February 27, 2012

Hola de la Colmena

Wow, that is a super impressive website.  I'm excited for you mom.  We had a conference this past week with Elder Johnson of the seventy. He is area president here in Mexico.  It was very rewarding to listen and feel his spirit.  Right now we have many families in teaching.  Each is progressing at different rates, but we are getting there.   I just got back from immigration, I signed my visa for my last time, and they gave me a tarjeta so that I can leave the country.  Our mission will be changing drastically in the coming months.  The mission will lose 88 missionaries in the coming 5 months.  That's a lot of newbies coming in.  I'm almost positive that I will be training my last two changes.

I hooked you up with some photos, the first pic where I'm holding my hands up, if you look close in between my hands you can see Popocatepetl. It’s an active volcano here in Mexico city.  You can’t see it in the pic but it’s putting out a bunch of smoke. Looks like it’s ready to blow.  Normally you can’t see Popo from where we are because of all the clouds (its really pollution but i like to think of them as clouds, to make me feel better).  Another pic is of me and Miguel in our luchador masks.  Nachooooooooo!   And the last pic is just me preaching to the Colmena.

I love you.  I'm glad to here that things are getting started with the dyslexia program.  Keep it going strong.  I did get the package. I’ll put those shirts to work.  Thanks for the Snickers. The district thought they were great.  ¡que tenga buen semana!

Con Amor
Elder Gardner

February 20, 2012

Hey, hey, Hey

I hope all is well in the Land of the Brave.  Just wanted to share with you all a little of what I've been thinking about this week.  I read a talk from Elder Christoferson, titled “Moral Discipline”.  I thought about you all starting up your new lives, battling with children, some of you have callings with the youth, and we have the elections for a new president coming up.  This talk hammers down what we need to learn and fight to protect, and what those young kids of the world need to know.

All is going just smooth down here in tortilla land.  I love you all and hope things are just swinging along.  

Here is the link to the talk.

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2009/10/moral-discipline?lang=eng&query=moral+discipline

If that doesn't work its Elder D. Todd Christoferson's talk in Oct. 2009 called “Moral Discipline”. 

Peace be the journey,

Elder Gardner

Make sure to check out the footnotes (or references) at the end of the talk!

February 6, 2012

Dear Mom,

I got my hands on some Skippy peanut butter.  Within the last 3 days I've eaten 2 loaves of bread worth of PB&J sandwiches.  I love my peanut butter and root beer. 

Well, another transfer has come and gone. Today starts Elder Castro's last change on the mission.  It’s my first time killing someone.  My job this change is to keep the kid´s head in the game for the last 6 weeks.  No, he´s doing good but he loves to remind me how much time he has left.  I'm excited for this transfer, we have a lot of potential.  We just need to animate some families to get married.  Right now we have 4 families waiting to get married so they can get baptized.  Mom, Esperanza is doing really well.  Her problem right now is that the dad of her two boys is super catholic and comes to visit every Miercoles.  He has said that he doesn't want his kids to go to church, but that if Esperanza wants to go she can.   Esperanza told us that her boys loved the church and that they will keep attending.  We told her she is learning quicker than most people, she told us, "I think it just has been my time to find the Church."  I’ll let you know what happens with her in the coming weeks.  Mom, I would love to bring you to a lesson with us, that would be awesome.  I love you, good luck with the homework.  Give those little boys a big hug from me.  Thanks so much.

Con Amor,

Elder Gardner