Sounds like a busy week!! Our week was pretty busy as well. On Friday we had a noche blanca, when we combined all 3 zones here in Queretaro and had all the baptisms in the same building. We had 15 in total. Originally we were going to have around 30, but Satan has been working hard. My comp and I gave some baptismal interviews this week that just went really rough. Satan really knows how to get us. That's why we always need to be aware and vigilant. Anyways, the noche blanca was really cool, and I'll have some pictures of that next week I hope. We had transfers, and Elder Rubio went to be assistant. I'm gonna miss him a ton! I recieved elder Monroy. He's from my generation, and I'm really looking forward to the time that we'll have together! He's from Hidalgo, which is just a couple hours from here which is pretty interesting. I'm glad all my siblings are doing well. I helped pick up the new missionaries today from the bus terminal, and it made me think how close Andrew is to getting on the mission. He's very well prepared. I hope Connor does what makes him happy haha. It's always a little sad when family leave after visiting. But it is a nice rest haha. I'm also stoked for general conference! I still need to call the stake secretary to make sure they'll broadcast it in english for the missionaries... But I'm excited to see what our Profeta and Apóstoles have to say haha.
3/26/2018
As you can see, it was a really sunny, hot week. The sun here burns so bad... Today, I went with 6 other missionaries and we all bought some hats to wear during the day. We got tired of our faces getting burned off everyday haha. So hopefully that will make things a little better. Besides the sun, it was a pretty decent week. We worked super hard this week, but didn't have a whole lot of success. We're just gonna keep working hard. Our recent converts have been progressing so well in the church, and it makes me so happy. My companion and I are the youngest zone leaders, but it's been giving us a lot of motivation to work hard, and to try different things to help the zone. We're gonna be doing some divisiones this week, and I'm looking forward to them. I forgot my camera, so I only have the picture my comp sent me. Soon I'll send an email with a bunch of pictures. I'm really looking forward to General Conference this week. I can't remember ever having been this excited for general conference actually haha. I don't really have much more to say this week, it was pretty normal. Love you all!!
Elder Cherpeski
4/2/2018
This week was really cool! We had our zone leaders meeting with
President, and it looks like we have a lot of stuff to improve. I've
been getting along decently with my, just learning a little bit of
patience haha. General Conference was definitely the highlight of the
week, and man was that a powerful conference. President Nelson is a
prophet of God. His message was perfect for us, and something we need
to study again and again. What he said about that God and Jesus Christ
would perform some great miracles really stood out to me. Also, when he
announced the temple in Russia, we all freaked out! Luckily, I watched
all of conference in english, and it was a great time with the other
english speakers haha. I need to go back and study those talks more
in-depth. Nothing too exciting this week besides that. It's la semana
santa, so not many people were home. It made it a little tough, but we
still had some new investigators this week.
Pics: Elder Gunness and Elder Smith, they're good friends
A member has a tonnnn of Legos haha
4/9/2018
Sounds like you guys have been staying busy! I can't believe Andrew
will have his call here in a few weeks!! I'm so excited for him! A
member in our ward invited us to her call opening, and she got called to
Tabasco. It's super hot down there! Make sure to video Andrew opening
his call, and then send me the video!! It was honestly a really hard
week for me. I get along with my comp, but we really don't have a lot
of fun together. I'm trying to fix that. I'm flat out tired all the
time. I get off the phone around 10:45, and we go to sleep around 11.
Then my comp "has to have" like 5 alarms starting at 6 but he sleeps
through all of them. I think I'll just turn off all of his, use mine at
6:30 and turn on the light to wake him up. Oh well. However, we have
been having a lot of success. We found 8 new investigators this week,
and 5 came to church. We were really happy about that. The problem
right now is that nobody is accepting a baptismal date. I have some
ideas for them to say yes this week, so we'll see what happens. Oh,
also this week I went and renewed my visa. Pretty weird that I'm at the
halfway point. I still feel a little new sometimes, but it's not that
common of a feeling anymore. Well, I'm gonna write the rest of the
family right now, thanks for still writing me everyweek haha!
4/16/2018
Well, I'm halfway guys! It has been a fast year. I have learned more
than I ever thought possible. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Saints is truly the Lord's restored gospel upon the earth, and
that through covenants and living the principles of the Gospel, we can
have more happiness in our life than we ever thought possible. I have
seen miracles, tender mercies, heartbreak, changes in the hearts of
people, and the hand of the Lord in my life the last 12 months. I love
being here, and I have changed for the better. I hope everyone has a
good week, and remember that you have a loving Heavenly Father. I love
you all!!
Looks like you all had a pretty eventful week! I was able to see part
of Andrew's talent, but I didn't really understand... I'm sure it was
really funny though. Also that's cool that Dad got in New York Times
haha. This was an eventful week to say the least. We had a two days of
divisiones, the zone conference, and I broke my ten year streak of not
throwing up haha. I swear, I keep losing weight no matter what I do.
Oh well. It was awesome on divisiones this week. I went with Elder
Cunningham to his area and gave baptismal interviews to a family we had
found last transfer in divisiones. They got baptized on Saturday, and
were really excited to see me again. The zone conference was cool, and
we talked about how we can teach more in just normal contacts. My comp
and I presented a message about how we can teach the Plan of Salvation
in 3 minutes in a street contact. It was pretty cool. My interview
with Pres was pretty chill. We mostly talked about basketball and
general conference. The day after zone conferences we did divisiones
with the assistants, and Elder Rubio (my last comp) came back to the
area. It was an awesome day with him, and we had a pretty good time
hanging out again. Unfortunately, I got a stomach infection this week,
and woke up pretty sick on Sunday. However, I have medicine now, and
feel a lot better. It's crazy to think that I have a year now. On a
another note, my prediction for Andrew's mission call is the Mexico,
Baja California mission. I'm probably gonna be way off, but it would be
cool if he also came here to Mexico haha!
4/23/2018
Hey everyone, I hope you guys are doing well! My
week was pretty good! We worked super hard, and celebrated my year
mark with a little ice cream haha! I feel like I'm in that point where
everyday kind of feels the same. It makes the days go by pretty quick
haha. We have some good investigators, but we need to find some new
ones. We found 10 last week, but I don't know how many of them will
actually progress. We went by to pick up 6 investigators to church, but
one by one they all made excuses or weren't home. Only one came, but I
think he'll get baptized here pretty soon! It was pretty discouraging,
but after the sacrament and reading my patriarchal blessing I felt a
lot better. I hope they come next week. The next closest we have for
baptism is named Isaac. He's dating a member, and I think he wants to
marry her, but she refuses if he's not a member haha. But the cool
thing is that I think he actually is developing a testimony for
himself. His girlfriend is in a different ward, and he attends by
himself, so that's a good sign. He's also reading the LDM, and
praying. He's honestly a super great guy. And he speaks perfect English
haha! We have other cool investigators, but they just aren't coming to
church right now. It was pretty hot this week, but I think I'm getting
more used to it now. We gave about 7 blessing of salud this week, and
that was really cool. I started a new diet and workout to try and put
back on some weight. I now eat 3 eggs, 2 cans of tuna fish, and a
protien shake everyday on top of my other stuff. I've been doing these
intense but short workouts designed to destroy a muscle group in 6
minutes. It works haha. I've been pretty sore, but I'm starting to put
some weight back on. I think that's it for this week. I love you all,
and hope you have a fantastic week!!
4/30/2018
First of all, I want to congratulate Andrew on his mission call! That's
so awesome that he's gonna be learning spanish as well. I'm sure he'll
pick it up faster than me haha. I'm happy to see everyone is doing
well! This was a super fast week for me! We spent a good time of out
our area this week for baptismal interviews, and a couple baptismal
services we needed to be at, but it was still a super productive week.
We got a reference from another area of a kid who is deaf, but just got
baptized. The rest of his family wants to learn more about the church,
and they happen to live in our area. The kid attends a different ward
that has a translator in sign language, but we hope to baptize the rest
of the family as well. We had a stray dog follow us around all morning
on Thursday, and it kind of looked a bit like Rio haha. We had a sick
ward activity on Friday, and a bunch of members brought friends, so
hopefully we can start teaching them pretty soon. I forgot it was my
birthday until the morning of when my comp told me happy birthday.
That's how things are in the mission haha. However, some really great
members invited me over for cake in the night. Also the sisters that
share the area with us had candy for me and a nice letter. We had
transfers on Saturday, and we're staying the same. I'm happy about that
though, the area is really great! I hope everyone has a great week!
5/7/2018
This week was honestly pretty basic. We contacted, had lessons,
planned, and went about trying to find people. We had some awesome
lessons, and our investigator Isaac said that he definitely wants to get
baptized. We have him on date for the 19th. The rest of the week was
pretty normal up until friday night. We were in a lesson with recent
converts when we heard it start to rain. Really loud. We didn't think
much of it, so we just finished the lesson and got ready to head out.
When we opened the door, I was met with what felt like buckets of rain.
We saw the street, and it was completely flooded! We didn't even say
bye to the members, we just started booking it home.
We live kind of on
the top of a hill, and the problem is that we we're at the bottom of
the hill. The road we normally walk up was like a river rapids, and we
knew as soon as we saw it that there was no way we could make it up the
road. We sprinted around taking backroads (sometimes in water a foot
deep or more) until we got home looking like we had just jumped into a
swimming pool. It was pretty wild. Also we had our leadership
conference this week, and we're going to test out some new stuff in the
zone to hopefully get more results. We'll see what happens.
For P-day
we went bowling as our zone activity, and then went and explored a mall
together. Some of my buddies and I were debating who had a better sense
of fashion, so we went to some stores and picked out outfits, and I won
3 out of the 4 (we asked the employees there to judge haha) so it looks
like I have the best style of fashion in the entire zone. I'll include
some pictures haha. It's important to relax a little bit once in a
while, because I was honestly feeling a little burnt out (and very
tired) and today definitely helped me out. I'm looking forward to talking to you guys on Sunday!! Que tengan una excelente semana!! Les amo!!
5/21/2018
This week was pretty rough to be honest. We dropped 9 investigators and
only were able to find 4 despite our best efforts. I'm not at all
disappointed with our efforts, but it was pretty discouraging to see so
many people deciding not to apply the gospel in their lives. Our for
sure baptism for the 2nd of June is now not for sure :( He had a ton of
doubts last week, and fell back into drinking coffee. He said now he's
not sure about baptism now. I don't know how that's possible when the
week before he told us that he had a dream where he saw himself dressed
in white reading the book of Mormon and him telling himself that all the
answers are in that book. Hopefully we can find out what it is that's
really bothering him. It was pretty upsetting when we found out.
Freaking satan is working pretty hard these days as well. It got pretty
hot this week (around 95 degrees when a member showed us.) So that
was fun. (not really) But we really did work as hard as we could this
week, so I was happy about that. Also we got to play some basketball
today, and we got some pretty competetive 3 on 3 going, and it was super
fun. I'm gonna be really sore tomorrow though.
5/28/2018
This week was a lot better than the last. It was honestly one of the
fastest weeks of my mission. We were extremely busy this week. We had a
meeting with the stake president to plan a stake mission activity, and
even though I won't be here when it happens, it's gonna be pretty
sweet! We also had our zone conference this week. It was really nice.
We talked about the Book of Mormon, repentance, short lessons in the
street, being creative in our finding approach, and always inviting
people to act. I felt really uplifted afterwards. I also had my
interview with Pres. We talked about basketball for 90 percent of the
interview. But the funny thing is that I didn't even bring it up! He's
a basketball nerd as well haha! It's pretty likely that I'm out of
here in a couple weeks. I'm pretty ready for a new area even though we
have baptisms coming up. I mainly just need a new, normal companion...
We saw some sweet miracles this week! One was a guy we found right
before church. We skipped ward council to look for some people and it
paid off! We found this guy named Jorge about an hour before church,
and had a lesson in front of his house. We somehow talked him into
coming for an hour to the church. 10 minutes before the services
started I got a call from him. I thought he was going to cancel, but it
turned out he had a question about how to get to the church. He showed
up! And he didn't just stay for the first hour, he stayed for all
three!! He said he really enjoyed church, and wants us to come back on
Wednesday. It was cool seeing how much church impacted him and his
attitude. We had a lesson with our investigator Isaac (the one that was
progressing super well, but had some issues) and were tentatively
still good for this saturday. He had some pretty difficult temptations,
but lived the word of wisdom this week, and read in the Book of
Mormon. I sure hope I can baptize him before I leave. We were able to
find quite a new few investigators this week, and it was nice seeing the
fruits of all our labors haha. Anyways, I'm glad you all are doing
well. I love you all!
6/4/2018
Honestly looking back at this week, it's just a blur. We had quite a few
lessons which was nice. However, the highlight of the week was
definitely Sunday. We had 3 really awesome investigators show up this
week to church, and it was awesome seeing how much they liked church.
One of my favorite investigators Isaac had been praying to decide on a
baptismal date, and received the answer at church. He's getting
baptized the 26th of July, his birthday. He wants to start a new year
in his life as a new person. I won't be here for the baptism since it's
a pretty advanced date, but he wants me to be there when he gets
baptized. We have transfers next week, and he said he's praying that I
don't get transfered haha. I'll send a picture of him next week! He
also speaks perfect English which is pretty sweet. Another big bonus is
that one time we were talking about basketball, and now he sends me
texts during the NBA playoffs to let me know how the games are going.
What a guy haha. However, I'm ready to leave this area. I know I gave
it all I had. We have 3 upcoming baptisms, so it sucks to miss out on
that, but I need a change of setting. It's been hard on me seeing some
of my converts here go less and inactive. I feel pretty hopeless. I
think that's the part of me that wants to leave.
I started reading the Libro de Mormón again. This time with the
question, "How can I become a better disciple of Jesus Christ?" It's
been fascinating to see how many things I've found so far just in a
week. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was
the Prophet and Seer that restored the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Like it
says in 2nd Nephi 3:12, the Book of Mormon was given to us to reject
false doctrines and traditions. What a blessing it is to have it in our
lives. This week for P-day, we went with the district in Heroes and
played laser tag and ate hot wings. I ate way too much and spent way
too much money. But it was really fun haha! That was about it for me
this week. Time sure is flying by! I love all you guys, and hope you
have a great week!
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