Sorry this took so long to send to everyone! I got kind of jammed up with work in the offices and couldn´t write until around right now.
This week was really tough. In fact, I´d even say it´s been one of the toughest while I´ve been in the offices.
We had a bunch of appointments with a whole bunch of new people, and everything just fell through. I think we had a total of around 20 cancelled appointments. Somewhere around there. It was really discouraging, but we powered through it and just said "Ni modo" all day long.
This week was filled with little miracles though. For instance:
We really don´t have any money right now. We´re kinda broke. It costs a boatload for our house. We pay around 800 pesos on Gas (Just absolutely insane), 600 on light (again, insane), and around 300 for water (not too bad, but still high). When the quincena arrives, or in other words, when the money gets there, we´ve got to blow it all on the house, and then the reimbursements take a while to get here.
That´s not to say I don´t put them in on time. It´s just that I can´t reimburse my own account. If I do, I look like I´m just giving myself free money, so I have to deposit to my companion´s account in order to receive my reimbursement.
Well, as it turns out, my companion gets really angry with me when I do that because he doesn´t like seeing money that he can´t have (usually it´s like 1000 pesos or so) and then tells me that I shouldn´t ever do it again, so I just go without money for the next two weeks and pray that my companion will finally understand that when he doesn´t let me deposit money into his account, he has to pay for everything.
The point of this whole explanation is that my companion finally ran out of money, and we were running on empty for a solid week and a half. It was pretty awesome what happened then.
We usually have to pay for taxis to arrive in our sector because it´s BIEN LEJOS (very far) from the offices. So basically we´re spending anywhere from 40-60 pesos daily on taxis.
We showed up to the offices one day and we just had no money. Elder Diaz didn´t have any left, and I had long since lost mine paying the light bill. We were at the offices, working, and all of a sudden, the President´s wife shows up and offers us a ride as we are about to leave! WHAT A BOSS LADY!
She took us to our sector and dropped us off, even though it was super far away from where she was going to pick up her kids.
But it happened AGAIN the following couple of days. We just showed up to the offices without money, and she took us every time. It was really cool that miracles like that took place.
Now, I don´t want anyone thinking that I´m sucking on rocks for water because I´m so dirt poor here in Tijuana. I´m actually doing just fine on money. So don´t freak out and start trying to start up a donation squad to earn money to send to Elder Carter. I really am doing just fine. They send us enough money to last us for a month, and I finally convinced my companion that I´ve got to deposit money into his account so that I can withdraw it, or he´s going to end up paying for literally everything, and we´ll BOTH be bankrupt.
So yeah, that was quite the miracle that happened a few times over. We´re pretty blessed here in the mission.
We also had a pretty funny experience with a guy that we contacted around 2 months ago. He contacted us on a Tuesday when we were leaving to go to the Sector. He started just quoting random verses in the Bible, saying references that didn´t exist. For example:
"IN ROMANS 8:23 IT SAYS THAT THE STRONGEST LEADERS ARE THE ONES WHO KNOW THE WORD OF GOD."
First off, Romans 8:23 probably doesn´t exist, and if it does exist, I´m positive it does not talk about anything remotely close to what you just told me, but you know, I´ll roll with it. I´m sure I can just show him a couple verses like Amos 3:7, Ephesians (that how you spell it?) 2:20, and maybe even Amos 8:11-12. And then I can just explain the whole lesson to him in around 5 minutes, and get a nice strong investigator.
That day, I noted his direction and then his telephone number so we could talk to him at home. Well, we never did contact him until yesterday!
This time, he was much more insulting, crude, and to be honest, utterly hilarious. He goes up to us and starts quoting the same Bible verse:
"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Galatians 1:8
So, according to him, the Angel Moroni preached a different gospel than what Paul, Peter, Jesus, and all the others taught.
This verse is a classic here, and it´s honestly the funniest argument I´ve ever seen. There´s a million ways to show that this scripture shouldn´t be used to argue that "Mormonism" isn´t correct, but here´s my 3 favorites that I tried to use on him:
1.) How many churches have the Bible with this exact verse? Almost all of them! Therefore, how many churches can apply this scripture to their specific church? All of them! Exactly! So the question of which church is correct STILL applies here.
2.) So, according to this scripture, we cannot change the word of God at all. That means you must still sacrifice animals to God, because the word of God back in the Old Testament was to sacrifice the "firstlings" of every flock. Do you do that? No? Well then, looks like the Gospel Jesus Christ taught is false doesn´t it?
3.) What is the gospel that this verse describes? (Many don´t have any clue at all. They just say "the church") Well, let´s go to the New Testament. Specifically, the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If we look around in these books, we see that Jesus Christ himself taught Faith, Repentance, Baptism (with the three requirements of course), the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. We teach that exact Gospel as he taught it. So, we don´t teach anything different than what Paul taught! How great is that?
There´s still around 3 more that are just super great, but I´m not gonna put all of them here.
Anyway, this man just got super angry with us and told us to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations and THEN read the Book of Mormon and other books, because the Bible is all there is. He told us specifically:
Joseph Smith is burning in hell.
That was a great statement. Especially since he´s not affilated with any religion at all. Basically, the guy just wanted to show how much he knew about the Bible, and that he was right, and we were wrong.
It´s just so funny that he would try to do something like that. Honestly, apart from the Prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve themselves, we are THE VERY LAST PEOPLE you want to try to convince that your church, idealogy, or theocracy is correct. It´s like trying to tell an archeologist that dinosaurs don´t exist. It´s pointless. They KNOW they exist. There´s evidence.
Like, what are we going to do? Just be like: HOLY COW YOU´RE RIGHT! WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE WE THINKING ELDER? OH MY GOSH DANG GOODNESS! THIS IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT GOSPEL THAN WHAT PAUL TAUGHT! THIS GUY KNOWS HIS BIBLE!
And then we throw our nametags on the ground and begin asking this man how to receive forgiveness from God, according to him.
Just utterly hilarious.
Finally, the photos. These photos are of a drink called "Chia." The little rock things are supposedly seeds. I honestly thought this drink was super gross. I managed to chug it though. All but those rockletts. Ain´t nobody got taim fo´dohs.
The worst part about that drink was that it wasn´t actually liquid. It was like some weird form of gel. Like, I felt the little rock babies in my mouth, but they were surrounded by some sort of gel stuff. It was super gross, but it didn´t honestly taste too bad. Just the overall texture and experience was bad. But hey, that´s Mexico.
Okay, that´s this week. Pretty boring, but overall great stuff.
HAVE A GOOD WEEK!
TAKE LUCK! AND CARE! TAKE CARE OF THE LUCK IF YOU HAVE ANY. TAKE CARE OF THE LUCK THAT YOU HAVE AND YOU CARE FOR IT!
But seriously though, take care.
If I loved you anymore I´d have to punch something.
Elder Carter
