Semana 59: The Deep Sleep

Viejos Lobos Rascuachos Pachones

I hope you all had a phenomenal week!

Last Pday we went to a public park and had a picnic with the zone, later we found some teenagers in the park and they invited us to play soccer with them. It was pretty fun, we topped off the day with some crazy games of spikeball. 

La Zonaaa

We went on exchanges with my boy Elder Jimenez. He is finishing his training right now and is such a cool guy. I flame him for being a Chilango (person from Mexico City) all the time, he flames me back for being white. I think I have the upper hand though Chilangos have the weirdest accents on earth. Their investigator that was on date practically killed herself in regards to her not wanting to progress because she's Catholic. We decided to stop by her house. We explained literally every. single. apostate. thing. the Catholics do and why we do it differently. She realized pretty quickly that we knew a lot more about her own church than she did. By the end of the lesson I felt prompted to ask her if she is wanted to stay in the Catholic church because she had a testimony of it, or because she was afraid of abandoning the culture of being "Catholic". That question really got to her and by the end of the lesson she told us, "I have never received a clearer answer of what church is the correct church to join". Elder Jimenez and his comp are planning on putting her on date this week. She also watched all of General Conference. Pretty cool miracle.

Selfie

I had my warts cut off courtesy of the mom of my recent convert. She used this laser tool and practically burned my finger. It was pretty cool.

We ran out of gas so we can't use our hot water heater so that stinks.

We found this guy who seems way elect. Almost too elect. His name is Gabriel and he is 84 years old. He is a retired psychologist but still has clients and uses his talents to bless the lives of other people for free. He has no wife, no kids. He speaks English fluently and the most crazy part is that he studied psychology in the University of Chicago. While he was studying, he found a flyer that talked about some sort of free classes to be mentored in Salt Lake City by a famous psychologist named Stephen Covey. He learned from him and was mentored by him. During this entire time he lived in Salt Lake and was astounded by the ideologies of Stephen Covey. While he was there, he realized that Covey was a member of our church and he wanted to know about it. He's spent several YEARS trying to find a way to contact us, he had no idea that missionaries even existed. He ended up calling Salt Lake City headquarters, talked to them in English and begged for someone to call him and teach him about the church. And with our luck, he is in our area. We shared the Book of Mormon with him our first lesson and he started crying and looked up at the sky and said "why did it take 84 years for me to find this book, but I am so glad I finally found it" Crazy, right? Everything we say to him clicks immediately in his head. He talked about how he's visited so many small towns in Mexico that still have their indigenous connections and speak languages such as Mayan. Every town he's been to talked about how a God visited their people a long time ago and ministered to them. He had no idea how. We shared the first part of 3 Nephi 11 and he almost dropped to the floor crying. Everything made sense to him. I am not making any of this up. There's only 3 conclusions I can make about this man...

1. He is insanely elect, literally a chosen man from God

2. He is straight clowning us

3. He is one of the 3 Nephites 

Araña

The past couple of weeks, I have felt pretty crappy health wise, I had a lot of allergies. The worst part was that I was feeling extremely exhausted... every day. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even stay awake during the day. I fell asleep while I was contacting a Taxi Driver, I fell asleep during a part of General Conference, during several lessons, personal study, you name it, I was asleep. My companion noticed and asked me what was wrong and just told him, "I have no idea, I try to stay awake and I physically can't. I want to work hard but my body won't allow me to". I talked to my District Leader who finishes his mission in 5 days and he told me "oh don't worry, it's just a phase lol 13-14 months in the mission is the worst! You can't get yourself to do anything but once those months pass, you will be back on the grind". I don't want to gas out or die as a missionary. 

It wasn't until I called my sweet mother and told her how I've been feeling. I told her that I was extremely exhausted and didn't know what to do. She asked me what pills I've been taking and I told her Benadryl to help with my allergies and she started crying laughing. She then said "Well now we know what is putting you to sleep!!" Apparently Benadryl are allergic reaction pills that help calm insect bites, poisonous plants, etc. But not congestion and sneezing. You are only supposed to take it if you are going to stay in the house and rest, not if you are walking around all day and working. I've been taking this stupid Benadryl pill for 2 weeks every morning and I feel like a complete idiot. This is proof that I still can't survive without my mother. It's been 2 days since not taking my Benadryl pills and I am feeling great :))

Adiós verrugas

Elisa was baptized this week!! Elisa and her grandma came to the first session of General Conference on Sunday and in between sessions she was baptized! I got to baptize her and it was such a cool experience. She came out of the water screaming and it was pretty strange but I loved it. She's so happy.

Bautismo de Elisa

Speaking of Baptisms, our mission President has a baptismal expectation every month for every zone. The expectation is 9 baptisms for the month of October. We completed the goal on Sunday, October 3rd with 9 baptisms since my zone is filled with hard working animals and I love them so much. 

My babies in their training

General Conference was so SICK!! I learned so many new things and the talks answered a lot of my questions. I am so grateful for modern day prophets and apostles that lead, guide and direct us in these latter-days! 

Sorry for the long email!! Hope everyone has a great week!! Love you!

Elder Scown