Called to Serve: Xalapa, Mexico Mission: Dec. 17th, 2018 Letter #58

After lunch today the staff of the little joint gave us mints that had little inspirational quotes on them and mine said something along the lines of: "No matter how long the storm is, the sun always shines again." It was cool because this week the sun came out again in our area. We have 4 people who have accepted baptism for January 5th. There's a lot left to do with them before that day, but we're on the right track.

The other missionaries weren't exactly excited when we took Viridiana back, but they didn't make a huge deal of it so I'm content. She has the desire to get baptized, but has a few things she needs to get in order first. We'll try to help her get things done by the 5th, but we didn't count her as one of the 4 that accepted baptism for lack of certainty on that part.

The Primary Program was actually pretty calm. They would sing a song, have 4 or 5 kids share a short scripture, then sing again. They didn't do any Christmas songs or scriptures, which was weird to me, but it was fun. That same Sunday though, the ward after us had their program as well and I had to stay in order to do a baptismal interview with an investigator in that ward so I figured I would sneak in and watch their program as well. That program wasn't so uneventful haha. They had the typical child in the choir that shouted everything at the top of their lungs, several kids that got very confused about their turns for reading scriptures and the whole deal. They also started every song with a small solo and some of the soloists were very lost, while others sang rather well. The elderly lady, that led the songs, was also super into it. She has to be an ex-member of another, more wild, church or something because she was leading with just about every part of her little body and left the children with no way to excuse themselves by saying that they couldn't see the director. It was kind of funny though because I could tell she wasn't doing it to be irreverent, she just simply had a LOT of dedication to leading those songs.

We had a few investigators in church, but still haven't had much time to visit with them since the program.

I pretty much just listen to talks, but I listened to a bit of the tabernacle choir and a touch of EFY this week in the moments I felt like humming a tune.

To help explain the number thing I'll give you a bit of background info. Nowadays in the mission field there are only 4 key indicators that we report each week: 1. New investigators, 2. Investigators with a planned baptismal date, 3. Investigators in church, 4. Investigators baptized and confirmed. Our problem with the new investigators was that in our mission specifically they just tightened up the rules for what counts as a new investigator, and we found them the old way last week so they didn't count. We fixed our strategy up this week though. We had a couple of people with planned dates, but they were more than 3 weeks away so they didn't count either. In church we kind of just had a bad week. We had Dana come, who will get baptized on the 5th as well, but she didn't count because she's still 7 years old until the 5th. Reactivating members doesn't count as any key indicator now so some particular leaders sometimes get mad when we "use our time ineffectively" and reactivate, but in Preach My Gospel we're told to do it so Elder Jimenez and I do it one way or another. It worked out for us though because one of the inactive members wants us to baptize her nephews now and is going to work with us to do it. So that was the deal there, but we're back on top of things now. Elder Jimenez has been doing really well lately. I think this was perhaps the most impressive week I've seen from him while we've been together. He's really making some key changes.

The best thing I ate this week was a Mexican take on Chinese food. There's a sister in our ward that always tries to give us something out of the ordinary and it's always fun to eat with her. The Sister just made fried rice and some chicken that was prepared differently then it usually is in Mexico, but it was different enough to stand out and I liked it.

One thing I did this week that I liked was that I just read a random chapter from the Book of Mormon each day to see what would happen. It helped me a lot to focus on what was being taught in each individual chapter in stead of focusing purely on the "plot development" of the book. It was neat to see how much you can learn from any chapter in the Book of Mormon if you're willing to really focus on the message in each verse.

Something that has made me laugh all week has been a running joke that we have between the zone leaders and us. The four of us were talking to an old dude last week about basketball and he did something iconic. But now that we're close to the video call it'd be better to wait until then to explain it in full measure. Just remind me.

Zone Conference was cool, but it was also kind of odd. I found that I enjoyed the spiritual side of it a lot, but then just felt like the "fun" part dragged on. I hope I'm not becoming a boring person haha. But I felt a renewed desire to bring people to Christ this Christmas as a present to He who has given us everything.

There hasn't been anything too crazy about Christmas in Mexico, but one carol they have here is catchy. I think it's called "La Rama" or something like that, La Rama means, 'the branch'. I just like hearing people sing it.

For P-day we tried to play a game with flour, but it basically just turned into a flour fight.

Love, Elder Finlinson