August 20th-27th, 2012

dear family,

thanks for the updates and everything. i´ll keep a look out for the package mama, thanks! i hope everything went well with gramps surgery! i´m sure it did. yeah dad it still is raining, but mostly in spurts of about fifteen minutes of hard rain, then the sun comes out and we roast in the sauna, then it repites haha. i´m used to the heat and the sweat now, doesn´t bother me, just have to drink lots. me and my companion get a long pretty well. we disagree on some things but we´re working on it. i´m learning a lot of patience here in the mision. as well as other things, the most important thing i´ve learned so far i think is how to recieve revelation. all you have to do is invite the spirit with prayer or scripture study, and then ask yourself questions and search the answers in the resources available, and in your mind. i think a lot of times we forget that a key part of recieving revelation is the meditation. we can learn through modern day prophetic revelation, for example in doctrine and covennts that some of the prophets recieve the most profound revelation just through thinking about things. like section 138 where the prophet has the vision of the spirt world. it came to him from reading the scriptures and then thinking about them is the key. every day we teach as missionaries that to recieve an answer to wether or not the book of mormn is true you have to read, MEDITATE, and then pray. sometimes we skip over that middle step but it is the mas important. the lord will confirm to you in the prayer what you have already thought about and drawn conclusions about.

this week was kind of a huge bummer, our baptismal date that was really a sure thing, fell through and cindy couldn´t be baptized. it´s cause they were´nt able to get married cause the offices were closed on friday. thursday night i remember telling elder wheeler, ´this is going off too smoothly, i´ve never had a baptism go off this smooth, i hope something doesn´t happen´ then the next day they weren´t able to get married. i jinxed it haha. this saturday though it should happen. we desperately looked for another baptism but couldn´t find one. we were following up on a lead of a nine year old girl whose parents were members, but after a lot of work we finally found her and she only had eight years old! that was another bummer, and then saturday night we went to visit miguel, the niño we baptized last week, and he was in a bad mood and told us he wasn´t going to church the next day to get confirmed. lo and behold him and his family didn´t show up for his confirmacion so last night we went to visit them and found his dad drunk in the street. so we brought him to his house and tonight we´re going to go see them so miguel can get confirmed this sunday. we have other investigatores who are being lazy and not getting married or fulfilling with their compromisos so we are going to leave them and look for others. president of the mission has asked us to focus on the elect people that are willing to be baptized the fastest as possible. this week we are going to improve on that.

we have high hopes for this week, it´s the last week of the transfer and perhaps my last week in tres valles so we´re gonna go out with a bang aka a baptism. we found a great family of four yesterday but the problem is they can´t read, that makes it a lot harder to teach but we feel they are escogidos de dos semanas. i´m to the point where this letter would be easier to write in spanish i think. some of the words come to my mind first in spanish haha and it´s a hassle to put them back into english.

thanks for the e mail dust, that´s pretty cool about your filming the hippies!

i love you all and hope you have a great week!

time goes so fast we have to do the things most importantes today!

love elder broadhead

August 13th-20th, 2012

dear fam,

thanks for all the letters and updates and i hope all goes well with gramps hip and with dads appt tomorrow. i´m sure it will.

well yesterday we baptized a little boy of nine years old. his name is miguel. it was a miracle that he was able to be baptized. i feel like all of the baptisms here are miracles. i have found out that the people that get baptized are usually not the ones we have plans of getting baptized when the week starts haha. i´m not sure why that is but all i know is that when we do everything possible to baptize, the lord helps us baptize.

this week we only met with miguel three times, they would never be home when they told us they would be, as usual here in mexico, so we couldn´t teach him very much. he is nine years old and both parents are members inactive. he is a great kid though and the problem was that his mom didn´t want him to get baptized at first. she would hardly speak one word to us, she is really shy. so we had to work with her and thanks to our heavenly father she consented. miguels dad is really great and he was alwasy on board for the whole thing. the thing is that the missionaries before us had already taught miguel everything, something happened and they couldn´t baptize him in that time, so we just had to review the teachings with him. the baptismal service was great and we feel really blessed right now. the goal was for every companionship in the mission to baptize this last week. everyone but one companionship baptized! it was pretty awesome that we almost completed with that goal.

on tuesday we had a zone class in tuxtepec and then i went back to the ciudad of aleman with elder parco to do divisons. it´s elder parcos first transfer and he does not speak any spanish haha, it´s classic to watch him have the struggles that all new missionaries have and i was glad to have the opportunity to teach him a little bit. he did good though, he knew the area pretty well even though he´s only been there four weeks.

the new house is working out pretty well. we just don´t have a washing machine anymore so we have to take our stuff to the nearest members house with a washing machine to do it.

sorry the e mail is a little bit late, we´re running behind today, my companion is very nit picky.

the baptism for this week is a lady named cindy. the guy she lives with is a member so this wednesdy we are going to marry them and then her baptism is scheduled for saturday. the only problem is that she just got sick with genge! it is the thing that the mosquitos give but we´re praying that she gets better!

everything is going well i love you guys and now we gotta get going we are busy busy busy!

love elder broadhead

August 6th-13th, 2012

hey fam how´s it hangin

thanks for all the letters i love em! they´re always so classic and i laugh a lot.

sorry i don´t have much time today to write because we still have to change houses but i´ll type fast. so this week we had to spend a lot of time lookin for a suitable house. somebody could make a lot of money on a real estate agency down here cause there are none haha. i now feel certified to be a real estate agent in tres valles because i know of everything thats up for grabs haha. because of that, we just had to work through people and references and what not, we started with the members, obviously, and worked our way outward. we found some reasonable houses and apartments but only one had airconditioning. the only thing is that it is really small, like the size of the kitchen at your house haha. i told my companion no several times, that our things wouldn´t fit but he was relentless and doesn´t like how hot it is here so i finally relented because i will probably be leaving here in three more weeks and he will have to deal with it for much longer haha. so right now we are going to move all of our things across town to the new bachelor pad. the only thing is that we won´t have a washing machine anymore so we will have to take our laundry to the bishops house about a block away and do it there on p days. ill send pics of the new house next week eh?

apart from that the missionary work went fairy well this week. we didn´t have a baptism but the thing is that lizoli, our baptism for this upcoming week, didn´t go to church. this week is the bautimision for presidents birthday and i think we are the only ones in the mission without a sold date haha, it seems to always happen to us but we are going to work hard and have the faith to baptize. in this mission the lord has asked us to baptize every week and i believe it´s possible. president called us and told us to work hard to fulfill with the goal. it´s just been hard cause we had to spend a lot of time looking for a house cause mission presidents wife was pressuring us to find one.

well mom about my hacked debit card, my first thought is that it was probably a mr. elder gruber over there in france that hacked it haha. no but i haven´t had to use it yet and the only time i think i will use it is towards the end of my mission when i wanna buy things, but it´s probably a good thing to have. so send it on down here and pray that it makes it. i´ll keep a look out for it. try and conceal it in the package somehow.

yeah dad you can keep forwarding me the letters. i don´t alwasy have time to read them but when i do it´s fun.

it is true that a hurricane passed through here this week. we did get lots of rain and wind but we made it through ok haha.

i love you guys and thanks for everything. keep trying things to get your back better pops, i wanna beat you in basketball when i get back. i´ll bring you back one of these mexican hammacks. they´re pretty sweet and comfy, it should hit the spot.

other than that things are going well and we´re workin hard!

-love elder broadhead

July 30th - August 6th, 2012

hey fam hows it hangin,

thanks for all the letters and updates sounds like you guys had fun on your trip. how´s dust doing? i haven´t heard from him in a while.

well this week was kind of a long week. we have been working hard to find new investigatores and we some that we thought were good but none went to the church so we were very frustrated. we didn´t baptize this week and we can´t get ahold of lizoli who we were plannning on baptizing this week that is coming up. early in the week we went to work in the small town of novara. its called a pueblo in spanish it just means like small village. we have to take the bus about twenty minutes to get there. there are about six or seven members there, two of which are active. we don´t work there much because it´s really hard to get people to the church in tres valles. but we figured we better try so we went and found a great family that was really interested the only problem is that the dad works on oil platforms in the ocean and so he rests for 15 days and then goes out to the platforms for 15 days. they weren´t able to go to church yesterday but we have hopes that they will accompany us this next sunday. they are called edit y hugo and have one of the pudgiest little boys i have ever seen haha. they good people though and we´ll continue to work with them. we have been hunting down the inactives in novara and tryin to get them to church and getting references. inacitves and less actives are a great way to get referencias.

also president trevino and his wife came to tres valles this week to interview us and to look at the situation of our house. i had a good interview with president and his wife is gave us lots of good things that we didn´t have for the house, for example we finally have a mirror in the house. but last night we got a call from president and he told us we need to look for a new house because our house is too hot and not up to standards, he doesn´t want us living there anymore. its true our house is sooo hot but i think i have gotten used to it. my companion is still adjusting to the heat. so this morning we went house shopping haha. a mission really prepares you for everything. we looked at several houses and the limit that we have is 2000 pesos monthly for the house. we we think we found a good one and it has air conditiong too, so we´re excited. we´ll keep looking throughout the week and next monday we´ll be moving to a new house.

in answer to your questions the book you sent has helped me a lot thank you! my companion is skinny and very neat, sometimes too neat like sometimes reminds me of dad haha. but he´s good and we work well together. his spanish is good as well, between the two of us we do just fine with spanish. a brand new missionary came to our district and can hardly speak or understand spanish and i realized that i have come a long way since i was at that point haha.


well gotta get going we still have a lot to do! love you guys all so much and constantly pray for you! have an awesome week!

-elder broadhead