October 15th-22nd, 2012

fam,

 

how`s it hanging! thanks for the mail and the updates. glad to hear dad got a little relief and he cracked me up with the sweat gene joke haha. sí i am constantly sweating here but i`ve long since accepted it. cool new bishopric. good to hear from dust and tara as well. haven`t heard from ash en about six or seven months it seems like. that`s cool mom taught a toffee class. that is going to be so tasty when i get home. and yeah i`ve lost like twenty pounds i think. i`m not sure cause obviouly there is not a scale.

 

this week was very interesting and fun. me and my new companion/hijo get a long great. his name is elder garcia and he is from zacatecas méxico. he is really progressing fast and he`s going to be a great missionary. he is teaching me a lot of spanish and new words and stuff it is good to have mexican comp again. we have a lot of fun and laugh a lot.

well this week we baptized someone named cecilia. she came to church last week with her friend and already wanted to get baptized last week haha. she is really a nice lady the only problem is that she is really shy and she gets really nervous and it makes her so she can`t talk. i was really happy though because my hijo elder garcia was going to get to baptize his first week in the field. so after the services yesterday we had the baptism. we also baptized the cousin of jose manuel, the one we baptized two weeks ago. aron only has eight years old though and his parents are members so it didn`t count for the mission but he`s a great kid. so anyway we baptize aron, the niño, first, and then cecilia gets in the water for her baptism, my companion says the baptismal prayer, and then goes to baptize her but she refused to dunk herself in the water. she was really scared of the water. so after another failed attempt we made her sit in the chair in the water so it would be easier to dunk her. that didn`t work either, she refused to go under. we kept asking her, hermana if she wanted to get baptized or was it just fear of the agua. she told us that sí she wanted to get baptized but she couldn`t bring herself to go under the water. so we went to go get bishop to help us. he tried calming her down and we even shut the doors of the font so no one could see her, cause she gets really nervous, but that didn`t help either. after about an hour of being in the water and about fifteen attempts. we finally just told her that we would try again another day. she was really sad and embarassed and i felt terrible. so i called and told the zone leaders what happened and they called and told presidente treviño and he said that the baptism counted even though she didn`t go under the water. because she had the desire, she fisically just couldn`t go under. so that was a huge relief and we went straight to her house and told her. she was reall happy after we told her. and so we`re going to confirm her this week next week in sacrament meeting. my elderes en cardel baptized as well so we have had four straight bautistritos. i`m very happy with the work they`re doing.

 

we`re going to continue working hard and baptizing every week. my lideres have told me that because of visa problems we are not going to get more elderes in the ward until the next cambio. it`s ok though because we are going to baptize an amazing family of four on november eleventh and it would be in the other elderes area if they were here haha. so i`m thankful for that.

 

well this morning me and elder garcia went with the zone leaders to eat in carls jr. haha it was fun. after we ate we played the card game ``uno´´ for a bit. it was a good time haha. right now we`re going to go paint the house of una hermana de la iglesia and pick up our laundry from the lavendería.

 

thanks for the birthday updates mom, keep up comin por fa!

 

well i love you guys a lot and of course pray for you everyday mucho. thanks for being so awesome.

 

-love elder broadhead

 

 

October 8th-15th, 2012

hey fam,

 

hope everyone is doing good! tell gramps thanks for the generous donation, i appreciate it a lot. i`m glad to hear he`s doing better and improving. i`m confident that this wednesday you will find the solution to all this pain pops. i hope you like your new calling mom, in the primary!

 

this week was my last week with elder charles. i have learned a lot from him, same with all my companions. presidente called me this week and told me that i am going to get an hijo! that means a new missionary. i`ll be training these next two cambios. i`ll go to the mission offices on tuesday to pick him up! i hope he`s a mexican! we also learned this week that now, we are not going to get two new missionaries in the ward. we had already found the house and everything. the problem is that they`re having trouble getting visas for the american missionaries again, so it throws everything off. we really need more missionaries in this barrio though. it`s so huge. sunday`s we really struggle cause there`s so much to do and we can`t talk to everyone. if you wanna know my area, i think you can go on the church website, look up the boundaries for the ward camino real, and then you`ll know my area. it`s huge and we have to travel a lot. that`s crazy to think that we`re going to get a new bishopric. time goes fast. i`m going to complete nine months in the mission! it`s crazy.

 

this sunday we baptized jose manuel. he`s really great and i have high hopes that he goes on a mission. the only problem is that he just got a job at sam`s club and now he has to work all the sundays. he still has to get confirmed though! so this week we are going to try and work with him so he can come to church and get confirmed on sunday and change his schedule at work. the ward has proposed a missionary activity where we invite all the old investigatores and people that have been to church o talked with the missionaries to the church for an activity. the stake choir is going to perform and there will be a speaker. the spirit will be really strong and in that very moment, the speaker will invite all the people there that aren`t members to be baptized! and we`ll do the baptisms right then and there the same day. it`s pretty crazy but i think we`re going to try it. the activity is going to happen in november. we`ll see how it works. we are hoping to already have somebody lined up for a baptism that day, so that person will go first and the rest will follow.

 

i`m a little nervous cause the couple we were going to baptize this next week is now backing out. we found them in the street last night and they had claimed they hadn`t recieved an answer from god yet. i claim that they have. we`ll go over this week and help them recognize the answer they`ve already recieved. they`re great though. the only problem is that the dad works all week and we can only see him on saturday. they have a cute one year old kid named ian. i want my hijo to be able to baptize his first week in the field!

 

our plans today are have a zone activity so we can take pics and say goodbye to everyone cause tomorrow are cambios!

pics are of the baptism, us and chucky, the little kid we baptized two weeks ago and confirmed yesterday, and of my elder nelson that i took of him peeing in the canya (sugar cane) when i went to do the baptismal interview on friday en cardel haha

 

everything is going great and it was fun messaging you pops! tell mom right now i don`t need anything and that all is well!

 

we had another bautistrito and i`m happy my elder`s are working hard. is going to arrive another new missionary in my district haha. we are going to be two trainers and two greeny`s (verdes) haha! hope you guys have a great week! i`ll talk to you next week!

 

 

 

October 1st-8th, 2012

 

hey guys,

i feel terrible that you didn`t get my letter last week! i think it`s cause i got too excited and attached one too many pictures and it didn`t send, sorry about that. i copied and pasted it and sent it in another e mail. from now on i`ll send the pics separate so at least you get som information. haha sorry again.

 

this week was pretty good for us and conference was awesome. i`m not gonna lie a got a good laugh out of mom`s comment, "how do they understand conference?" referring to the mexican people i assume, but mom to answer your question, it is translated into spanish haha. they show it at the stake center (my chapel in camino real) and the whole stake comes to watch, they really only came sunday morning though haha. dad i enjoyed elder hollands conference talk as well. he actually gave that exact same talk to us in the mtc so it was a repeat for me but i still enjoyed it. he did it better in the mtc though cause he just completely applied it to the missionary work and he got more worked up and emotional and yelly and stuff like that. obviously he couldn`t do it in general conference, but it was still good. that`s pretty cool that they lowered the missionary age, i believe i already foretold this event of the lowered age, if you can remember mom, like a year ago i though it was gonna happen haha. it`s pretty cool though, is ash thinking of going on a mission now? you should do it ash, i wish you could come to mexico, but american girls can`t come here!

 

yesterday was really stressful cause we baptized between the general conference sessions. when we got to the church before conference we found the baptismal font full of nasty water and really dirty haha. since we had alot of missionaries there for the conference they all helped us clean it and fill it for the baptism. we first tried to get the dirty out with a mop, so one elder had to strip down to his garments and went into the font with a mop, it was sooo funny to see haha, but it didn`t work too well so we ended up draining it and cleaning it, then refilling it. it had trouble filling up though so there was hardly any water in there when we did the baptism, luckily, chucky is small and didn`t need much water to be baptized haha.

 

next week i`m going to get two new elders added to my district, so i`ll have three companionships. they are going to give us another pair of missionaries in our ward in camino real. it will be really nice to cut the area in half and not have to travel so much. with four missionaries in one ward we are going to baptize a lot. the ward should divide in two pretty soon, it`s huge. my district has been performing well and i`m happy with them, we have had two bautistritos in a row, and a third should be coming this week!

 

on friday i went to cardel to do two baptismal interviews, a lady and her son. i interviewed the son first and he passed, then his mom. she had been having trouble giving up drinking coffee and i couldn`t pass her to be baptized. i had to tell her no and that we were going to have to push it back a week. it was absolutelya terrible feeling. she started to cry and tell me about how she had this grand image of getting baptized with her son. i tried to comfort her and tell her that she could watch her son be baptized this week and then she would be baptized the next week, she reluctantly agreed. it was the first time i had to fail someone in the interview and i didn`t like it one bit. i had to get after the elderes en cardel for not being clear about the word of wisdom. it was a good learning opportunity though. i`ll go back to interview her again this week hopefully.

for this weekend we are going to baptize jose manuel and his nephew that`s eight years old. the nephew doesn`t count for the mission because his parents are members.

 

well the zone leaders just called me and told me that i have to go find a house for the new elderes that are coming to our ward. so i gotta get goin right now! dang i hate house shopping in mexico, but good thing i had practice in my old area haha.

 

for my b day the only thing i would really need is another long sleeve white shirt por favor! prefferably not one hundred percent cotton, muchas gracias!

 

well everything is going good here and we`re working hard. i love the mission!

 

love you guys and hope you have a good week! sorry about last week again i`ll make sure it doesn`t happen again!

 

-love elder broadhead

 

 

September 24th-October 1st, 2012

 

 

family,

 

thank you very much for the e mails. i got a good laugh out of your guys`s comments there always funny, i liked tara`s, "i only went to the bathroom once" comment haha. i`m sure this pain treatment program will help a ton with the pain, dad. keep looking for relief! mom i`m sorry i forgot to thank you for all the other stuff in the package i have put it all to good use and am going to make up a little gift bag for our recient convert, dayra, we baptized her on saturday and she was confirmed on sunday. her uncle was the one that baptized her. we had a zone conference this week and president asked us to have members baptize our converts now, so we are going to do that. this week we are going to baptize a little boy named renaldo, we are having one of the priests do the baptism and help us with the teaching this week. then hang a picture of the baptism on the ward bulletin board so the other priests get jealous and want to baptize too. then we`ll tell them they can baptize the people they find for us to teach haha.

 

great to see that you are all working hard in your callings. one of the biggest signs that tells us that our church is true is that it makes us work haha. if the church didn`t make us work it wouldn`t be true because it could never produce the faith necessary to lead us to eternal life and salvation. and thats why we try so hard to get our converts callings, so they can excercise their faith through working. i read the book lectures on faith that brother swani gave me before i left, it was really good, you guys should all read it if you haven`t already. it used to be part of the doctorine y covenants! something that i struggle with is asking members to make sacrifices for the missionary work. i absolutely don`t like doing it, but i`m working on it and i know that it`s neccesarry that they make sacrafices for that very same reason, so they can show god their faith. i told that to my old companion and he told me, "well, you`ve got a long way to go to be a god then" haha.

 

apparently i haven`t been very clear in my e mails or answered very many questions so i`ll try to do better. it`s just that i don`t have very much time to write haha i`ll tell you all the details when i get back, don`t worry!

 

moms questions- the weather is still hot and rainy, i lost my umbrella a few weeks ago so i just gave up on trying to not be sunburned haha. it`s harder to use in the big city too, with all the dogging and ducking and diving we do haha. yes we still eat lunch with the members, every missionary in mexico does. it`s the big meal of the day here. we eat lunch at two and then dinner when we get back to the house at night. my shoes are holding up just fine, i have been really happy with them mom, it`s my feet that are not holding up to well haha. also when we say air conditioning in mexico we just mean a little unit that you put in the window. we have one in the house but it doesn`t work very good. we put it in the room where we sleep to try and help, but we do have two fans. the beach is pretty cool, we didn`t realize that we were working right on the beach this whole time. we should`ve realized though cause we`re constantly pulling sand out of our ears. haha. i`ll attach a pic of the beach. we are actually going again today to play volleyball with the zone. should be fun. the sunscreen is holding out good for now, i`ll let ya know if i need more, thanks. the name of the "town" i`m in is the city of veracruz haha. our area is just pure houses, it`s the northern part of the city and the area is huge. the name of the neighborhood (it`s called colonia in spanish) where the church is located is called camino real. there are lots of different colonias in our area.

 

ok hope that answers all your questions.

 

we are working hard and learning a lot. we are trying our best implementing this new program where we do less prosolyting and more working with members/inactives to get references. i went to cardel on friday to do an interview of an ex marine, to say the least it was very long interview, but he was repented and ready to get baptized. good guy, learned a lot from him about the true nature of repentance.

 

pics are of the baptism, and the beach, and us with a coconut. here you can just pick the coconuts off the palma and eat them. i`m not a huge fan of the coco, but we do it every once in a while.

 

love you all and wish the best for you!

 

love elder broadhead

 

 

 

 

September 17th-25th, 2012

 

 

hey fam,

 

thanks for the updates and everything, it´s good to hear ol spanky got home ok and had a good time serving. yes mom i got the package, thanks for everything, the debit card was missing though?? haha jk no i have the debit card and everything, just a small joke. i can´t believe you guys are still going to those concerts! sounds fun though.

 

this week was a little rough, we went to visit dayra on tuesday and they had had some family problems so she had opted to get baptized this next week. el 29. we are praying lots for her. so we once again started frantically looking for someone to baptize. thursday we went to visit alejandra (her first time en the chapel was this last week) we taught her and she accepted to get baptized after the services on sunday, oh we were soo happy. then saturday afternoon right before we were going to head over to her house for the baptismal interview she called and said that she wanted to wait a little more to get baptized, she had some things to think about. we talked with her for awhile, but she also couldn´t come to church yesterday so we are going to visit her tonight to help her overcome her doubts. she is great though and wants to get baptized, just needs help overcoming the opposicion that all the canditates for baptism have. yesterday we also found what is called a regalito, it just means like a gift. a little boy of eight years old that wants to get baptized. all his brothers are members and his parents go to church most of the time but are not married and can´t get baptized and therefore the little boy chucky falls under our jurisdiction. so we are planning on baptizing three this week. dayra, alejanda, y chukcy.

 

on tuesday after class of district i went up to cardel to do divisiones with e nelson. his companion came to my area to work with e charles. we went to work in un pueblo that is called cempoala. we set the baptismal date with a little girl of nine years old for this past sunday. then i went back to cardel on friday to do the interview. she got baptized this sunday, everything went fine.

 

one of the members we ate with this week has a son that lives in mexico city that is a luchador (wrestler or fighter) she showed us a picture of him and he looked just like jack black in nacho libre haha it was so funny we cracked up laughing. mexico is great. we also started teaching un kid of 18 years that lives with his wife that is 17 years old. she is a member and they have two kids. he works all day to try and support his family. he is a good kid. i was trying to imagine what it would be like to have two kids at eighteen years old and lots of responsabilty. we hope he accepts this gospel, his name is christian, he´s just soo young. we almost have to get permission from his parents to teach and baptize him,

 

we discovered that there is beach en our area this week so right now we are going to go look for it to take some pics haha! we´re going to have zone conferences tomorrow and we have high hopes for this week.

 

pics are of a flower/jello creation that un investigador gave us and just another normal pic.

 

i love you all, have a great week and look for missionary opportunities!

 

-love elder broadhead

 

 

September 10th-17th, 2012

 

hey guys,

 

thanks for all the emails and everything! i got gramps too, sounds like everything is going along ok with you guys, i still pray for you all the time!

 

this week was mas o menos we didn`t baptize, our fecha didn`t come through. she is named alejandra y lives very far, we have to take a 15 minute bus ride to arrive to her house. we couldn`t see her all week because she works a lot and she didn`t come to church. but this ward is great because siempre someone comes to church that we didn`t plan on cause the ward is so grande one of the people usually manages to bring someone. another one of our investigatores named dyra came and her baptism is schedules for this saturday. she sixteen and her mom is member but not her dad. she`s an antigua investigadora de los elderes que were here before me. so this week we`re going to work with the other one that came to church (alejandra) to try and baptize her after the services this sunday. me and e charles both talked in church yesterday, his was pretty classic with his spanish. i actually got a little nervous cause i`m not used to this big of a ward but it went fine haha.

 

me and e charles get a long pretty well and we laugh a lot. we were walking in the streeet two days ago and someone stopped us and started waving a book of mormon in front of our faces and said that he wanted us to come by his house. the only thing is that he is missing one hand, but he doesn`t seem to care haha. he makes lots of hand motions and uses it a lot to illustrate points while he talks haha. it`s pretty funny but anyways we went to look for his house that day and we couldn`t find it cause ni yo ni mi companero know the area very well haha. so we had to start asking people if they knew were the guy lived that only had one hand haha and we eventually found it. he didn`t come to church though so we have to drop him. he`s a pretty classic guy though.

 

today we did a pretty good cleaning job on the house, it was pretty nasty. it`s alwasy nice having an american companion cause they value cleanliness haha. also we found this cafeteria dentro de sam`s club that is way good cause it`s all american haha so we`re gonna hit it up again tody haha.

 

mom`s questions. my comp is from arizona. yes we still walk everywhere and take buses that are pretty crazy and classic. the walking is taking a toll on my feet i have several ingrown toenails but there`s never enough time to go to the doctor haha. and no, i haven`t been sick yet on the mission, aparte de some minor coughs and colds. there hasn`t been a day where i haven`t left the house to work and i hope to keep it that way. and your idea about the chirstmas thing is just fine mom, gracias.

 

i have tons more that i alwasy want to tell you but there is no time! i am learning a lot and loving everything! i absolutely love, love studying the gospel, the only good part about getting home is going to be able to study whatever i want instead of for my investigatores haha.

 

the question that i ask everyday to the members that we eat with, is what was your missionary experience this past week? and i feel like i should direct it at you guys too! if you haven`t had one, look for one and constantly share your testimony!

 

i love you all and apreciate everything thanks for it! have a great week!

 

the pics are of my area, and my companion taking a pee in the bushes haha i alwasy take pictures when my comps pee in the wild haha.

 

-love elder broadhead

 

September 3rd-10th, 2012

 

 

hey fam,

 

thanks for the e mail mom, i didn`t get dads though. i pray that things will get better for him everyday. i also wish i could take some of his pain. i`m sure it`s how heavenly father felt watching his son go through the atonement. sometimes i wonder why heavenly father isn`t taking better care of my pops while i`m out here but i`m sure there`s a reazon/plan.

 

everything went smoothly for the transfers and the ward in camino real is really great and huge with tons of people. i`m in the northern part of the city and it`s mainly a suburb. there`s tons of people and houses. i`m still not used to the faster pace of life here, everyones in a hurry, my last area was a lot more tranquil. this week we didn`t have a baptism and we`re working hard to find one for this week. my companion e charles is really great and a good missionary but his spanish is not too shnazy haha. i`m his padrasta which means stepdad. when a missionary is new in the mission he is called hijo which means kid, and his trainer is his papa and his next companion is his padrasta haha. this sunday we were supposed to have three people come to get confirmed and only one came. it was kind of embarassing when they didn`t come and this bishop was calling for them but i learned a valuable lesson that you have to look out for the converts of the missionaries that were in the area before. we`re going to visit them this week so that they can be confirmed. it`s been kind of weird in this ward we have a ward mission leader and a ward council meeting. i`m going to have to learn how to work with these new tools. it`s kind of sucky not knowing the area but it`s all part of it.

 

this wednesday we had a zone class and i gave a training, and then friday i went to cardel to do a baptismal interview. cardel is about a half an hour busride north of the city and it`s the only other area in my district. the elders there are are really good though. it`s kind of a bit more stressful being the district leader, i have to remind myself to just have fun sometimes haha. the mission can get stressful sometimes though. we have the weight of the salvation of the people in our area on our shoulders and it gets heavy when they don`t fulfill with their commitments.

 

we have two investigatores that are going to get baptized on the 23 of september, rafael and his mama. there only problem is that they have to take a bus to get to the church and they don`t have enough money to do it next week. we`re going to visit them tomorrow to see what we can do.

 

the president of the mision has raised all of the weekly goals and now we have to get a ton of references and teach a ton more lessons to inactives. he wants us to prosilyte less and work more with members active, less active, and inactive. in order to get a reference. it`s really good though i think we`ll baptize more working in this way.

 

right now we`re going to play voliball with the zone, the zone is a lot smaller than my other one so we can get together on p days now. we have to go get the net and the ball from some members right now. there is a wallmart right next to my house so it`s been great being able to eat all the american brands and stuff, and finally i could buy refills for my razor haha. the house is not too bad but it`s not too great either.

 

well everything is going great here, i hope you all have a good week. i`ll talk to you later!

 

oh yeah the stake sent me the stake news letter, tell brother burnett thanks for me!

love ya all!

-elder broadhead