Well, this was a good week. It honestly flew by. On Tuesday I went in a trio to Leon Moderno (one of my old areas) to work with the Elders there for the day. I was able to see some awesome members there. It was also saddening because I saw a great member who was planning on going on a mission the last time I was there. He went, and ended up coming home early for depression. His testimony has waned, and I gave him a pep talk to try to get him how he was before. No matter how strong we are in the gospel we have to keep trying to strengthen our testimony.
Our neighbor/convert Ismael has been doing very well. He should be receiving his dog, Togo, here any day now. It's an all black German Shepard. It's going to be an amazing dog. He already has a Belgian shepherd and it's a super cool dog.
Here in the state of Guanajuato along with other states, there's a gas crisis going on, and on Friday night we saw huge lines waiting to put gas in their cars. It honestly looked like a scene in a zombie apocalypse movie, and was super weird. I'm sure if you google it, you'll be able to find some pictures and stuff.
I said goodbye to Elder Rios this week. We've been in the same zone for more than half my mission, and we've done divisiones like 7 times or something like that. It was weird seeing him leave. All my friends are going home.
We received the transfers, and it was a bit of a shock. Elder Hayes is getting transferred and I'm staying. We were both sad/frustrated, but that's how the mission goes. The good news is that I'm receiving Elder Martinez, my son! It's basically guaranteed that he'll be my last comp, so that's kinda cool. My son is gonna kill me off haha. It brought me back to a year ago when I received him today. It was a weird feeling. At least this time we know what we're doing. Today I start my 12 weeks countdown. It's weird because I never thought I was gonna make it to this point in the mission. I'm just gonna keep working like I always have, and I know it's gonna fly by. Love you guys!
Elder Cherpeski
Saying bye to Elder Rios
Saying bye to Elder Hayes
My son Elder Martinez and I (this pic is from the Christmas party)
1/14/2019
This week flew by! It's been strange being back with my son again, but it's been really fun as well. Time didn't slow down at all as it sometimes does when you get a new comp. We had a really productive week and found some really cool new investigators. We are soooo close with some investigators(la familia Maciel, and la familia Jimenez), and we should be having five baptisms on the 26th. At this point, they have a testimony and everything, it's just making that last decision of actually doing it. We brought our recent convert, Ismael, and we told him to give them advice. He said, "solo, háganlo." "just do it." It's frustrating how close they are to baptism. We fasted on Friday so that we could testify with more power, and I think it worked. They came to church despite the gas crisis.
Speaking of that, it's getting pretty ugly here. People wait in line for more than 30 hours just to get 20 liters of gas. It's pretty crazy, and there's no news if it's gonna end soon or no. It's making it harder to get people to church.
We had a pretty crazy experience happen to us this week. We were looking for some recent converts who have gone inactive. For one of them all we had was the name of their privada. There was a house number written down but we couldn't read it at all. We decided to go look for her anyways. We showed up to the privada and started talking with the security guards. We chatted around with them for 5 minutes, and then after making them our friends, they let us in without getting our ID or asking for the address that we were going to visit. Bad security, or Jedi mind tricks? Nobody will ever know. Anyways we got inside without a plan really. We decided to go to a number that somewhat resembled what was written down. Nothing. Nobody was home. We decided to knock a random house to ask if she was the person we were looking for, and then if it wasn't her, we were going to pretend we had knocked the wrong door, and apologize. We knocked the door and lo and behold it was her! In a privada with about 100 homes we found her the second try! We set up a return appointment this week. It was pretty wild!
We had our leadership conference in Querétaro on Thursday, and we talked about goals and all that fun stuff. I'm not a huge numbers guy, I think more depends on attitude, but numbers are good to track progress. Today we went bowling with Presidente, and I got 136 two games in a row. I'm consistently mediocre. Tomorrow is my second to last zone conference, so that should be fun. President is buying Costco pizza for us because we had the most baptisms as a zone last change. We want to keep the momentum going. Today after bowling we went to rockstar burgers. Those are the only two pictures I took this week. I'll try to take more this week haha. Love you guys!
1/28/2019
Well, it turns out Elder Martinez and I got Amoebas. We are currently on medicine to kill them. I thought I was gonna get some sort of parasite in the mission, and it finally happened. We're both doing a lot better now.
We started off the week with an extremely long night on Monday. We both were really sick in the stomach, and I only slept a handful of hours. We were planning on going to Silao, a neighboring city, to help the missionaries there. We almost canceled, but we decided to suck it up and just go anyways. We had a good day of work there, and Elder Martinez and I shared a message about how the Book of Mormon can answer the deep questions of the soul that people have. It turned out really nice. Later I went and worked in a little pueblito called Romita. It was a decent day. The next day we came back and went to the doctor for my jaw. It looks like I've been grinding my teeth during the night. It's probably from the stress haha. I'm feeling a lot better though, and they're gonna make me a mouthguard. Later we went and had some good lessons, and found a new less active family that we're gonna start helping. On Thursday we did our weekly planning, got into a bible bash with a testigo de Jehova, and then went out to an area called Delta to do a baptismal interview. At this point of the week I had already recovered, but Elder Martinez was still really sick. We went with a doctor in our ward, and that's when we found out about the Amebas.
On Friday my comp was feeling really bad, so he decided to stay and rest for the morning. I read the book Saints. My comps family sent it to him, and I took advantage of the time to read it. It was really interesting, and I learned a ton. I'm really glad that I didn't have to be one of those first members. I probably would have gone apostate haha! Just kidding. They certainly passed through a lot of trials. Later in the afternoon, we went and worked and had some good lessons. We helped Ismael get his house ready for Togo. It's gonna be a sweet dog. On Saturday we finally had a nice, full day of work. We had a really good lesson with la familia Maciel. We destroyed the dad for going to ride his dirtbike instead of going to church. He went to church this Sunday. Our testigo of Jehova is progressing super well! We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and he liked it. He also went to church this Sunday. Speaking of that we had nine investigators at church on Sunday! We were super excited that all of them came. Now we just need to get them in the water.
Sunday afternoon was nice. We found the sister of some recent converts. She went to Church, and it looks like it's finally her time. We put a baptismal date with her, and it looks like it could be a pretty sure baptism. We found a new family a couple Sundays ago, and we went back and had the next lesson with them. We taught them a bit more about the Book of Mormon, and it looks like they understood pretty well. Afterwards they invited us to eat dinner with them, and they gave us Pozole verde! It was delicious. Sitting there, eating, laughing and talking with this family that we had met just a week earlier, I realized that I'll never be able to replicate these experiences again. It made me sad for a moment, and also gave me more motivation to sprint to the end. It was a good week, and I hope to have a healthy, productive week. Love you guys!
2/4/2019
Well, this was an insanely fast week. We had tons of lessons, and we were busy all week long. I'm writing earlier today because I'm going to the temple tomorrow and I'm heading to Queretaro in a bit here. Instead of telling about everything we did this week, I'm just gonna focus on a couple specific events.
3/18/2019
The first event was a lesson we had Wednesday evening. On Sunday there was a mom and her son that showed up. I thought they were members actually, until a member told me that they were investigators. I scheduled the lesson for Wednesday and introduced ourselves and everything. We showed up and talked with them for a bit. They're from la Cuidad de Mexico and had actually been attending church for a while now, but still hadn't gotten baptized. I jumped straight to the baptismal questions to see what their problem was, assuming that the missionaries had taught them a bunch of times. They passed the questions, but said that they still felt unprepared. I was a little stumped, and asked them how long the missionaries had been visiting them for. They said that this was the first time they had ever talked to the missionaries, and that they always wanted the missionaries to visit them, but they never had.
I was shocked to say the least. Everything they knew about the church was from their own personal study, and from going to church. They're two golden investigators that showed up out of nowhere. We're gonna teach them the missionary lessons, and then get them baptized. It was super surprising. They're already doing "Come, Follow Me," for crying out loud. We hope they get baptized soon.
Another experience was Saturday night, with la familia Maciel. This family has all the lessons, and the mom and daughter are basically members already. The dad told us that he's not interested in changing right now, but we can talk to him whenever we want. We read 2 Nefi 31, 32 , and 33, and then testified to them about the Book of Mormon. I asked them what they thought about baptism at this point, and they started to say some excuses, about how they were born Catholic, and how they felt comfortable where they were. I started talking, and I felt like Nephi when he was talking to Laman and Lemuel, and supercharged with the Spirit. I told them that just because they're comfortable doesn't mean that it's where God wants them to be. I don't really remember what I told them, but they said that they're going to pray about when they need to get baptized. I think they'll get baptized in these next few upcoming weeks. It's very frustrating though.
It's crazy that I only have 8 more weeks. I'm shifting things into another gear to make all these baptisms happen before I leave. Keep praying for me and my investigators. We're on the verge of about 6 baptisms right now. Anyways, that's it for this week. Love you guys lots!
Every day in a field behind our house, people come and lay leather out to let it dry. Leon in considered the Leather capitol of Mexico.
Us out here destroying these false Catholic traditions.
2/11/2019
This was an eventful week! I started off last Monday heading over to Querétaro. I showed up in the evening and stayed with the assistants. I had a good time with them, and we went to bed a "little" later than we should have. I got up at 5 the next morning and headed to the offices in a taxi. My generation and I loaded into a van, and we started driving down to Mexico City. It was so much fun catching up with everyone. I remember a lot of things that happened in the MTC that I had forgotten about. We got there at 10, so we went into the 11am session. It was super great. I felt so at peace, and it was definitely the most prepared I've ever been to enter. We ate at the temple and drove back. I then got onto a bus to head back to León, and showed up back at home at 10:30pm. It was a super tiring, fantastic day.
The rest of the week was pretty rough honestly. We faced a ton of rejection this week. That doesn't really bother me, but sometimes I feel like if I don't have a lot of lessons, I'm not being productive. We still worked hard though. I went and visited the Garey family for dinner on Thursday. They're a blast to be with, and we had a good time with them.
Our Testigo de Jehova is progressing quite well. We went over the baptismal questions with him, and he's in agreement with everything. Now it's just a matter of him receiving an answer and getting in the water. I really want to baptize a Jehovah's Witness haha. We had some other really good lessons this week. One of our investigators got into anti-church stuff online, but we were able to control the situation, and she still has a date of the 9th of March.
And now, puppies. My convert Ismael has two sweet dogs. Luna and Bala. He crossed Luna a couple months ago, so she's been pregnant for a while. We helped Ismael build her little house to have her puppies on Friday. Then, at 2 in the morning Saturday night/Sunday morning she started giving birth. We all made bets about how many she was gonna have. Ismael said 5, Elder Martinez said 7, and I said 8. She had 13! We went over after church to help weigh them and feed some of them.
They sure were cute! He's gonna have his hands full though! He wants me to take one back with me, but I said that my mom would kill me haha. Anyways, it was a pretty eventful week, and I hope that we can continue working and helping out everyone here. Love you guys lots!
Elder Cherpeski
2/18/2019
Well, I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that across the world, thousands of missionaries are communicating with their families via phone calls, telling stories, bearing testimonies, and hearing the voices of their family. The bad news is that the phones in our mission can't make international calls. Nobody has been able to so far. However, I've waited 22 months, and I think I can wait 6 more weeks. Plus phone calls may have ruined the effect of my homecoming. So, as for right now I'm just gonna finish off the mission with emails. Sorry about that, but I think it will help me stay focused, and it will be even cooler when I get back.
2/25/2019
We had a productive week, and had lots of good lessons. Also, I had a really cool opportunity of going down to Silao, a little city about an hour away from León, and baptizing someone that Elder Hayes and I started teaching here 2 months ago and moved to Silao. Her name is Teresa, and she's a little crazy but a nice lady.
It's started to get really hot again, and I get drenched during the afternoon. We did a lot of door knocking this week trying to find more investigators. We knocked a few neighborhoods but had basically 0 success, but we finally found an awesome neighborhood Saturday morning and had a few lessons there, and put a bunch of return appointments.
The investigators who moved here from la Ciudad de Mexico and never had received the missionaries before are progressing really well, and we have them on date for the beginning of March. Also we have some cool investigators that will be getting baptized on March 9th. Basically two siblings of a family of 6 got baptized 2 years ago at the ages of 12 and 17. They stayed active and kept going even though their older siblings and parents didn't want anything to do with the church. Elder Wright and I tried to teach the rest of their family when I first got here, but they didn't want anything. But, a few Sundays ago, one of their older sisters showed up with them. I still don't know why, but I went and put a lesson with her. Now, her, and another sister are attending church, and their hearts have been changed. They're completely different people from when I first met them. Maybe something happened, but they're looking forward to get baptized. They already asked for the day off and everything!
I'm starting to feel like I'm fighting against the clock. We have so many investigators on the verge of baptism, and I'm just trying to get them into the font at this point. I'm honestly a bit stressed out. But I know that no matter what happens I gave it my best. The zone is changing a lot this transfer. I'm gonna miss a lot of the people that are getting transferred.
Ismael's puppies are doing well, and they've grown a ton in just a week! I'll send pictures. They're still up for grabs if you want. Belgian Shepard haha. Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing you guys in a bit here. If things keep going this fast, I'll be home in no time. Love you guys lots!!
Well, this was a good week. Once again it was pretty warm, but I'm pretty used to it down. I'm probably gonna die of how cold it is in Idaho haha. Some of the days this week really dragged on, but the week went by fast. We've been trying to find new investigators this week, and we spent a lot of time knocking doors. It was pretty ridiculous. I'd say that 40 percent straight up reject us, 20 percent see us, and don't open the door, 25 percent say that they're catholic and don't want to change, and 10 percent let us schedule another day to visit them, and 5 percent let us share a message. We saw quite a bit of everything this week. One time we knocked the door and a lady came out and we talked to her for 5 minutes and she said that we could come in a share more. She said that she wanted to tidy up real quick and then we could come inside. She never came back. We waited 10 minutes and knocked a couple more times. Nothing. It was pretty mind blowing that people would do that. If you're not interested, just say no.
The zone isn't quite as strong any more after the transfers. We lost some really good missionaries and got some very relaxed ones. Tomorrow is my last zone conference, and I had the idea of inviting some recent converts from some different areas to do a sort of question and answer type thing to understand things from the investigators perspective more. We're gonna bring Ismael. Hopefully it turns out well.
We've been reading the Book of Mormon again as a mission, and it's incredible that no matter how many times we read the Book we always can learn new things and see it from a different angle. I feel like it's a huge hole that each time we read we go in a bit further into the hole but we can never truly hit the bottom. It's truly an incredible Book.
We have two for sure baptisms for the 9th of March, so we're excited about that! I'm hoping to have 3 more after these two before I leave. We're going to do everything possible to make it happen. We're starting to put baptismal dates for after I leave. That was weird.
I don't know if it's because my body knows that I don't have much more time now, but I've been feeling really tired these days. All day long. This is my 8th transfer as zone leader, and I think that's taken an effect on my energy level. We usually can't get to bed until about 11 and it's just never enough sleep. I'm just gonna keep pushing these last few weeks.
I can't really remember much more from this week. Everything just kind of blends together these days. I'm gonna start going through my journals and writing down all the stories that I want to tell you guys when I get back! Love you all!
Elder Cherpeski
3/4/2019
First of all, I want to offer an apology to Danielle. I remembered it was her birthday week the minute my head hit the pillow last Monday night, and I realized I forgot to send her an Email. So, feliz cumpleaños Danielle! I'll be sending a video of Ismael's puppies so you can see how much they're growing. Every time I see them, I think of you! :)
We worked in the morning today because we had some appointments, so that's why I'm writing so late today. This was a pretty great week! We had our zone conference on Tuesday, and it was amazing. I finally put together a zone conference message that I've been wanting to do forever, but that has been hard to organize. My comp and I called some recent converts throughout the zone and invited them to do a brief face to face type thing. We got three converts there, including Ismael. It was super cool hearing things from their perspective, and we all left with more desires to keep working. Afterwards President Williamson pulled us aside and said that in his almost three years of being mission President, that it was the best zone leader message he's seen at a zone conference. It truly was very spiritual and I learned some things that I want to apply in these last few weeks.
We had a decent week of work, and a good amount of lessons. However, instead of talking about the rest of my week, I'd rather talk a bit more about some investigators we have right now.
Cyntia and Jesica are sisters. Their younger sister and brother got baptized 2 years ago, but they barely got interested in learning more about a month ago. I think I've already told you guys a bit about them. They're getting baptized this Saturday and are super excited!
Claudia and Samuel are mother and son. They're from la ciudad de Mexico and have been attending church for some time now, but Elder Martinez and I were the first missionaries to teach them. I think I've mentioned them a couple times. They also are programmed to get baptized this month. Claudia has been through so many trials in her life, but has amazing faith. She already pays her tithing and she's not even an official member yet!
La familia Maciel. They've been in teaching for about 4 or 5 months now, and are super frustrating. The daughter and Mom go to church pretty much every week, but want to wait and get baptized with Alvaro (the Dad) as well. The only problem is that he doesn't want to get baptized. He goes and plays around on his dirtbike on Sundays and doesn't want to give it up. Sara and Naomi are being incredibly stubborn. We've tried everything with them, and they've even told us that they want to get baptized but that they're waiting for him. It's super frustrating, and I think we might drop them here pretty soon if they don't accept a date.
Alvaro is a Jehovah's witness. He started off really well. He went to church two weeks in a row and was reading the Book of Mormon. But then he started looking online too much and is becoming more and more ridiculous. For example last lesson he argued that we're creations of God, and not his children. Also he thinks that baptisms for the dead is spiritism and isn't okay. The lessons become a series of weird questions like that. I planched him for not reading and praying and showed him 2nd Nefi 32:4, and I he agreed with me that he needs to read and pray and ask if the Book of Mormon is true. We hope that he does so this week.
We have about 15 other investigators right now, but these are the ones we've been working with the most. Well, I think that's about it for this week. Love you guys!
Elder Cherpeski
3/11/2019
Well, this week we had two baptisms. It was the craziest baptism of my mission, and I'll explain what happened later on in this email. We started out the week doing divisiones with the Elders in Delta. They had a total of 1 person written down in their agenda for the day, so it was a lot of knocking doors and walking. We finished off the day with Dairy queen though, so it wasn't all bad. Wednesday I went in and registered for classes. If you haven't seen the classes I signed up for yet, you'll see that it's quite a bit different than what I was originally planning on studying, but I feel really good about what I've decided to do. I'll tell you more about it when I get home. The rest of Wednesday and Thursday we had some good lessons and knocked plenty of doors. Friday we went to Querétaro for the leadership meeting. We discussed goals of the mission, and President talked about how miracles happen daily. He talked about our zone conference message for like 20 minutes! It was a good time with all the bros, and I'm gonna miss all these good times with them.
Saturday rolled around, and we had a baptism scheduled for 3pm. I thought it was bulletproof. We had let everyone know a week in advance and then again the night before about the baptism. We got to the church around 11am and opened up the font. The sisters had a baptism 3 weeks ago, and they never drained the water! I swear there were bugs starting to hatch in there. It was disgusting. I flicked the switch to start draining the font and left to go clean the bathrooms(if you think the churches are dirty in the U.S. you have no idea how disgusting some of them are here). I came back 30 minutes later, and it had only drained a few inches. It had completely dropped draining. I don't want to go too into detail because I don't want to get mad again, or write 15,000 words, but let it suffice to say that we spent a good amount of time on the phone, working in the water tanks at the church, bailing water out with buckets, and finally switching to a different church at the last minute. We tried everything, but we couldn't get that thing drained, cleaned, and filled again in time, so we switched to a different church. They said that it took maintenance 30 minutes to figure it out.
The baptismal service was short, and not many people went to the service because everyone here is lazy, but Cynthia and Jessica got baptized. We baptized in cold water on our knees, but it was still a spiritual experience. (Note to any Bishop reading this: If you want to help the missionaries, have a ward mission leader, or someone assigned to help them that actually works and won't leave the missionaries out to hang when there's an emergency with the font)
The confirmation went a lot smoother. We should have a couple more baptisms this month, so we're gonna keep working to make it happen. Well, that's about it for this week. Love you guys!
Today I hit 23 months in the mission. It doesn't feel like it's been that long, but at the same time I don't really remember what normal life is like. I have two more weeks, and I plan on using those 23 months of experience to get some work done.
This was a hot week. On Tuesday we did divisiones with the Elders from Loma Bonita. Their area isn't huge, but it has lots of hills, and it just happened to be the hottest day of the week. My shirt was completely wet pretty much the whole afternoon. Pretty gross. We had a good time in divisiones and had some good lessons. My legs felt like jelly at the end of the day.
We had to give a few baptismal interviews this week, and that took a lot of time out of a couple of the days here. I love León, but we spend way too much money and time on transportation here. One day, we went out and looked for a reference that we got from the sisters in the visitor center in the Ciudad de Mexico temple. They told us that it was a golden reference, and that he was looking forward to meeting with us. We were on a bus for an hour to get there, and it was a fake address. We tried teaching the person that lived there, but they weren't interested at all. A lot of our week went like that. Lot's of looking and lots of rejection. Sometimes we have to go through rough times to really appreciate the blessings. Saturday night we finally got the blessing we needed.
Saturday was probably the most eventful day. We went and cleaned the font in the morning and then visited someone named Roman. He got baptized a bit more than a year ago. He's blind, poor, his wife is bed bound, but he gets to church by himself every single week. He has incredible faith. I try to visit him once a week. We had a good chat with him. Every time we talk with him, it puts everything back in perspective. Anyways, after visiting him, we went and ate and then went to a lesson we had scheduled. The lesson started out great and the Spirit was present. We were almost done with the lesson, and we were talking about the Book of Mormon, when the 25 year old son of the person we were teaching, walked in. He started saying lots of anti-church stuff. He was pretty aggressive, and all we could do was testify about the Book of Mormon. The worst part was that the investigator asked us to not come back.
We were pretty mad after the lesson, and we started heading to our next appointment that we had with Alvaro(the Jehovah Witness). About 20 minutes before the appointment, I got a strong impression that he was gonna drop us. I told my comp, and he said that he felt the same. Sure enough he told us that he didn't want to continue. We were pretty upset now. Everything was going against us. We had one more lesson for the day. It was with the Familia Maciel. Before the lesson we went and read the Book of Mormon to get the Spirit back with us, and to just calm down. In our weekly planning session, we had felt really prompted to teach the Plan of Salvation again.
We started off the lesson watching the virtual tour of the Rome temple. It really brought the Spirit and set the tone of the lesson. We then taught the Plan of Salvation again, and we cleared up a couple doubts that they had. Finishing the lesson, we invited them all to baptism again. The dad told us that he still wasn't interested and the mom said that she wants more time to decide(three years to be exact), but the daughter Naomi remained quiet and said that she had been reading the Book of Mormon and praying to know if she should get baptized. She said that she had a dream where one of her teachers from her insanely catholic school told her that she should get baptized in our church. I asked her if she would prepare to baptized on the 30th of this month. There was silence for a good 15 seconds and then the mom started telling her that she still had time to think about it, but I cut her off, and said, "Naomi, you already got your answer, didn't you?" She looked up and softly said, "yes." In that moment, I felt the love that Heavenly Father has for her. It was a very strong spiritual experience, and some tears were shed. Her parents looked shocked, but very supportive with her decision. Naomi will get baptized my last Saturday in the mission if everything goes well. We also have two baptisms for this Saturday.
I don't have much time left, but I really want to finish strong. I love you guys. The Church is true!
3/25/2019
Finishing up Ether this week, I read in chapter 15 verse 33 that he hadn't even written the hundreth part of what happened. That's how I feel with emailing. I'm looking forward to telling you guys the other 99% of the stories in person next week.
This week was pretty good. We had two baptisms! It went a lot more smoothly this week. Claudia and Samuel got baptized. They started to going to the church out of curiosity in the Ciudad of Mexico a couple years ago. However, sadly the missionaries never went to their house. When they got here it was just a matter of teaching the baptisms y listo! Claudia was crying after her confirmation. It was powerful.
Everything is ready to go for Naomi's baptism on Saturday. She asked me to baptize her, so it looks like I'll be baptizing my last Saturday of the mission. That's a goal I've had since I've had 6 months. I'm excited to finish on a high note.
Well, I'm signing off. It's been an adventure. I know the church is true. I'm excited to dedicate the rest of my life to the Lord. I love you guys! See you in a week!
