SMILE!!! sonreír

Sorry, I have NO time to write today. We spent like four and a half hours washing our clothes today because we don´t have anyone around to use a good washing machine. We walk like a mile or two to use someone´s machine but then we have to pull buckets of water out of a tank to fill the machine to wash, then wait, and fill it again to rinse, then hang it and do it for a total of 4 loads. Takes forever.

I put smile because in 2 Nephi 9:39 it talks about being spiritually minded. Spirtually Minded Is Life Eternal. I was thinking about it and it isn´t coincidence that it comes out like that. To really be focused on the spiritual things is what really makes us happy, or SMILE. Little things that God does to make the life better.... it´s amazing.

Silvia is an investigator that has been going to church for months and knows a member and really likes it all but hasn´t wanted to get baptized. We showed up to our appt on Tuesday and we started talking. She starts saying that she wants to buy her own scriptures and everything and then asks about the burning in the bosom thing. We explain it and then she told us why. Last week in the English class we talked baout how to bear your testimony in English. She kind of did it in the class but never said that "I believe this church is true" phrase. She just talked about prayer and general things. I left them the homework to translate their testimony and while she was translating her testimony into Englsih, she said that she felt the burning in the bosom and knew that the church was true. She talked to her mom about getting baptized and just told us that she´s waiting on her mom to be able to put the date, so that her mom can attend. It was really cool.

I did exchanges this week and while I was on exchanges, Elder Lamping and Elder Bautista taught Bety. She´s going to get baptized on October 12th, that is if her baby isn´t born before. She has been feeling a little sick lately and they gave her a blessing. When they finished giving the blessing she looked around and asked, "How many hands were on my head?" and they respond that just four. However, she responded saying that she felt more hands on her head and somebody with their hands on her shoulders, too. It was a pretty neat experience and she says that she´ll never forget it.

Yesterday we got called over to a group of drunk guys while we were walking. It happens a lot when one of them just wants to speak english. So, this guy just asked us if we wanted to drink, and of course we said no, but that we were looking for people to be taught. He replied, "I´m too drunk to be teached, but maybe next week!" I wanted to reply to him, "Maybe your just too drinked to be taught!" and see if he noticed, but I thought I´d better not. :) Where would the comedy come from without drunk people?

Anyway, love you all but I gotta go. No time left. We hope to find somehwere wlse to wash this week, but we´ll see about that.

Loves!

Elder Hill

Llamado a servir ~ Called to Serve! I Hope They Call me On a Mission, I am A Child of God y Sisters in Zion!

Gordon B. Hinckley: I love the youth of the Church. I have said again and again that I think we have never had a better generation than this. How grateful I am for your integrity, for your ambition to train your minds and your hands to do good work, for your love of the word of the Lord, and for your desire to walk in paths of virtue and truth and goodness.

Thomas S. Monson: To the youth, we plead with you to live clean lives, for the unclean life leads only to suffering, misery, and woe physically,—and spiritually it is the path to destruction. How glorious and near to the angels is youth that is clean; this youth has joy unspeakable here and eternal happiness hereafter. Sexual purity is youth’s most precious possession; it is the foundation of all righteousness.

Piernas Maravillosas, Marvelous Legs, "Mission Rolls" AND PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED!

ELDER MATT HILL WITH HIS COMPANION ELDER JOSH LAMPING

So, when Zeagler and I found out where we were going (to pure hills), he started telling members that he was going to have some "piernas maravillosas" or "marvelous legs". He´s a funny kid and it´s right.

ELDERS HILL y ZEAGLER WITH DISTRICT

LOL, ELDER MATT HILL SHINING ELDER BRANDON ZEAGLER'S SHOES!!

ELDER ZEAGLER Y ELDER HILL, still SO SERIOUS!

There have been a couple days when we are late for an appt or it´s raining, and we have to pretty much run up the hills and it´s tiring. The first week back here has been great and I´ve seen a lot of members that I met last year. There are a few from La Quebrada that I didn´t see yesterday in church, but I´m sure I´ll see them in the coming weeks. It´s been fun to be back, however, it´s a little deceiving because I feel like it should be May again and it´s nearly October. This is a good area to finish the mish because I´ll lose a little bit of my ´mission rolls´and all that, and the ward is good. 

Turns out that Elder Lamping have a lot in common, too! He´s Josh, and has a brother named Matthew. His mom is Wendy. He likes mountain biking and also worked a little in construction with his dad. Also, turns out that he played with Christopher Griggs back in the day and his grandma is one of their old neighbors. The world just seems so small. He´s a good kid and has a great spirit and love for the work. He´s usually teaching me how to keep up the good work. 

This week I have gotten to know a few of the investigators and members that we are teaching right now. Silvia is about my age and has been coming to church for a while and I don´t really know why she doesn´t get baptized because she wants to read D&C and everything, comes to church, comes to activities, and all. We have an appt tomorrow to see her. There are a few people that Elder Lamping hasn´t really been able to tell me about because when he met them for the first time, he didn´t really understand what they do or things like that. We have contacted a few people like Francisco and Maria. They were two different contacts that we did in the street looking for other people and they seem really nice. We have appts to contact them and teach them this week. We´ve been focusing a lot on ALWAYS asking for referrals, which is what it says in the back of PMG. This week we got 10 and we hope to get more this week. Antonio is a less active member and his wife, Maria, isn´t a member but seems to like the church a lot, but hasn´t gone in a while. Efrain is a guy who just loves to have us over and feed us dinner but he doesn´t want to commit to doing anything in the church. He doesn´t want to stop working. Our appt on Saturday we were going to drop him and not visit anymore, but as we were leaving his sister in law asked us how to read the BOM and then we realized that prayers are answered. We hope to be able to teach her about how to read it and all that tonight. There are a few other people that I honestly don´t remember right now. Don´t have a lot of time, but I´ll be sure to take better notes next week and let you know more. 

Time to just keep haulin´ along in the Valle de Tules and work hard. The district is really cool with Elders Chandler (knew him in Queretaro) and Bautista, Elders Valdez and Garcia, and Sisters Ibaven, Pérez, and Rosa. 

Be good! Love you all! 

Elder Hill  

Well, I was going to upload a picture or two but looks like this computer has a virus and erased my memory card. Patience is obviously a virtue I have yet to master. :) 

Thanks for looking into it all. If you could please just do that I would really appreciate it. Also, think about coming down in the summer instead of getting me. I think that it would be a lot easier. Gotta go. Love you. Forgot to write that we have cockroaches again, too. I was going to send a picture, but it´s gone so I´ll let you know what´s up later. 

Loves ya tons, 

Elder Hill 

¡Feliz Grito de la Independencia! !Happy September 16th! Weird Transfers!

¡Feliz Grito! ¡Viva México!!! "¡Vivan los héroes que nos dieron patria! ¡Viva la independencia nacional, viva el bicentenario de la Independencia, viva el centenario de la Revolución! ¡Viva México!"

Wow.... transfers were so weird this time! 

Elder Zeagler and I were to totally thinking that we wouldn´t have transfers because he was being trained and it´s not too common that they change that sort of companionship. What´s even more strange is that they take both Elders out and put Sisters in! I received a call from Pres. Call on Friday asking about the area (and it´s not the safest area out there) and when I told him that it wasn´t too safe for sisters he told me that he needed to find a lot of areas for Sisters. However, I didn´t think that they would be put in my area.  The Sisters are taking over the mission! There were a ton of sisters in the office today!  It´s all good though. I have been super stressed out since Saturday when they told us that because we had to let the people that we had been teaching know because we couldn´t just leave them there hangin’ and we went around with the ward mission leader to show him the area and all that jazz. Lots of filling out paperwork and getting the house clean so that the sisters could get there without problems. I started packing this morning at 9:30a and that was the hardest thing ever.

ELDER HILL AND ELDER ZEAGLER WITH ELDER ZEAGLER'S NEW COMPANION?

On Monday night we had an FHE lesson in Spanglish! The Bishop´s son and wife and a young couple came down from California to visit and see the grito for the 15th and the wives didn´t speak a whole lot of English. So, for the bishop to understand and an investigator that they brought, and the wives to understand, we spoke Spanglish. It was a lot harder than I thought trying to teach in English. It´s a whole different world. Also, the Bishop´s daughter in law was asked to speak in church on Sunday and the bishop just calls me up and says, "And now Elder Hill will help Sister Flores translate here message."...... I´m just like... What? It turned out being okay but I spaced out sometimes and forgot what she said and I had to ask her again. 

ELDER ZEAGLER CLEANING

Also, the question that usually comes up in any relationship came up last week. Elder Zeagler asked me, "When you first saw me, what did you think?" and I told him that when I saw him he was the only one with glasses and looked really serious and really lost and I thought, I hope it´s not him. (because, two serious people just doesn´t work too well) and he said, "When I first saw you I was like, yep´! I want to be with him because I know he speaks English!" It was funny and I was dead wrong about him being serious! Ha! He´s a funny kid! I´m sure I´ll miss him! 

We found a guy named Ricardo on Wednesday. We were leaving the private residence where he lives and he was standing in the door and just says, "Adios Elderes!" Now when that happens here you just stop dead in your tracks and go talk to the person ‘cause that doesn´t happen too much. Turns out that his brother is from La Quebrada and I know him! We met last year. So we started teaching him and all that and he´s pretty interested. The sisters have an appt tonight with him. It was interesting how we got to run into him because if things would have worked out how they were planned, we wouldn´t have been able to. Long story short, we went to eat but they wouldn´t let us in at the other entrance of the complex and they made us go to the other side. I was super frustrated because the renta cop was talking smack to me and I just decided to leave. I talked to the owner of the security company who gave us permission to go in whenever we want, and turns out that the sister wasn´t there so we went back out the way we came and there was Ricardo. He for some reason didn´t have work that day and he happened to be standing in his doorway with a movie paused.. Coincidence? I think not!! 

ELDER RICHARDSON AND ELDER HILL

Well, I gotta go. The whole Mexican 4th thing turned out okay. I actually slept that night which is really weird. I haven´t been sleeping well and on the night that probably made the most noise, I slept. Thanks for the stuff you sent with César. He´s a cool guy. I took advantage of the opportunity and left him with a few pamphlets from the Church and he said that he´d read them. We´ll see what happens. 

Have a nice week! Love you all! 

Gotta go because it´s late and we got work to do. 

So, If you could just confirm that for me about DCSO and all that, perfect. It would be a good part time job if they pay for post and paramedic. If you could just get the timelines good that´d be great. Also, I was thinking, It might be easier to come down during spring break so that des doesn´t get out of school and it will be easier to do other things when I ´m not a missionary.... etc. think about it. 

Loves,

Elder Hill 

fotos-Elder Zeagler at work dusting the couch cover and Elder Lamping

ELDER MATT HILL WITH ELDER JOSHUA LAMPING

from Draper! Totally forgot to let you know that he´s my new companion. I´ll tell you more about him next week. 

Sacrament and White Sheets....Symbolic

ELDER MATT HILL

So, I´m not sure if I´ll be able to write next Monday, it might be Tuesday. Next Sunday and Monday is the annual "grito" (on the night of the 15th) and the parades on the 16th for the Mexican 4th of July. Normally everything is shut down on that Day and nobody does anything but games and parades and everything. Others just get drunk, but I won´t go into much detail about that. So, just a heads up, you might not get a letter on Monday, but on Tuesday. It´s pretty crazy around this time of year because they always shoot off fireworks all hours of the night and day and a lot of people get drunk.... really drunk. I´ll let you know next week how it went. 

Elder Zeagler snapped this of Elder Hill! LOL!

ELDERS HILL Y ZEAGLER

We´re still not finding new people to teach but we´ve been teaching the members and it´s been good. We have been teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost, Enduring to the End) and two families have told us that it´s been an answer to their prayers, and we didn´t have any idea they needed it. It´s a good feeling to be able to help teach people sometimes as if they were an investigator as well. None of us is perfect and we all need the same teachings over and over because we tend to forget even the most important details. 

DAVID Y ELDER HILL

PAULINA Y FAMILIA Y ELDERS ZEAGLER Y HILL
she's studying here in Utah!

Yesterday in the Gospel Principles class we talked about the Sacrament. I was reminded of a couple times when I was volunteering in the ER I was asked to help move some patients who had passed away. The view of a deceased body while it´s on the gurney covered by a white sheet and the Sacraments while it´s on the table is a striking resemblance. It´s supposed to be symbolic and I remember how I was thinking about who that person may have been, what he do fro a living? What was his family like? The feeling was a feeling of reverence and I feel like sometimes I take that attitude away from the Sacrament. I should be thinking more about Christ and getting to know him. It´s just a thought that came to mind yesterday. 

We visited a family this week who has quite a few grand daughters. One of them was talking about bones and she turned to her sister with whom she was arguing and said, "If you didn´t have bones, you´d be all soggy!" It was just a funny moment. :) 

Well, keep going. I hope that all is well. If you are going to come down as a family it would be okay if Josh & Des came down but you´d have to rent a car because to go a whole bunch of white, English speaking people on the bus, well, that´s just nuts! We´ll cross that bridge when we get to it. 

Thanks for looking into everything for me. I´ll let you know later what´s going on. 

Loves,

Elder Hill 

WHAT'S GOOD Y THE TITLE OF LIBERTY

So, another NC phrase is "What´s good?" I hadn´t heard it since Queretaro because there was a family there who lived in Georgia and they said the same thing. It makes more sense than saying what´s up? but I won´t ever admit that to my companion! ;) He also says "good land." When it rains, they say that in NC their future wife gets cuter by the second, so he´s always hoping that it rains (and I´m hoping that it doesn´t.) 

We were walking to an appt the other day when some guy hands us like a little advertisement for the store that he works at. My companion says, "Thanks! Let me give you one, too!" and he pulls out a pamphlet about the Gospel of Jesus Christ..... The guy just looked at him like, ´okay...thanks.... you´re weird´and I just laughed. Then another day we did an FHE with a family and Raúl took us home in his taxi. Zeagler was hanging out the window on Friday night traffic telling people to read the Book of Mormon and people just thought he was crazy. I had to be a "agua fiestas" and tell him that it´s probably not thee best idea to do that. Some people might keep that image about the church forever! 

We´ve still been struggling to find new investigators. We´re going to work more with the ward leaders and try to strengthen them. The stake president went to our ward council meeting and said that there is a lot of discouragment and suppressiveness in the ward and that we all need to pick it up and smile more. It really helps. That´s what our job will be for the next little while. 

Elder Hill, (Whom has been compared on numerous occasions to Captain Moroni),
signed his name and mission dates on Capt. Moroni

I hope that things can get better. Keep praying, fasting, and being obedient. Blessings come. 

Loves! 

Elder Hill