January 10, 2011 The TEMPLE!!

What a week it has been. We had a slower week, we had a lot of people cancel on us or just not be there and really didn`t find many new investigators. But it was still a great week! WE started teaching the boyfriend, Freddy, of one of our investigators, Lucia, and he`s really cool! He has a ton of questions and when we teach him he really listens and pays attention. I believe we`re going to teach him again on tuesday or wednesday! We also had a little problem with one of our investigators, lets just say he had a fun new year and then dissapeared to Mexico City for a few days. It scared us a bit... but we went to go talk to his wife and he was back. which is great! so hopefully we can get them married this or next week and baptize him before my companion goes home. That would be great! haha
To top off my week! I went to the temple!! :) It was really really great! one of my companions converts got married and sealed to her husband! it was such a spiritual and amazing opportunity! We took a bus to Mexico city and then a city to the temple. that city is seriously huge. Like. ridiculously giant. haha I can`t even explain it. I`ll be sending lots of pictures of the temple! because it`s amazing! and huge! I believe it`s one of the 5 biggest in the world. wow. We got to go in and see them get sealed. It was wonderful! haha I wish we could have stayed all day and did more, but we had to go, but it was all ok! haha afterward one of the people with us gave me their camera and told me to take pictures, I got some pretty good ones. They called me professional. haha it was fun. I really really enjoyed it!
We went to the Visitors center there too! They had a great statue of Christ, Pictures depicting the entire book of Mormon, and a small Mexican Pioneer Museum. it was pretty cool! I`ll send pictures of all of this!
Also this week, we had another holiday here in Mexico, El Dia de los Reyes Magos! or day of the wise men. they celebrate when the wise men brought Jesus the baby presents, and because they did, they bring all the kids presents here too!!! haha it is kind of a weird holdiay, but I like it! It has pretty much 0 apostacy, and it takes a lot of the presents out of christmas and more of Christ. It`s great! I approve. haha and for this holiday they have a big circular bread called La Rosca, and they hide tiny little dolls in it when they bake it, and when you cut your piece you try not to get a doll, and if you do you have to bring Tamales to the next holiday, 2nd of February, (a holiday for a Virgin). it`s funny. I got one, My companion too. But we`re not bringing Tamalies. Because we don`t celebrate Virgin Holidays... haha
Well I believe thats about all, we have some pretty cool investigators right now, and some pretty lame ones. We stopped off to pick up a lady and bring her to church, at 7:30 in the morning! (which means we left the house at 6:45. Aaannnddd, she was still sleeping and didn`t come. it was pretty lame... we`re going to planch her this week. huh. yeah, church is difficult at 8 in the morning. WE only had 1 investigator. it was sad. But the Boyfriend of the Bishops daughter came, and he`s not a member, so I think we`re gonna start teaching him soon! he seems pretty cool.
Yeah well Thats about it! I love you all and Pray for you each and every day!
Love
Elder Summers

The temple! And The Mexican MTC!!! Pretty cool huh? it`s really small... haha
Also. I found THE GOLD PLATES!! cool huh? i`m a pretty great missionary, just for that... mwahahaha.


oh also! for fun today. WE went ICE SKATING!! believe it. Ice skating, in an OUTDOOR rink in the middle of mexico. yup.

The pictures of the Book of Mormon, Temple visitors center.
More of the Temple!
A rodeo! yes... a mexican rodeo! haha I think it lasted for like 3 days... i heard loud speakers and music every night for the past little while... haha
A really cool flower i took a picture of. At the pyramids we went to. it was growing from a tree that i called the jello tree, cause it moved like jello. haha

The Pyramid!! I don`t remember the name... it was really weird. But it was pretty cool! not as cool as Xochicalco... which is huge and has like 20 or 30 pyramids. this one had 2 big ones and 4 or 5 really small ones.

January 3, 2011 Another week in lovely Mexico!

Oh the time sure is passing quickly here! i`m almost 6 months into my mission!! weird!! Well we had a pretty good week. it was a little difficult with the holdiays, becuase the day before, of, and after new years everyone was drunk. so there was really no one to teach, and a lot of our investigators went on vacation. but we still had a good week, we found 3 new investigators that are pretty cool and we challenged 4 people to be baptized! it was great! so yeah, we definately had a good week here in Pradera! We also had a get together on new years with our district, we were allowed to stay out till 10:30!! So we watched a church movie (states of grace) and ate pizza. it was great! except I really didn`t enjoy the movie a whole lot. the end was lame. very lame. but thus it is. haha oh well...

Today we went and visited some more pyramids! these were smaller and not quite as cool as Xochicalco. But still pretty cool. Sadly the computer i`m on doesn`t have a card reader so I can`t send pictures this week. But maybe next week. It was quite fun!

and though all of you are thinking that the holidays are over... your wrong! theres one more on the 5th! El dia de los Magos Reyos. The day of the Wise men. When the wise men reached christ the baby and presented him with presents. It`s pretty much just another reason to get drunk... and eat bread. They have special bread for that holiday. haha weird. But thus is mexico. They have lots of holidays.

New years day was weird. No one was out of their houses. it was seriously weird. haha we walked around and cuernavaca was like a ghost town, there were barely any busses so we had to wait forever to go anywhere and yeah. it was a strange experience. Yeah well thats about all that happened this week. If all goes well we`re going to marry and baptize an guy this next week. hopefully. and have 3 or 4 baptisms for the week after. I`m really excited for that. we`re getting some pretty good investigators here, I love it!

yeah well I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Summers

December 27, 2010 Christmas!!!

Oh what a great week it has been. This was the week of the Navidad. Christmas week. :) I love everything about christmas and this year it was awesome! I spent christmas day, here is the 24th. I´m not sure why, with an awesome family. We woke up in the morning and went down to the church to clean for a while, because we had no appointments, and people really don´t like to be bugged here on christmas, even though it´s not a very big holliday, (compared to the U.S.) and we cleaned and I played the Organ for a few hours. it was great! Then we went to the families house and talked for a while, and watched the Testiments! What a great movie! prettty entertaining in spanish too. Then we went to another members house to meet some people, they made us tamalies with guacamolie sauce that was bomb. I loved it. Then we went back to the first families house and had dinner, it was like a grassy plant in Molé sauce. it wasn´t very good. But I got full so I was happy! Then we sang christmas songs and my companion played the guitar. it was great :) And we got to stay out till 12!!! it was crazy. I was so tired... haha then real christmas day we went to another members house and our families called! so I got to talk to my family and friends! it was really awesome! I really enjoyed it. Then we ate lunch over there, then after had to go to another area to do an interview. Altogether a good day. Very relaxing. very nice.

Also this week! We had another Baptism!! It was so great. Her name is Eva. And she is probably the most excited person i´ve ever met aboutt he gospel. She was always making comment in our lessons about how excited she was to get baptized and everything and is now probably in Alma in the Book of Mormon! It´s awesome! she was so ready and so awesome! we´re teaching her two kids, but they definately have a lot less enthusiasm than she does. haha Her son we´ve taught basically everthing too and he was really excited and into it until we taught him about the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity. Then his excitement dropped significantly. it´s sad. Hopefully we´ll be able to get him excited again. But all is well! :) We just played soccer with the zone. It was fun. We play a lot, and for new years we´re getting together as a zone and going ICE SKATING!!! yes believe it. Ice skating in Mexico! They have an outdoor rink in the Center of Cuernavaca aaannnddd it´s free!!!!! crazy huh. People here don´t really like to ice skate, but they love to watch. The other day I saw maybe 10 people on the ice. and 200 in the stands watching them. it was funny. So we´re gonna go tear it up! yeah!

We also had our ward Christmas activity! It was aweosme, they had a talent show like thing before and my companion and I and our ward mission leader sang a trio with the guitar, of Silent night. It was pretty good. I have the video, but it´s much much to large to send. There were lots of singers and dancers, and our bishop sang and played the piano and guitar. He is an incredible singer! seriously, he´s a very quiet humble guy, but he can sing! It was awesome!!1 yup, well included are my baptism pictures from this week and i´ll send more in another email!

I love you all and want to hear about your christmases and your presents and everything!!!

Love you all!

Love Elder Summers

December 20, 2010 Oh what a glorious time of the year!!! and BAPTISM!

What a great week it has been. it was kind of crazy and we had a lot of stuff to do. Including our Zone Christmas Party!! it was actually 3 zones together. It was great! we went and ate good food then everyone bought a gift and we had a crazy gift exchange. I ended up with a really cool weird statue thing of a mexican guy with beans. it´s cool. i love it! then we had a really great spiriualy meeting. The president and his wife spoke and I did a musical number with my companion and a few other elders. Then we had a testimony meeting. it was awesome! It got me very excited for Christmas.

Ontop of that we pretty much had a miracle this week. We´ve been teaching a Lady named Gabriella, almost all of her family are members. except her parents, but they live in another state so yeah. her husband and grandma and yeah pretty much everyone are members. He cousin just got back from a mission like 4ish months ago and he started bringing her to church and yeah so she got interested. Then we started teaching her and she was even more interested. When it came time for baptizm she said that she wanted to talk with her parents about it first. Which is reasonable, but lame because she´s like 27ish. so she should make her own decisions. And talking to her parents turned into She´s going to Guerrero (another state) on the 22nd for a week or two. and we couldn´t have that without her being baptized. Cause she is ready now. So we had a great talk and used the scriptures a lot! and after about 10 minutes of almost silence and just waiting she finally said ok. And we baptized her the next day!!! :D it was great! an awesome experience and very spiritual. It makes me happy when We have investigators that aren´t scared of what their family thinks and make decisions for their selves. it always makes me happy. We have another Investigator who is all set up to be baptized thursday! She is pumped. She´s probably the most excited person ever, she´s in the book of Jacob in the Book of Mormon and reads a lot. She is really awesome and super ready for baptizm. her kids are a little less. One has been to church once, the other twice (the son) We taught the son everything and the only thing he really lacks is the desire to get baptized, cause he doesn´t have it yet. he understands everything pretty well and I believe has stopped smoking and drinking. I hope. We´re goign to ask again next visit. and if everything goes ´miraculously, we´ll baptize him too! But only if he wants too.

Well with the christmas spirit in the Air, there is a wonderful opportunity to share the Gospel! I challenge each and everyone of you that reads my emails to Share the gospel with someone that you think is ready, or needs to hear it right now! The light of Christ is stronger at this time of the year than any other. people are much more receptive and are more willing to listen about messages of Christ and his church than any other time of the year! so that is my challenge to everyone. Talk to your friends, co-workers, family, or a random stranger about the gospel, and if possible, see if they want a message fromt he missionaries! Because they need as much help as possible. I love Mexico! and I love All of you! and most improtantly, I love my Savior Jesus Christ!

Love

Elder Summers

p.s. I taught a lady this week named Santa. true story. I wanted to know if her last name was either Clause, or Biblia. Either would be awesome.

More Pictures

A picture of Brent with his current zone

A service project Brent did at a Primaria

Eugenia at her baptism

us at Xochicalco. This was a great trip

Brent posing in a trench coat he found in his apartment

Some Pictures

Making what I think are scarves?

"A cool part of Pradera, called Tzompantle. it´s a rich area. Lots of rich people. and very poor people. weird... thats mexico. haha"

"A big stack of dead things! not really... they like the dia de los muertos. haha halloween is a pretty big thing here. seriously."

"Dia De los Muertos!! mwahahaha!"

December 13th

Hello Family!
It is the 13th of December and just a nice almost 70 degrees here in Cuernavaca Mexico! You might be curious about the subject of this weeks letter. As a few of you might know and the vast majority probably don´t. Yesterday 12-12-10 was the Birthday of the Virgin Guatalupe!! The whole country celebrated with a ton of fireworks all day. We watched a little at night. Everyone was praying to the Virgin and giving her flowers and everything all day. it was.... ridiculous. and stank seriously of Apostacy. But that is mexico!!! haha
So this week has been pretty good! We have 2 people that are set to get baptized this next week. and with some luck and faith 3 more the week after! But we´ll see what happens then. This week had great and sad moments, We had to say goodbye to a really cool family. They were progressing really really well and were super interested and everything! But after teaching them about the law of chastity we found out that they aren´t married. They´ve been together for 14 years and have a 14 year old kid together, but aren´t married. We later taught a great lesson on the family and the improtance of marriage in the family and how it will strengthen their relationship and everything! it was very spiritual, but sadly they reject marriage. it´s weird, cause they are very happy together and really seem to love each other. But don´t believe in marriage. I don´t understand why, we kept asking and asking and trying to figure out their real problem with marriage or the church or whatever but they would never open up about it and after 3 appointments we had to say goodbye and left them with a card and our telephone number. It was sad because they were sucha great family! they came to church 2 weeks in a row and everything! but... when we drop someone I know the lord prepares more to be taught. So this week we are going to teach!
This week was changes! And Neither me nor my companion are going, which means that i´m going to kill my father! haha this is his last change, then he goes home. Sad. He´s great! and awesome guy, missionary, and father. But i´m exctied for him to go home. haha and i´m excited just to be able to say that I killed my father. mwahahahaha
Well christmas is definatley coming, I was in walmart today printing pictures and they had good american christmas music on. I felt at home. It was great! haha So i´m really not sure whats happening with christmas yet.... were going to find out during the week and I might shoot you a quick email telling you where and what and everything so yeah. If you have reccomendations on what time I should call tell me. And I hope everyone is there at Mom´s and Dad´s when I call!!!
Ok well i´m going to chili´s for lunch now. I love you all and will talk to you later!!
Love
Elder Summers