Servicio

We had a couple more service projects this week. We have had so much service we are having difficulty finding the time in our schedule to complete all of it. We have been working on a fence for the past couple of weeks and have almost completed that. We are just waiting for the material to finish putting the chain link on the poles. We also helped a member family in the branch with fixing up a house. They live 30 minutes away from the church and they just bought a house in town so they can live closer. The house is old and beat up so we went and helped them start fixing it up. We painted and plastered the walls for a few hours. The missionary work has been going steady and firm this week. We have a few people we are working with to try and help them make and keep the sacred covenants of baptism. One of our people, Mia, is close but struggling with coming to church. The other person, Jesus, we have barley taught because he has been so busy with starting school and football but has come to church three times in a row.

I think this is the most Texas thing I have seen..

La pachanga de la zona

Today is the last day of the transfer so we got together as a zone and had a BBQ. We had fajita and sausage tacos. Our entire district is staying together for another transfer! It's not common for a district to stay the same for two transfers and we now have the privilege to stay together for three! I'm excited for the upcoming transfer and everything that is going to come with it.

This week went well. We found a couple people that have potential to progress and we set a baptismal date with one of our people as well. The work has been going well here in Alice. We are always trying to find but it seems like here in Alice we find fewer people but they are more prepared. I have come to learn that it's honestly a blessing when people slam the door or just say we're not interested. It's easy to tell they are not interested and you don't have to waste time with them. The blessings of a slammed door!

Food pantry! We volunteer weekly and we finally got a picture.

la pachanga

Carne

We are still continuing to work on the service project for some of our people. We went back this week and worked on burning out more stumps.  We had the fire burning inside a big metal ring so we decided to put a grill on top and cook some dinner.  we put some meat on to cook a few hours, for dinner. Someone we meet gave us a sirloin of nilgai (I think that's how you spell it). It's an animal similar to the antelope but larger. We cooked that along with some onion and potatoes. It came off great and tasted like a beef roast. We had our first interviews with President Ocampo this week. It was a good opportunity to get to know him better and have some one on one time with President. We found a couple new people this week and they are progressing well. Two of our people have been reading the Book of Mormon and another two came to church yesterday. 

Perros!

Over the past year I have become not a very big fan of dogs. Don't get me wrong a nice properly taken care of and well behaved dog is good, but there are just too many that are vicious death wishing beasts. We were trying to knock a door this week of one our our people that has a baptismal date and a dog was in the way. It chased us across the street but my companion was still determined to knock.  When the dog went to the back of the house my companion ran to the door knocked and then tried to run back. As soon as he touched the door the dog came around the house at full speed and chased him down the block!

Yesterday there were 83 people at church and 6 non-members!  It is amazing to see the miracles in this area!  We also had another service project this week.  We are working on building a fence for some of the people we are teaching.  (They also came to church yesterday.)  In order to put the fence in we had to remove 5 or 6 massive stumps. We worked for a few hours just digging around the stumps and trying to get them out. We ended up deciding to just burn them out.  We are going back on Tuesday to dig the holes for the posts and get ready to set up the fence.

My companion and the dog...

more cactus fruit