January 19, 2015
Hi All:
This
week was pretty successful. We put ourselves to work and had some really good
numbers. We also found some amazing people to teach that are progressing really
well. And lots of funny moments. Still can’t send pictures. I need to find a Mexican
computer nerd.
One of our investigators
names is Daniela. She’s super awesome our neighbor said we should go visit her
and talk to her. So we went and she’s super awesome and has a baptismal date
for 14 of February. She’s read everything we’ve ever left with her, and remembers
everything and has gotten answers to her prayers and knows that it’s true. I’m
half tempted to just leave Preach My Gospel at her house and see what happens.
We left a Book of Mormon with her and explained it and I assume she’s read a lot.
We have a lot of awesome
people were teaching and killed it as far as numbers go this week. We have 4
baptisms programmed for Feburarry. Aar! I forgot how to spell it so I’m hoping
to see a lot of success soon. President gave us an awesome incentive to
complete our goals as a mission. If an entire zone completes their personal
goals for new investigators every month, we can do ANYTHING we want on p-day
and president will come with us, and PAY for it!!! ANYTHING! We can go
swimming, to the movies, play paintball! Anything!! So were pretty stoked for
that. I want to go surfing.
My companion is very
funny, but he doesn’t really try to be. He’s an awesome guy and very sincere,
but he hasn’t had a lot of real world experience. Like he’s never been to a
barber shop and doesn’t know how he likes his hair cut so I had to choose a
style. Lots of little things like that. When he first got here I had to show
him how to iron his shirt. He’s really awesome though. We get a long pretty
well even though he’s quiet. Also I saw him eat a booger in personal study, and
I was like, “Dude! That’s gross!!” and then he looked at the ground really
ashamed and said, “I know... I’m sorry.” ahha I almost died laughing.
Also, he laughs at the
word poop, a lot. So I told some members to say it to him every now and then. And
I told a member when we were eating with them and Elder L. was like, “I don’t
always laugh... then the member yelled “poop,” and he busted up laughing and
the member said “poop” for like the next half an hour. I almost died of
laughter that day too.
Things are going really
well here. We’re having good success and working hard. I feel close to fluent
in Spanish. I’m just trying to perfect my accent. People tell me it’s pretty
decent, but I want to get to the point where I lose my English accent and if I
were to talk to someone on the phone they would think I was Mexican. But it’s
kinda tough.
I’m pretty excited about
the Seahawk’s win, and the time passes so fast. I already have 9 months!
Love Elder Latimer
P.S.
I miss snowboarding and wake boarding a lot. I
was thinking about that today. But yeah, I’m learning a lot here and lots of
cool experiences. Some members have told us awesome stories about like 3
nephites and John the Beloved encounters. I was gonna ask you guys if there’s
anything cool like that in our family? I know something like that happened to
Nana once. Or Dad, if you have any really cool mission stories, I’d like to
hear them. Same goes for Josh or anyone else.
I love you all and hope
everything is going well! Tell Oliver I hope he feels better.
January 26, 2015
Dear Everyone:
This week as pretty great we taught a lot of lessons, like 33,
so that was great. It’s pretty calm here. Nothing crazy has happened recently,
just working hard I guess. I can’t really think of anything new or exciting other
than that we have some great investigators, and we have a couple baptisms
programmed for the 14th of February: Daniela and Vanessa. And Rigo can get
baptized whenever he wants, he just has Jehovah’s Witness friends that throw
like little doubts at him. For example, one of his doubts was why the Elders
wear white shirts. It’s sad.
I feel like I might get transferred this change. I kinda don’t
want to because I want to see these baptisms go through, and finish training
Elder L. But I’ve been here for like 4 and a half months so who knows? I’ve had
more companions in my mission than I have had transfers, but I like it because
I know a lot of people because of it. Well see if I go to Los Cabos!
I’ve been reading the Bible all the way through in Spanish
(new testament) and I just started 1 Corinthians. There are a ton of awesome
scriptures in all of Paul’s letters. And I usually get nervous for changes
because I want to baptize these people I’ve found and taught and put so much
effort in. But I was reading and Paul says that he that plants the seed is no
greater than the one who waters it or who harvests it. So that kinda helped me,
knowing that the number of baptisms doesn’t indicate how much success you have
had in your mission.
I like that thing you told me, Mom, about Jesus´s baptism. That’s
really cool! I never thought about that before. I’m trying to think of weird
things that have happened, but it’s been really normal. But there is this
little dog named Pirata that lives in front of our house and when we leave he
ALWAYS slips through the gate and poops diarrhea all over. He knows that we
know too! I look at him every day and he avoids eye contact with me, and I say
I know you did it! And he runs away.... freaking devil dog.
Also my watch broke. It’s been sort of broke for like 3
months now but the battery ran out, and I tried opening it up to look at it and
the whole thing fell out and broke on the floor. So I doodled a watch on a
piece of paper and put it inside the glass part and wrote “Gucci” on it hah. It
was pretty awesome. But I finally bought a new watch for like 120 pesos and it’s
pretty nice.
Time is flying by here. I’m still trying to get my accent to
be perfect but it’s hard to pick someone to imitate here because everyone talks
so differently. But who knows, I’ve still got a lot of time in the mission so
well see how I progress.
That’s cool that Joe is into psychology! People here always
try to get us to interpret dreams for them so maybe Joe would like to serve in
Mexico or a South American mission aha. I’ve heard some pretty crazy
experiences that people have had with dreams. I have lots of weird stories
about that but I don’t feel like typing them ahha.
I hope the seahawks win! I’m glad you’re all doing good. It
sounds like that diet Dad and Mom are doing sucks. I would rather just get fat
and die young. Hope everything keeps going good! Miss you guys a lot.
Love, Elder Latimer
February
2, 2015
Dear
Everyone:
I’m
staying here for another change so I’ll be here for the baptisms we have
programmed. I SAW THE GAME. I was in a lesson with a recent convert (Edwin) and
my district leader called me and yelled ELDER LATIMER YOUR TEAM IS WINNING, so
I told Edwin what he said and he turned the game on, so I watched like the last
6 minutes of the 4th quarter. It was insane. I was so depressed. I figure we
lost because I watched it. Because Josh didn’t watch it [last year on his
mission] and we won and I watched the last 6 minutes and we lost... I’m to
blame.
This was a pretty decent
week we taught a lot of good lessons, and I ate the biggest plate of nachos I’ve
ever seen. It was probably like 3 or 4 pounds. Needless to say it was a great
way to start my fast. But eating all that grease then not drinking water for 24
hours gave me a huge migraine so that sucked. But I’m actually planning to kill
this dog that lives on our street, not only does he always poop on our porch
but the past three nights he has been barking at like 3 in the morning for
intervals of 30 minutes. At one point I actually got up put on a shirt and
threw rocks at him... I hate him.. He is my mortal enemy.
Also I’ve got some stories
that are pretty nanners:
Alma (Edwin’s wife) has
told us before she had a dream where an angel told her she shouldn’t be
baptized. We brought the bishop with us to teach them a lesson and she brought
up her dreamed again but this time she added a detail that she never told us
before. The angel said: “Don’t worry you don’t need to be baptized, because you
are already in paradise.” Which we took to mean, yes when she dies she will go
to paradise in the spirit world but won’t be able to obtain a celestial glory.
We’re pretty convinced it’s a demon or Satan as an angel of light because she’s
also told us that she knows she needs to be baptized she just isn’t sure what
church. She has a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and
everything we have taught, but it seems like some external forces are working
on her.
That’s actually the only
crazy story. But another cool one is that we went to go visit a member who is
one of my favorite members, Hermano Guero. We got there and he was like dying
because he has kidney stones and he said they’re like huge crystals and really
long and thick and there is like 7 of them. And he asked us for a blessing and
I gave him one. In the blessing I didn’t say the pain would be taken away or
anything like that. I was going to but I didn’t. Then he asked me afterwards
why I didn’t say that, and I said, “Well I don’t know. I didn’t feel like i
should.” But then he told me that the pain was totally gone and he was able to
go back to work, which was a really, really cool experience for me to see the
Lord work in that way. He actually didn’t tell me right after the blessing he
felt better but he told us Sunday in priesthood when we were talking about the
proper way to perform a priesthood blessing. Anyhoo I just thought it was cool.
Im glad Joe got into
BYUI! He and Tyler are gonna have so much fun. It’s like constant fun and
awesomeness. I figured out that my memory has a virus so I have to use a member’s
computer software or something to debug it. But I have a lot of really cool
pictures to send.
I’m crazy jealous that
you’re going to Europe. I always wanted to go there. Make sure to take lots of
pictures and send me a souvenir or something! This year has gone by so fast. I
just finished 1 Corinthians and I’m also reading a book, “The Day of Defense”
(in Spanish), but it’s really cool. It’s how 2 missionaries defend the church
and I’m learning a lot from it as well.
Im glad everything is
going well, but tell Jonathan that the world won’t end because we lost ahha. I’m
not sure if anyone has ever won back to back super bowls. Anyhoo, I love you
all, and I’m glad you’re well!
February
9, 2015
Dear All:
I did send a letter [We
didn’t get last week’s letter for some reason]. I forwarded it again. Ugh! That’s
frustrating. This week was kinda frustrating. I’m working like a dog over here
to help people and not a single person came to church this Sunday. I was pretty
bummed about that because we did like everything possible but no one came. How
sad, but I did have a kinda cool experience were some Christian lady wanted to
argue with us, and I sort of destroyed her ahaha. I’ll tell more about it, but I won’t go into
all the detail.
First off in the morning
in my studies I was thinking we always ask our investigators to ask and pray to
see if what we teach is true, so after my personal studies I kneeled down to
pray and ask as well. And I felt a very strong feeling when I asked so it was
cool to get that testimony reaffirmed. (This will tie in to the story)
We decided to go visit
this lady. She was a street contact and we went to go follow up with her, and
she was a total bust. We walk in the door and start talking and she just starts
attacking us ahah. But it was awesome because I kept my cool and shut down
basically everything she said. The argument actually started because I asked
her if we could say a prayer in her house with her, and she just went off about
a whole bunch of stuff. But some of the funnier parts were that she said Joseph
Smith couldn’t have been a prophet because he isn’t mentioned in the bible. So
I said “Could you please show me at any part in the Old Testament where Peter,
James, John, Judas, Paul, etc are mentioned by name in the Old Testament? Or
even better could you please show me the name Jesus Christ in the Old Testament?”
haha. She got a little mad about that. Then little things like that kept
happening and I started to think well she’s just not gonna understand anything
we say to her so were gonna share our testimonies.
So I was like, “You don’t
have to believe anything I say or that my companion says. I know that if you
read this book and pray to know if it’s true, you’ll know it and you won’t be
able to deny it, because I just did it like 3 hours ago and The Holy Ghost told
me that it’s true.” And a whole bunch of other stuff. Then then my companion
shared his testimony, which was amazing because it totally shut her up. She
couldnt refute anything we said or anything she had felt in that moment. Then I
invited her to look on www.lds.org and
read something by Thomas S. Monson to see if he’s a prophet, and she grumbly
agreed! ahah. Then I asked her if we could help her do anything (clean, wash
dishes etc) then she said no, and instantly became more friendly and offered us
water ahah. I think she felt bad.
I felt like Peter and
John when they were brought before a court in Acts 4 and were going to be
killed and all they did was share their testimonies and they were set free. I
learned a lot. Mostly that anyone can deny your claims in the scriptures no
matter how reasonable or correct they are, but there isn’t anyone that can deny
a true witness of God and Jesus Christ.
Other than that the week
kinda sucked. I kinda got frustrated because were working hard but didn’t see
any fruits this week. Oh well, I know it will get better. That’s too bad about
Jace and the Super Bowl haha but it will all get better. I’m sure it will get
better. We have a couple of investigators and were hoping to see a few baptisms
this week or maybe the next. Vanesa, Alma, Rigoberto. I’m really hoping to have
more success.
I miss trek and youth
conferences. I wish I could be there! I’ll tell josh to go to BYUI so we can
room together maybe ahah. It’s so much fun. Can you send me his email?
Love, Elder Latimer
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