Pics 3/12/16

The baptism of my investigator, Candelario, from Nueva Galicia. I returned to NG to visit and see his baptism

Culiacan

Rainy Culiacan

Empezando el Calorsito en Culiacan

Hello everyone! This week has been a little bit more chilly in Culiacan, it even rained (the first time in months) and it even hailed! People were going crazy here, like as if the world was ending. 

Anyways, not too much has been happening this week. Presidente Velez was in the Baja California Sur the whole week, so we were left to work like normal. I had this Skype-like training session for all secretaries of records (me) in every single Mexican mission, with some Church administrators teaching us how baptism records should be logged and what to do if there are issues. I've been working on sending references, and my last companion, Elder Uicab, sent me a message and thanked me for the references that I've sent. He told me that they've helped his area a lot and now they have new investigators. So that's the reason why I'm working hard on sending references! If I can send at least one reference that turns out to be a baptism, then I've done my job well. I've been working on entering all the baptisms into the system. It's been a busy week, but it also felt slow somehow. 

Our investigators are progressing well. We're still good to go for our two baptisms on April 9th. Yesterday we had a contacting activity in one of the areas in our district. I feel like I'm bad at street contacting, but I was determined to contact several people so I did! I felt successful. I taught some English to our investigators one evening. We had Domino's pizza one night and KFC Chicken another night. I've calmed down with the donuts.

Everything is going well, this week was just normal and not too much has happened. I'm attaching some pictures.

Have a great week all! 

Love,

Elder Finkner

Pics 3/5/16

My rhino and I, zoo trip this morning

Preaching the Restoration pamphlet in Spanish to a monkey

My new investigator. He agreed to be baptized next week

Work In and Out of The Mission Offices

Hello everyone! Hope you all are doing well. This week has been pretty good. I've been busy in and out of the mission offices. I'm working alongside the mission president on a few new projects. One of them is my idea that I pitched to him, he gave me permission to get to work on this new program. We are having some problems as a mission regarding references and referrals, so I'm taking the initiative to ensure that our 200 missionaries are trained on how to use the Church's Referral Manager. I'm having all of the zone leaders training their missionaries, but then later this month or in April, I will be giving a presentation in the multizone conference regarding the Referral Manager. About 80 missionaries will be in attendance and I have about 15 minutes. The other project is to buy 100 smoke detectors and install them in every single missionary house. 

This week in the offices I've been busy sending various materials to all of the zones, we got our Easter pass-along cards so I sent a lot of packages.

Outside of the offices, we've been busy with a few new investigators. We have Abraham, last night he committed to coming to Churchtomorrow. We also found Perla and Franica, two teen girls whose grandmother wants us to teach them and help them have a firm foundation on Christ. Their grandmother gave us permission to take them to Church and teach them whenever, so we have some more free space to work. They're coming to Church tomorrow too, even though we just met them this week. They already accepted the baptismal challenge as well, so right now in our area, things are turning around for the better and we have some good solid prospects. 

I don't have too much else to report on, but one day we went to the hospital for my companion. He had a sinus inflammation, and I ate 4 large sugar donuts. I'm not complaining haha. I've calmed down on the Domino's pizza, but the new deal, buy one get one free is really tempting. 

Tonight I'm going to visit Nueva Galicia, one of my investigators is getting baptized so I was invited to attend. I'm glad I have the blessing to get to see his baptism. This morning we went to the zoo. See some of the attached pictures. 

Anyways, that's all for this week, love you all! 

Elder Finkner

Serving Missionaries and Investigators and Members

Hello everyone! This week has been great, I've been staying busy in the mission offices, and working hard in my area. This past week we had a missionary council here in Culiacan, so missionaries from Culiacan and Mazatlan attended. Afterwards, about 75 missionaries made their way to the mission offices and a lot of them wanted my attention because they needed help with materials, baptismal records, all sorts of things. I literally worked overtime in the office, I was in the office after lunch when I should have been in my area. So I've been busy with other things as well, like ordering materials, entering baptisms into the Church system, and answering and helping solve questions and problems that missionaries in the Culiacan Mission have.

So our area is a little difficult, and it makes it a bit harder when we only have 4 hours a day to dedicate to the area and the people in the area. But we managed to have our investigator, Selene, accept the baptismal challenge. She has strong desires to attend church. She's had health issues in the past, but she has a ton of faith in Christ, and her and her children could be solid baptisms once they get to Church. We just started teaching her.

I eat a lot of Domino's pizza here. I think I've had about 4 Domino's Pizzas in about 2 weeks.

I fed some newly-born puppies. They were only a week old, and they were sucking my fingers because they thought my fingers were something else. I'm going to admit, it was cute.

A boy who's a member in a different ward sells donuts, but gave me a free donut one day because I've been buying my daily donuts from him

We don't have many lessons in this area, on a good week, we have about 10. We street contact a lot and we meet a lot of people. But we're seeing progress.

Shout out to Lydia Lozano for her baptism today back home! Proud of you!

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Finkner

Pics 2/20/16

Elder Alonso and Elder Finkner. His trainer's trainer

Dan Heckathorn came back to visit Culiacan!

Secretario de Materiales

Buenas tardes a todos! Espero que tuvieron una buena semana. Anyways, this week has been fun, I've been learning a lot on the fly with my new assignment of secretary of materials. I have the responsibility of being the referral manager of the mission, so all the missionaries give me references, and then I send these references to the areas where they belong, and sometimes other missions. A reference is a name and address of a person who wants to meet with missionaries. Also, I order materials from the Church for the missionaries, and I distribute the materials to all the zones across the mission. So I send packages of church materials down to Mazatlan and over to the Cabos. I'm also secretary of records, so I put all the baptism information and records into the Church system. I have my own cell phone, and lots of missionaries call me for help.

Well, my weekly updates are going to be a bit different while I'm in the offices. I guess I'll say that everyday this week I've been in the offices from 9am-2:30pm. From there, we go to our lunch appointments, then we go to work like normal, preaching, contacting in the street, teaching, those types of things. The area is a bit different than what I'm used to, but it's a nice change of pace. The area is very slope-y, all of my area, (a whopping 8 streets) is full of streets with 45 degree inclines. It's tough on the legs haha. It's a bit harder to have lessons here, but I'm going to work hard to get the lessons. This area is mostly street contacting, and we only have 4 hours of normal preaching time. Well everything is doing good, nothing too crazy this week, I'm glad I have my warm water showers and my washer machine. I have a decent bed too so all is well! 

So that's all I got for now. I'll talk to you all next week! Remember Jesus loves you!

Love,

Elder Finkner