday. it was an awesome experience. before the meeting started they interviewed some of the elders and my companion got chosen and was interviewed by elder alonso, he said it was pretty cool. it was a pretty amazing meeting and i learned a ton. it is always cool to be able to be with someone that is so intune with the spirit. we try so hard to be in tune with the spirit as missionaries, but it looks like it just comes so naturally to him. he talked to us about the doctorine of christ and our purpose as missionaries. he also talked a lot about prayer. at the end he said that that was the most prominent impression that he had got for the mission in his time with us. it`s true. i need to improve my prayers. i came to the meeting with the question of how i could teach with more power and really be a missionary with power. we know that it only comes through having the spirit with you. and he answered my question, in order for me to be able to teach with power i have to have the spirit and i have to sincerely ask for it through prayer. as missionaries we pray so much that sometimes we fall into a routine. that is what had happened to me. but i took a few steps back and am praying diferently now. i love the definition of prayer in the bible dictionary, if you haven`t read it lately you should do it, it`s awesome. on friday i completed on year as a missionary and got the privilege of sitting next to my mtc companion elder wirthlin en the meeting with e. alonso. e alsonso had also come to visit us when e wirthlin and i were in the mtc about one year ago. time goes fast.

me and my companion are doing good, we get a long good and laugh alot. i`ve been blessed with some really good companions. the kids we baptized two weeks ago didn`t get confirmed this week because they didn`t go to church. we passed by their house after to see what was up and found the jehovas witnesses trying to teach them. it was another reminder that there is always going to be an oposicion, especially when people are trying to make changes for the better in their lives.

mom, no the wild birds aren`t tame, just the people have lots of pets here.

we have a baptism for this saturday. she is an old investigator and we just passed by to see how she was doing and before we could say anything she just said, hey i wanna get baptized now haha. i guess everyone has their time. even though personally i think she didn`t wanna get baptized before because she wanted to break the commanments over christmas and new years but oh well, what can ya do.

well that`s about it. i love you all and thanks for everything.

-elder broadhead

could you send this to zac willis? if you don`t know the adress, tell ash to look for it on fb.

¡que tal pete! (elder willis)

¿como estas? ¿como te ha ido? ya se que hace mucho que no hemos hablado. el tiempo pasa rapdio, verdad. pues esta semana cumpli un año en la mision y dije, voy a escribir a pete jaja. ¿te ha flopped tu compañero?jaja

a mi me va bien aqui en veracruz, me ha encantado la mision. pruebas y todo. ¿que tal tu area? cuentame todo. y no digas mustaza porque estamos hablando en español. tenemos que practicar para despues. para que no nos entienda dan jaja.

nos vemos pronto! te amo!

un abrazo, Elder Broadhead

January 7th-14th, 2013

hey guys. well my new campanion is named elder chico, he is from ciudad juarez, and is a really good elder. he has 17 months in the mission. we had a good first week working together cause we got to baptize two awesome kids, jesus and talita. these two kids are really awesome and i have had some really good experiences with them. jesus is eleven and talita is ten. their dad is an inactive as well as their cousin. we went to visit their cousin two weeks ago, she went to church and brought these two kids with her. so we started visitng them and the first thing the mom (no member) says to us is that she wants them to get baptized haha we`re like, ok perfect haha. there have been very few times in my mission where i have been able to feel the true love of christ. and i can honestly say that with these kids i feel it. i love them like jesus christ would love them and i`m really happy to be able to say it. i understand better now why christ loved the kids so much and i`ve had similair feelings and experiences towards one of the kids, fanny, in the family that i baptized en camino real. these kids have come as an answer to my prayers. in my mission i have been trying hard to come to know my savior better and praying hard to be able to do it. i had an especially meaningful personal prayer this week and as an answer to that prayer the lord let me see these kids through his eyes and feel of his love for them manifested through me. i`m going to send you a picture of these kids wearing our name tags, it is one of my favorite pictues of the mission. just from the picture you can tell what great kids they are. this would be the experience that i would tell you for you lesson tara, to tell the truth i wasn`t to happy to be transfered from camino real, a companion that i liked and an area that was starting to have success thanks to the work we had done. when i left everyone that got baptized in the transfer after were people that i had found. but making the best of the situation and working hard in my new area i have been able to bloom where i was planted and have experiences like this.

as i approach the year mark i have been going through a renovation proccess and learning a lot of new things and understanding even better the gospel of jesus christ, most importantly i`ve learned that the success of a missionary depends completely on the inside of the missionary and that true happinness depends soly on our ability to positivley affect the lives of the people that surround us, especially our friends and loved ones. 

this week we only could bring one to church cause now in this new year the church starts at eight in the morning and it is harder to bring peeps to church. it was a little bumming to see that not one of the members came to our baptism, including the bishop and ward mission leader even though the baptism was announced in sacrament. but it`s ok it didn`t affect us. it was a great baptismal service. 

sorry dad i didn`t get to answer a lot of your questions, but i did get to see one of my converts this week when i went to go pick up my comp from the bus station, my hijo e. garcia was leaving from camino real and our convert, cesar, brought him to the bus station and then took us back to our house in volcanes so i got to talk with him, it was awesome, he is still active and doing great. it was great to see him. well i gotta go. thanks for everything, we`ll talk next week. i could use some new garment bottoms if you get the chance. mesh. 32-34 short. but it`s nothing urgent. love you all!

love elder broadhead

December 31st, 2012 - January 7th, 2013

family,

thanks for the updates and everything. sounds like your all having a pretty good time back there in utah, getting some things done and moving on without cuddles. me and my companion got a pretty good laugh about the karoakoe machine haha. what kind of a ward buys a karaoke machine haha and where did the money come from. and yes tara, i will work in the temple with you after, it´ll be pretty cool. i miss the temple yikes its a big blessing to be able to go. how often do you guys go?

well this week we had the zone leaders conference and president presented us with the new vision of the mission for this year. en the past year we baptized like 2300 or something like that, but the number of people that go to sacrament meeting just about stayed the same. that is not ok. so the new vision is, establish the church. it´s  a theme that comes from preach my gospel. we are going to do it through three things mainly, continue baptizing, strenthening new converts, and reactivating. we have been focusing too much on just baptizing and not enough on the other two things. so to be able to focus better on this, we are going to be reporting a new key indicator every week, the attendance of the sacrament meeting. the goal is to increase that number by at least ten percent every six weeks. so we can do it mainly by visiting inactives and strengthing new converts. we are going to help all of our new converts here in our area get taught all the missionary lessons again, by the members. and help them get involved in the family history work. by visiting the inactives and getting them to church, they will have a testimony and be able to give us more references. we put it in action this week and visited a lot of inactives. we got rewardes by seeing a few of them come to church this sunday and even more, one of them brought two non members with her, it was great. so we are seeing the results already of this new acivity. also this week we baptized adrian. he worked hard convincing his mom and she finally gave him permission. it was a great baptizmal service, only that the bishop didn´t really believe that the mom had given him permision so on sunday he wouldn´t confirm adrian until he called the mom and talked to her in person. it was really annoying but the mom said yes, again. for that very reason the parents have to sing the registro of the baptism. oh well, he got baptized and all is well.

tomorrow in the morning my companion goes to the offices and on thursday goes home to argentina, he arrives on friday haha, it´s a long way to argentina. my new companion will be elder chico. he´s coming from tuxtepec and from what i´ve heard he´s a great elder so i´m excited to be able to work with him.

this week we are going to do a tormenta blanca, that is where all the elders in the zone go to one area to knock or visit inactives or do anything to try and help the area. we have one area in the zone that hasn´t baptized in two months. so we are going to all go and help them.

the conference edition of the liahona finally got to us this week and it´s been great to be able to read. it´s really helped me reading the talks again, especially those of the first presidency. i didn´t pay good enough attention to those talks before the mission. i´ve realized that as part of their messages the prophets always give us invitations, or commitments. i got to thinking that i never really take them up on their invitations. we are all investigatores of the prophet and i haven´t been fulfilling my commitments. if i was the prophet i would´ve already stopped teaching me as an investigator, that´s what we do as misssionaries if the people don´t complete with their commitments, we have to leave them behind. and so i´m going to make a extra effort to make note of the invitations we recieve in conference and try to complete them. the prophet doesn´t invite us to do things just for the heck of it. i invite you guys to do the same.

this week i went to the doctor again to get some ingrown nails pulled. it didn´t hurt as bad as last time but it is getting annoying.

well i think that´s everything. i love you guys all and am so happy to be able to be serving the lord. i think of you and pray for you often. i am grateful to be part of such a good family. talk to ya next week.

love elder broadhead

December 24th-31st, 2012

dear family,

first off feliz nuevo año! also it was great to be able to talk with you guys this week. i really enjoyed it and it was fun, even if it did make me miss you guys a little bit haha. thanks for the e mails this week and all of your comments. it sounds like you have some good goals for the coming year. that´s something i need to work on really. setting goals. sometimes i think their pointless because i feel that wether i set the goal or not, i´m going to try my best. their is a quote en predicad mi evangelio that says if we don´t set goals we will get to a ripe old age and look back to see that we have only accomplished a third of what we could have accomplished. i´m going to try better to set new goals. for this year. something that helps me and that could help you guys as well is to set the yearly goals, and then from those goals, set smaller goals. for example, what do you have to achieve on a monthly basis to be able to achieve your yearly goals, and then what do you have to do on a weekly basis to achieve the monthly goal, and finally what to you have to do day to day to achieve the weekly goal. that´s what we do as missionaries, we call them mini metas. for example we alwasy have the goal of teaching two lessons before the comida everyday. that helps us achieve our daily goal, which helps towards the weekly of forty lessons.

did your record your talk dad so i can hear it when i get back? sounds like it was pretty good, i would´ve liked to be there. thanks for the comments you shared with me. by the way, where is mitch calder going?

well this is the last week of the cambio. my companion is ready to go home and it is a bit of a struggle getting him to keep working this last week haha. he really is a great teacher of the gospel though, and with him i have really learned how to teach people, and not just lessons. i really learned the the application of the teaching is the most imporant part. it is even more important than what gets taught. i feel grateful to have been able to learn that from him and i know feel like i am a better teacher of the gospel. this month of december we only baptized one, and the zone didn´t do to good. several areas didn´t even baptize this week. on tuesday we are going to have the consejo de los lideres de zona and i don´t know what we are going to tell presidente haha. i really don´t know why we are struggling so much to baptize. this week we have three possibles that can get baptized. carmelo was supposed to get baptized last week but wants to wait more, and know more. so we have him planned for this week. we are waiting for adrain to turn eighteen so we can baptize him, his mom still doesn´t give him permision, and our other option, gretel, goes to church everyweek but refuses to get baptized. we have no idea why haha.

today we are going to do a gift exchange with the zone and then play a little volibol. we are trying to get them excited, we feel that the elderes are a little down for not having seen as much succes as they wanted. hopefully the actividad gets them excited a little.

well i feel grateful to be starting another year and looking back i really can see the blessings of the lord in this year, especially as a missionary. i am excited to start another year and continue to learn and progress more. more than anything i just want you guys to know that i love our savior and will do absolutely anything for him. that´s really the sum of my testimony. i love you guys and wish the best for you!

love elder broadhead