Letter #72

Elder Ramirez did everything perfectly in exchanges. It was amazing, his companion said that he hadn't done that before, but since exchanges he has been really trying to be better. I still haven't received the package. If you could send a letter to Elder Urrutia that would be great. He is amazing, but his family is very very poor and I would love for you to send him a little letter. Those were nerf guns in the house of a different area. There is no Thanksgiving in Mexico.... :(  There is Christmas but it's a bit different. Normal then 3 kings come in January to leave the gifts and they get a few gifts from Santa on Christmas Eve.  We will have a Christmas devotional but we don't know what we are going to do still.

The weirdest thing I saw this week... I don't know if it's a Mexico thing, but I have seen a lot of teenage girls (16-22) with boyfriends like 35 years old or more. It's super weird... oh yeah also this week something weird was that there was a concert like a block from our house that we could see from our roof and also we heard it until 2 in the morning...

Also we learned this week that I will be with Elder Toledo another 6 weeks and that Elder Hopkins from Logan will be a District Leader here in the zone.

This week was MUCH better. We gave our all and a little bit more. This week we had a meeting with our Mission President and our Stake President to talk about the mission work in our zone. When President Titensor took us home he told us 2 quotes. One from Jerry Sloan. In a half-time he looked at the team and said, " We are winning, but you are only playing not to lose. We don't play not to lose. We play to win." That was awesome because it changed my perspective of setting goals as a missionary/person. Are we just looking to do the bare minimum or to really do all we can. Then President said that his friend went to boot camp once and when he was asked what he learned in boot camp he said, "The body can do much more than we think it can." We changed that statement this week. We gave all we could and a bit more.

Christ suffered and gave his ALL for ALL of us. It is when we give our ALL that we can receive what he offers us. This week we saw how God helped us, we had many members acompany us and we could help more people. 

I invite you to also give ALL you have and let Christ make up the difference. He doesn't expect perfection, but he accepts a consecrated effort.

Love you,

Elder Finlinson

A shell cactus flavored, with honey and nuts inside. there were others we tried with shells of chocolate, strawberry, nut, bubble gum, etc. They were great!

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