Pics 3/16/16

 (Almost) Walking on water

Taking a break in the garden

Secretaries

Crazy Week

Hello everyone,

This week has been busy with the multizone conferences in the Baja California Sur, Culiacan, and Mazatlan. I spent Monday and Tuesdaypreparing my presentation and getting materials for the multizone conferences. On Wednesday, all of the missionaries in Culiacan came together to be trained by President Velez, the assistants, and the secretaries. So I had to give a presentation about referrals, and I spoke for about 15 minutes or so, and I answered questions that some of the missionaries had. I did a good job with my presentation, even though I was a little nervous. Earlier that same day, at 12:30am, I went to the airport to pickup a sister missionary, and I didn't get back until 2am. After the multizone conference which ended at about 2pm, I went to the mission offices to do some work for the missionaries. Finally I was able to eat lunch at about 4:30pm. But something was wrong with the food, because my companion, two other missionaries who always eat with us, and I all got sick. We all started to get sick Wednesday night and Thursday morning, vomiting with upset stomachs too. Elder Garcia and Elder Day, one of the other missionaries went to the hospital. Elder Trillo and I were fine, until Thursday night, when the food finally caught up to us and we got sick too. 

Well Thursday while Elder Garcia and Day were in the hospital, Elder Trillo and I went to work in my area. We visited Perla and Francia and taught about prayer and studying the scriptures. they understood really well and we all felt the Spirit during this lesson. I felt the Spirit help me teach too. Then we tried visiting Abraham but he wasn't home. Then we went to our ward mission meeting. That's when I started to feel nauseous and really sick. We made it home and I went straight to bed. 

Friday was a slow day. It was just one of those days when no one has time to listen to us. So we ended up walking around in circles for a few hours, trying to find someone, at least one person to visit, but to no success. I felt a little bit better with some medicine. Fun fact: I got in some random guy's car and went for a ride

Today, I started to feel better, but after lunch, it made me have an upset stomach again. We went to the Botanical Garden again with the other two secretaries. Elder Finlayson is from Dallas and my best friend in the mission and Elder Flores is from Honduras and was an English teacher before the mission so he speaks English really well. And then there's also my companion, Elder Garcia from Mexico City. I'm attaching some pictures that we took.

I was able to study some church talks this week even through all the chaos. The first is called The Refiner's Fire by James E Faust. The second is All Things Work Together For Good by James B. Martino of the Seventy. I recommend these talks to all. These talks provided me with more enthusiasm, comfort and increased hope. We can find peace in the knowledge of our Savior's atoning sacrifice and that He knows exactly how we might feel for He has felt all.

Ánimo y éxito!

Love,

Elder Finkner

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