A few pictures

Happy Day!

January 27th   2014

Hello, hello, everyone. I´m glad that you had a good stake conference, and that you learned a lot. It´s definately good advice to remember. I have learned a lot about similar things this week. I have really come to learn that we have to put our faith in the Savior, something that I have not been doing very well at at times. He is the only way that we can be saved and that we can improve our lives. I am really working to put my faith in him. I am also trying to be strictly obedient because I know that those small rules that sometimes don´t seem like a big deal can make a huge difference if we follow them. I like the analogy of the chick and the egg. It really makes sense. A lot of times we don´t want to do things because they seem hard, but in the end they will make us stronger. I´m glad that you basically have all of the ward reorganized dad. It sounds like it was a lot of work, but I think that it will be good in the end. That´s really funny about the cats too. I can really see them liking a lazer pointer. In fact I did see it in the videos that you sent. They´re funny. I´m glad that Watson is doing better too. We had a pretty decent week. We are still struggling to reach the norms of excellence, but we are working with the members more and we had 7 invstigators in sacrament meeting this weekend which was great. They all had a great experience and are anxious to return. We haven´t seen Brother G. since he started his new job so.....we don´t really know what´s going on. We talked to his family a couple of times, and they said they would see us in church but they didn´t come. There are a lot of people with problems here. We have been giving a lot of preisthood blessings lately. We had the opportunity to give a couple yesterday. They were both very good experiences. The one was very very powerful. I am working to set a lot of goals too dad. I am working on a 5 year plan in my ´spare time´ which isn´t much haha, but I felt that I needed to do it. I hope that it will be beneficial. Also, we get to have a conference with Dallin H. Oaks in 2 weeks which should be pretty sweet. Thanks for your prayers, and for the strength that you are to me. I´ll try to have a specific list of people to pray for next week. Have an awesome week!!!

Elder Schow

January 20, 2014

January 20, 2014

Hola! How is everyone? I'm really glad that I got to hear from you all. It really brightens my week. Wow those are some huge changes in the ward. I can imagine that it was probably a little bit sad for you guys. It sounds like it will be a lot of work for you to reorganize everything dad. Good luck! I think that it will be good in the long run though. I can imagine that you will miss some people. Oh and thanks for checking my bank account and such. Oh, and I got that card from the ward. Thanks! I have no idea who some of the people are but it was really nice to hear from everyone. The other letters from Maddie, Becky, and Susan never came though so maybe it isn't the best idea to send your patriarchal blessings at all. It's up to you guys. No biggie either way. Oh and will you tell Susan and Becky thank you please?

Oh that´s really cool that you are going to have FHE with the S. Did you invite them or did the Ms? This is one of the best ways to do missionary work. I really hope that it goes well once it happens. There are really great family. I glad that you like that Book Thief. I'm excited to see it eventually haha. Lauren and Cams new "baby" is really cute. (this is a kitty)  I'm glad that they were able to find a kitty. Oh I didn't even know that Mark and Tawny were going to have a baby. That's awesome though. I'm really happy for them. It's really hard to keep track of all of my cousins and their kids. There are so many now haha. I hope Grandma's surgery goes well. I feel bad I haven't had time to write them for a while. Please tell them and your parents that I love them.

Well we got permission to baptize B. G, buuuttttt he ended up getting a job in a different city like 20 minutes before we told him and so he had to report to work this weekend. He wants to have his baptism this coming Saturday, but he still hasn´t has his baptismal interview and so we don't know if it's going to happen. It´s great that he got a job because his family really needs that money but at the same time it really complicates things. We really hope that we don't lose him and his family. We had a good day yesterday. We were with a member of our ward for a while and she helped us find 6 new investigators. It was a miracle. We have several good investigators. The most difficult thing is getting them to come to church. We're still working on that. We have a good start to this week though and so things should go good.

Our new apartment is nice. We're still waiting for a fridge and an ironing board but it's okay. We eat a lot of ramen and tortillas haha. I'll send pictures.

 

Love Britton

P.S. can you please forward me Ethan´s emails?

January 13th 2014

January 13th 2014

Hola from Mexico. So yeah we found an apartment and are no longer living on the floor. CELEBRATION!!!!! We're living in the Beverly Hills of Mexico. It's a really nice area with guards and everything. I'm going to try to send a couple of pictures today. The only problem is we don't have a fridge for like a week so our food options are pretty slim for a while haha. Oh and it turns out that it´s a lot further away from our work than the other apartment. Oh well, we're hoping that they'll divide the area soon and put sister missionaries in the apartment that we are living in. And it's okay because it's a lot easier to focus in an apartment that only has 2 elders versus one that has 4. They changed the standards of excellence for our mission this last week. Well, actually the area presidency did. We have to teach between 40 and 60 lessions every week, have 15-20 investigators in sacrament meeting, and every companionship is supposed to baptize every week. It is a lot of work. We tried really, really hard to meet these goals this week, but we fell short. It's okay though. We are trying our hardest. We are supposed to have a baptism this week for Brother G, but he didn't come to church this week. We talked to the zone leaders and they said that we should still baptize him because he has come 4 times and his reason for not coming was legitimate. We have to call the mission president though and ask for his counsel so it's still kind of up in the air. We want him to get baptized, but we want him to understand the covenant that he is going to make first. So at the start of this year I decided that I wasn't going to speak English for the whole year...other than with you guys of course. It´s going pretty well. It's really hard at times but I am learning how to speak in Spanish a lot better. Now it's just a matter of understanding spanish. It will come though. I've only slipped and used English a couple of times. I'm interested to hear what changes that they make in your stake. I saw a poster for the Book Thief movie yesterday. I hope it's good because the book was pretty good. I have a favor to ask. Can you please check my bank accounts periodically?     I have used my Well's Fargo card twice. One in the the temple shop and once in the Bodega Aurrera. If anything is different please let me know and the bank as well. I haven't used the other card at all. Also, I don't know if you guys would be comfortable with this but I was wondering if you and dad could possibly email me a copy of your patriarchal blessings to read. If not it's totally okay. They're very personal. I just thought it would be strengthening to see which promises had come to pass in your lives. Like I said if not don't worry. I can't believe Curtis left already. That's crazy. Please continue to pray for the G. family. We have like 25 investigators but I don't have time to list them all. Love you all.

Elder Schow

 

 

January 6th 2014

January 6th 2014

Hola familia y otros personas que posible van a leer esto!

We get to write today because I guess transfers are in Tuesdays. Butttt...I´m not transferring!!! I'm staying in Cafetales with Elder Patey for at least one more transfer. I'm excited to continue to work here with him.   I think that we have a lot to learn from each other, and we have a ton of work to do. Incidentally we had a killer week this week; we led the zone in lessons, new investigators, baptismal dates, etc! We had kind of been struggling for a while, but we really tried to change our prayers this week and poof, we received success out of nowhere. This really taught us a lesson. If our prayers are not as sincere as they should be we will not receive help in our work. It was kind of a bummer though, we had 21 people that committed to come to sacrament meeting and not a one came :( We even called everyone to confirm that they were coming. We were pretty sad because the Gonzales family didn't come and their baptismal dates fell. We will get them all to come this week though. Our district leader gave us a lot of tips and we are in good spirits. :) I think we have a baptism in 2 weeks for Brother Gonzales.. We also still have several other people with baptismal dates too, and we are going to work really hard to help them to meet their goal. I am really starting to see how the gospel can change lives. I have seen it start to change the lives of many people. I am glad to be a part of it. I made several New Years resolutions. One of them is to exercise every morning. It is sooo hard to get up haha, but I just need to force myself to do it. We get beds soon too which is a great blessing. We are going to move into an apartment on top of the mansion of one of the members of our ward. There is an amazing view up there. It's pretty sweet. This family is awesome, they wanted to let us use their apartment for free, but because the church has to pay them they are going to give the money to the church missionary fund. They are so giving. We just need to find a member that has a vehicle large enough to bring beds, etc. from the mission office. Hopefully this week. That was nice of Elder Johnson's mom. He´s a great missionary and his Spanish is amazing for how little time he has here. He'll be a trainer or something for sure. Thank you for your prayers. You're all in my prayers too. It's so good to hear from you all. You are a huge strength to me. If you want to you can pray for the Gonzales family, the Carmona Family, and the Rodriguez family. Talk to you soon. Oh, and good luck with your goal to do missionary work. My advice is work with the missionaries in your ward or stake. They can really help you and you can really help them, even if all you can do is go to a lesson with them or something. The missionaries need the help of members. This is a huge problem in many places, especially here. The members don't realize we need their help and can't do this alone. Good luck. Let me know how it goes.

Elder Schow.

Almost a new year!

  December 30th    2013

Hola family and others,

I'm really happy I got to Skype you too!!! It really was weird at first. Sometimes it really feels like you guys don't exist hahaha. Sorry it didn't function in the end, I'm glad I got to hear your voices though! I'm glad that you all had a great Christmas and that you got to spend time with family! Hopefully you told everyone "hi" for me haha. I hope you had fun Skyping with Ethan too. I wish I could've Skped him a little bit. I need to be better about writing him. We spend a couple of hours with the Guttierez family for Christmas Eve. They were so nice we had a Christmas message and then a dinner. They gave us sweaters, ties, socks, and little blankets for Christmas. We were really surprised because we weren't expecting anything. It was super nice of them and it was perfect because on of my sweaters ripped on a bush when we were running to cross the street that exact same day. They invited us over for New Years Eve also! We get to stay out until 10:15 if they give us a ride home. Christmas was definitely different without you guys. We had 8 elders at our apartment. We all cooked a bunch of things for breakfast like waffles (one of the elders has a sesame street waffle maker which is definitely a rarity), French toast, etc. My package came and a letter from Lauren!!! Consequently the address is right. Thanks so much for the gifts! It was fun and delicious. My companion said to tell you thanks so much also. One of the elders in our apartment didn't get anything from his family. We all pitched in and gave him a little something. It was awesome because it made his day. We think that we found an apartment but we are going to wait to move until after transfers because we don't know if we are staying here or not. Hopefully, but we'll see. At least we'll have beds either way :) Maddie driving....sounds dangerous. I kid, I kid. I know she'll do great. We got to go tour the new visitors center this week and we receive a training so that we can bring investigators. We also got to do a temple session which is really rare. It was especially cool because the temple closes this week for a year and half. I'm not really sure why because it is really nice. Anyway though it was cool. I am having more fun. My companion and I changed a lot of things this week and I am having more fun and feel more confident. We have an investigator that is progressing really well. He has come to church 4 time, viewed a baptism, and he went to the visitors center of the temple yesterday with his family! His name is Brother G. Please pray for him. He has a smoking problem that he needs to give up before he can be baptized. He is a great man and is so humble. He wants to be baptized to set an example for his family. It's super awesome to see the changes that come into a persons life when they are living the gospel. Thanks for your love and counsel. I love you all. Talk to you soon. I think on Monday.

Adios, Elder Schow

 

Britton was going to send pictures but, his card would not work in the computer.  He said he would try again next week!  :)

December 16th 2013

December 16th 2013

Hola everyone. Thanks for the advice support and prayers. I know that it´s normal for basically every missionary to struggle for a while so no worries. I actually had a better week this week in a lot of ways. I've been sick a lot of this week but I have medicine and I'm feeling better. I think I ate some bad street food. Stupid tacos haha. No worries though I am very upbeat for the most part. I have also been sleeping in my coat and have been warmer. My incision has been bugging me a lot so I'm going to watch it for another week or two and if it doesn´t improve I might go to the doctor. We'll see though. I might just have to grit my teeth and deal with it. I had companionship exchanges this week with our district leader. I went to his area for a day and a night. It's a lot rougher of an area than my area and I was a little bit nervous at first, but he really helped to reassure me that we are protected on our missions and that if we are obedient and follow the Spirit that we have nothing to worry about. He took time out of his personal study to study with me and to strengthen me. I really appreciated it. I think he is a good example of a leader. We're still looking for an apartment but with no success so please pray that we can find one. We really need one in our area because it wastes a lot of time to travel from where our apartment is now to our area. I know we'll find one eventually. The members are a big help and we always check with them to see if they have heard of any that are available.    Thanks for your advice dad. At times it's hard to remember that you have been through this exact same thing. I wish I would have asked you more about your mission before I left. We will have plenty of time to talk about it when I get home though. I look forward to it. We taught several great families this week. My spanish is getting a little better. I am learning that I need to just open my mouth and talk even if it is incorrect. All I can do is my best. We had a really good lesson with a member yesterday. He is very sick. I think that he might have Parkinsons disease. He shakes a ton and he can't talk. He really wants to go to church but he can't. We are trying to locate a wheelchair so that we can surprise him and bring him to sacrament meeting for Christmas. We are going to spend Christmas eve with a member family in our ward. They invited us to lunch and dinner. I think it will be a lot of fun. We have P-day on Christmas instead of Monday. Also, we cannot Skype in the homes of members so we will have to do it on the 23rd or 24th. I don´t know when yet for sure because it depends on when the internet cafes are open. I will let you know ASAP. I hope that that works for everyone because I really want to Skype with you all. I'm am grateful for the opportunity to be out here. It is hard but usually I love it and I know I will love it more with time. Love you all!

Elder Schow

 

(All of Britton's posts are edited and there are some experiences that are not included due to their personal or sacred nature)