Tough Week

Hey well I want to start off by congratulating my cousin Miguel on receiving his eagle scout award! That is so amazing buddy, and I am really proud of you. That award will surely help you as you continue to grow in life!

I really liked the new paint job of the house! I think that it looks a lot better than the green that we used to have on the house! Just kidding ya mommy! I dont know if I will even be able to recognize the house when I get home from my mission. 

Well like the subject line of my letter says, these last couple of weeks have been pretty tough, and my companion and I really haven't been seeing the success in our area that I would like.  It still looks like as a zone we are doing well. We have been working hard, but I think that we have to work even harder. We have been trying to focus more on working with members, and we have kind of lost the focus on doing our 10 contacts daily. It might seem like a small thing, but I know that the Lord blesses us as we show him our full diligence and obedience!!  That is amazing that Peter Jensen is already home from his mission! I want to congratulate him for all of his hard work in the service of the Lord. It made me think today if I would be ready to go home today. I know that I still have so much more that I need to do here, and the time seems to be passing by a little too quickly. Sometimes it scares me how fast time has passed, and how I am now just about 8 months away from finishing this wonderful journey. That, though, only motivates me to work even harder in the time that I do have!!  As for companion, he finishes his mission in March.  He is really great and definitely one of my best friends here.  

Well we did recieve a great blessing from the Lord this week with this lady named Claudia! She lives extremely far away from our house and where we usually work, but the other day we went to eat in this pueblo that is far away, and we found her contacting. She gave us her direction and we set up a cita for the next day. We went the next day, and taught her everything and she accepted everything, including a baptismal date.  She was so prepared to hear the Lord's message. And on Sunday she came to church and I think she really liked it. She had to leave early from the church, but she told us that she would be coming back next week as well. It was about the only good news of the week!!! haha.

Today we cleaned our house, and it took us about 5 hours, but it is now probably the cleanest and best smelling house in the mission! haha. I don't know how Ana (the cleaning lady) does that every day. My back is killing me, and it wasn't that much fun! haha. But at least it is now a much better place to feel the spirit. And what's this about Lee skipping the Columbine game!! Even if they are horrible, it is a rivalry game.  That is like the Utah quarterback just saying that he is going to sit out against BYU because they are bad! Get better Lee so you can play!!!

I had commented to dad that I wanted to use my birthday money to take the whole zone out to eat or to go bowling, but the problem is is that they still aren't allowing us to get together as a zone. I told dad that I would rather spend my birthday money on the missionaries than on stuff for me, because you all know how much I love bonding! haha. It might just end up being a couple of companeros of the zone. I will let you know how it goes in my next letter home!

I Love you all,

elder holmes

What a Great Conference!

These are photos of the two baptisms we had this week.  Mia (the friend of Mayra) and Maria.  They were both amazing!  The other photo is of Elder Son, Elder Watson and me.  Watson was my comp in the MTC and Elder Son was in our District there.  They are both now Zone Leaders, as well.

Hey family,

Wow what a great conference that we had, and the great oportunity that we had to listen to the voice of the prophet and his 12 apostles!  Everyone was extremely surprised on the new announcement of the age that the new missionaries can now leave. I have been a witness, though of the missionaries who leave at 18 years old here in mexico, and it is true what President Monson said about their maturity level and their desire to serve. What a great push in the direction of the missionary work for the church. I would believe that the number of missionaries will go up by at least 10 or 20 thousand with that new report. But I was thinking about it, and how all of the girls back home are going to be peacin' out for their missions now! haha. I guess I will just have to wait for them!  

I love the messages that they gave us this week, and it was another amazing experience to receive the answers to my prayers. I had a couple of questions in my mind as I entered this year's conference, and it always amazes me that the talks are exactly related to the needs that I have. It is a great testimony builder to me that the prophet and the leaders of the church receive directly from God, the things that we need to hear. I was blown away by a couple of the talks, and the great spirit that I felt. This really is the Lord's church, and the leaders of the church are 100% inspired with the words of our Heavenly Father.

My companion and I kind of had a tough week here. We faced a little bit of a trial of our faith, but this week should be a lot better. Although we invited everyone to the church to hear the voice of the prophet, we just had a bit of success. It was tough to find and even harder to committ the people to coming to church this week. I know that this week will be better, as I apply all of the things that we learned in the conference. One upside of this week was the different capacitationes that we had. We had one with all of the zone leaders, and then on Wednesday, we were able to teach the zone everything we had learned. We learned some great things on how to work with the members. The mission is really taking a turn, and focusing more on references and lessons with members. They say that one day we won't even be able to contact or knock doors. It's a good thing that we are preparing now, and everyone knows that when we work with the members, we will have a lot more success.

Ok well another trip to Lake Powell without me! SWEET! haha. I loved seeing all of the pictures, but I am not going to lie, I was a little bit more jealous of the pictures I saw of all you guys together at the conference center! I would have loved to have been there to watch the prophet and listen to him speak in english! I was only able to watch the priesthood session in english. I hope that there isn't another Lake Powell trip planned, or any other trip for that matter, before i get home! haha. I think you can wait 8 months, can´t you! And then we will party!

love you all,

Elder Holmes

Thanks for Making Me Sad!

Hi family.  Here is Scott's e-mail that we received today.  Just a little background on his first paragraph......we learned a few days ago that our dog Abby has an inoperable cancerous tumor in her head.  We are already seeing significant signs of her deterioration and the vet says that this type of cancer is fast and furious.  Scott has always been really close with our pup and we knew that this news would make him very sad.  On a happier note......I am including a photo and a message that one of the ward members posted to my facebook page this week.  The photo captured her feelings perfectly and we are so glad that Scott continues to find such great joy in serving his Heavenly Father.  Can't ya just feel it?????  

Have a great week -- Carolann

Well I am here writing you but I kind of just lost all of the excitement in writing when I read about Abby. My comp started laughing at me because I care so much about my dog. I really almost started to cry because I started to reflect on all of the great times we have had together. This might sound weird because I am talking about a dog, but I love Abby. It's like watching the movie Marley and Me all over again! :(

I do, though, want to wish my cousin Ellen Lewis a happy birthday this week, and I hope you have an excellent day! I cant believe that I only have a couple weeks left until my birthday! And that this week we are going to be able to listen to the words of the prophets. I am pumped out of my mind, and I hope that you all are able to watch all of the sessions. Make sure that you have a couple questions in mind, because I know that the words of the prophets are always inspired and they always talk about something that we need in our lives. I am pumped but I think I will watch it again in spanish. I really wanted to watch it in english because it really isn't the same feeling when it is being translated. But at least I can understand everything this time! My spanish is pretty good now that I have been with my mexican comps for a while!

So this week was a pretty fantastic week, and just like I told you last week, I will now fill you all in on the couple of baptisms that we had! One of our converts is named Mia. She is one of the best friends of my converts Mayra! She is about 30 years old, a single mother with a son named Emiliano, and has now experienced the miracle of forgiveness. She has been through a lot of things in her life, and has made a few large errors in her life, but she has now changed so much and is really solid in the church. It makes me reflect on the talk that Elder Holland gave in the last conference when he talked about the "obreros de la viña". And how it doesn't matter what time we get there, as long as we find our way back to the Lord's path. Mia is doing so great and it has been a great experience for us to teach people with the Hermana Mayra as well. Speaking of Mayra, this week was the primary program in the ward and her kids just killed it! (Laura and Karla). They looked like members who have been in the church their whole lives. They memorized their parts, and they knew all of the words to the songs! it almost made me cry! !

Ok now on to the baptism that we had yesterday! The hermana Maria! She is family of some of the members in the ward, and she is the one who came to church all by herself a few weeks ago. She has grown a lot, and yesterday was a very special day for her and for us! She is a very humble lady, and very sweet. It was a great miracle in my life to spend this past week with her. She won't be confirmed for another two weeks because conference is this upcoming week!

Well so that is about it for my week!  Today was a really fun p-day. We went to play soccer really early in the morning on some sick fields that are close to our house. Then after that we went bowling and my team just trashed everyone! haha. I love you all.

Elder Holmes

Message that accompanied the following photo was:  Hermana......on this occasion my family took the elders to look for an address that was very far away and we got caught in a terrible rainstorm.  Even with the rainstorm, the elders never lost their joy and happiness of serving the Lord. 

Que Honda!

 Scott with Yolanda and her family.

Scott with Marlen (who was baptized a few weeks ago) and her mother Felicitas.

Hey I want to just start off by recognizing my awesome Uncle Lee! I heard that you went through another tough hernia surgery and I just want you to know how much I love you and how often I think of you and the sacrifice you made for my dad and my family. Every time I talk about sacrifice here on the mission, I think of the great example you are. Sometimes we think life is hard, and many think living the commandments are hard, but they just don’t understand the meaning of the word sacrifice. If everyone could have a heart like you, Uncle Lee, this world would be a lot different, and we would sure see many more kind things being done. So thanks a lot bud, and I love you lots!

Now on to my exciting week! We didn’t have too much success this week because I felt like we were running from place to place, but we did end off the week with two amazing baptisms! The Hermana Felicitas and the Hermana Yolanda! I had the privilege to baptize Felicitas and a Bishop from a different ward (who is a good friend of Yolanda) got to baptize her. The Bishop of the other ward was actually the one who brought Yolanda to the open house with one of her daughters. Yolanda invited her whole entire family to her baptism, so it was a really special day for everyone! I was really grateful and happy to see all of the progress that the two of them have made in this last week! The story of Hermana Felicitas was really a great miracle that I will always remember. Her faith has grown soo much in this time and the last trial of her faith that she had was cutting out coffee completely from her life. Like I have mentioned before, her husband is really sick so Felicitas is up with him all night and has to help him with the dialysis of his blood 5 different times during the day. With such little sleep it is really hard for her to stay up and have the energy to keep pushing forward. Because of that she had been using coffee to help give her the kick during the day. Well with such great faith in this last week she told us that she had thrown it all away and that she wasn’t even going to look at coffee again. She was so determined on getting baptized, and that is exactly what she did. It was a really great experience and you could see the difference on her face the day of her baptism. 

Well we have a couple other people that are progressing and I think that a couple of them should be getting baptized as well in this week but I will let you know everything about them in my next letter. I like to leave you guys with a little of suspense, so you appreciate the surprises that I leave with you all. 

I gotta say when I saw the picture of lee in all of his football pads I was pretty jealous! I mean why in the heck didn’t I ever play football? You are definitely 10 times better looking than you really are when you are in all of your football pads! haha. I mean what girl doesn’t want a guy in those tight little football pants! Fetch i should have played football! haha. Thanks for all of the pictures! I am glad that you are all just having a great time! It would be nice if my other brothers remembered me every once and a while! haha. Like Nick I think he is just so wrapped up in the college life that he doesn’t even want to write me anymore!!! And lee, well i don’t even know if he is still alive, except for the photos! And Christian, I thought I was your favorite brother bro!!! 

Well I took all of my pants and my blue suit to get slim fitted. To be honest I have no idea who sold me the suit, but I think they measured the wrong guy! haha. They probably mixed up my measurements with a 300 pound guy because I was swimming in it my whole mission! 

More next week. I love you all,

Elder Holmes

VIVA MEXICO!

Well time is flying by really fast for me in my mission, and now one of the hardest things for me is to keep  in contact with everyone that writes me! I have been pretty lame and this is literally the only letter that I  have the chance to write every week! So I hope those that haven’t received a letter from me, don’t taken  offense. With the time, you really just lose yourself in the work. I don’t know where the time is going and  why it is passing by so fast! SO VIVA MEXICO to everyone! On Saturday, the 15th, we celebrated the Independence Day here in  Mexico and it was really fun to be in this area. Like I have told you guys, this area is really typical Mexico  and whenever there are fiestas, the whole town is transformed. There were a ton of people coming into  town this whole week and the center was a really fun site. There were a bunch of people selling and they  had live bands going on all day. Obviously, we didn’t have the time to check it all out, but the Hermana  Mayra made us a really typical mexican dish called Pazolli. She also made us something called chilles en  nogadas and they are extremely famous here at this time of year. If you were to go buy one of those chilles  in a restaurant, you would find them at about 200 pesos! So that was really nice of them. The bummer for  everyone else is that at 9 o clock it started to rain like crazy and I think it kind of pooped the party! haha.  It was a fun time to see all of the mexicans with all of their traditions during the week! So as for this week with the investigators, everything went pretty well for us. The hermana Yolanda, who  we found in the open house we did, is planning to have her baptism this week, as well as the mom of  Marlen (the 20 year old girl). Her name is Felicitas and she has also shown a lot of progress. So if  everything works out just perfectly, we should have those baptisms on Saturday in the afternoon! Be  praying for us!! Also we had a great find this week of a lady named Lucia and her daughter Leslie. They  were references from a young couple in the ward. This week the standards of excellence in our mission  changed a little bit, and now we have to have 20 lessons with members and we need to contact 10  references every week. It is a lot different than before and we are all focusing more on just working with  the members to have the success and to find the escojidos.  But anyways, Lucia and her daughter Leslie  accepted during the week to be baptized and they both came to church on Sunday. We had a super spiritual  experience with her, and she felt really amazing in the church. She and her husband need to get married, so  we will see how everything turns out with them.  Well this last week I pulled out 1200 pesos (almost 100 bucks) and that helped me buy a nice new man  purse that I use everyday, fix some of my pants with a seamstress, and buy three new long sleeve shirts!  We will see if I buy a new pair of shoes here in the next couple weeks, as well! This is my “happy birthday  to me”!!!  Love you all and miss you a bunch. Elder Holmes I can’t believe that I forgot to tell you guys about the talent show that we had as a ward about a week ago!  Obviously I had to show the ward how I could snort the spaghetti noodle up my nose and out my mouth!  haha! I was the hit of the show!!  Here is a photo of it, along with one of our entire zone of Cuautitlan,  and the best of all, when we went bowling today with some of the missionaries.  We had a great time!

"I Knew This Was Where I Needed to Be"

Scott mentions his birthday in his e-mail today.  It's not until the 22nd of October, but he is remembering how long the mail takes.  I know he would love to get a card from any of you who might have the chance.  His mailing address is: 

Elder Scott Holmes

Mexico Mexico City North Mission

Apartado Postal #98

54740 Cuautitlan Izcalli, Edo. De Mexico

MEXICO

Thanks for being so awesome in your support of him!  We sure appreciate it and love you all.

Carolann 

Well I want to say happy birthday to Eric Cassity and Joey Winters for this week, and I want you to know that I am thinking of you both and hope that you have awesome days this week!

Well as for me, I am pretty wiped out today, because we went to play on a brand new soccer field that belongs to one of the hermanos in our ward. They just built the field and it is directly behind our house! It is an astroturf field, and it is super dope! We had a lot of fun playing with some of the missionaries from the zone and the hermano that is from our ward. I played pretty well but got extremely tired, really fast, because I am extremely out of shape!

This week went pretty well for us, but we are also facing some difficulties in our area and in the zone. I dont have too much time to write today so it might be a little short, but I will let you know more next week on how all of our investigators are progressing. I do want to tell you one miracle that we had yesterday in the church. This lady, who is a family member of one of the members of our ward, came to the church all by herself yesterday. Her name is Maria, and she is pretty awesome! We were able to talk to her about baptism and also put a date with her to be baptized on the 23rd of this month. She told us "Yes I would love to be baptized. I don't even need to think about it. Right when I walked into this church, I knew that it was where I needed to be in my life." Wow! What an awesome testimony builder for me and my companion, that there are people that are ready and waiting, and all they need to do is enter God's church and they will feel it.

Well we aren't too sure about some of our investigators at this point, so I will let you know how they all progress next week. Sorry for the weak email, but right now a member is going to take us to the mall to buy a couple of things. Mom, don't worry about sending me anything for my birthday. The jersey for my companion should be just fine. He wants a small, long sleeved Rapids jersey. I think that today I will buy a couple long sleeve white shirts and maybe a pair of shoes. That will be my birthday gift! 

I sure love  you all a lot.

Elder Holmes

A Freaking Awesome Week in Tepotzotlan!

Well this week was a freaking awesome week here for us in Tepotzotlan.

On Saturday Mayra and Adriann got married!! It was a miracle, and we were extremely happy for the both of them! They seem extremely happy now, and i feel like we have really helped them change their lives. Also that very same day, Mayra and her daughter Laura got baptized. That was also an extremely special moment because Mayra asked me to baptize her, and my comp, Elder Neyra, baptized Laura. Hermano Adriann is progressing really well too, and he is still really excited about the church and also about getting baptized. This guy is a total stud. His first Sunday in the church he stopped smoking completely and after ten years of living with his wife, he got married on Saturday. I love him a lot, and i know that he will keep progressing just great. Just a little fun fact about Mayra and how awesome she is:  for the last two weeks she has been giving classes to the relief society on how to make diferent foods. Two weeks ago she did donuts and last week she taught them how to make empenadas. All of the hermanas already love her, and she feels really great sharing all her different talents with them, as well.

Now on to the other story, of Marlen. She also progressed really well in this week and we had a really awesome baptismal service for her on Sunday. Her dad was able to come (who is really sick) and i think that he really enjoyed it as well. We are going to keep working with her mom this week, and we will see how everything turns out. She is really awesome, and another miracle that my comp and I have received from our Heavenly Father.

So on Friday we had the zone leader meeting and it was fun to see all of the other missionaries that I have gotten to know throughout my time here in Mexico. One who has been a really good friend to me has been Elder Marquez. We were in Queretaro together and he taught me a lot of good stuff. SO in the junta on Friday, I was saying how sick it would be if we could be comps. I thought that there was no chance, but when they gave us the changes on Saturday night, they surprised us by moving Elder Neyra to Queretaro and putting Elder Marquez with me here. It was kind of a big surprise, because I thought that I was going to end up killing Elder Neyra (killing is used here in missionaries terms btw for when missionaries finish their missions). haha. But the change came as a surprise to many, and Elder Neyra left a couple different people here pretty sad. Elder Marquez and i have already started off great, and have been talking all day about everything new that has gone on. I think that we will have a really great time together with a lot of success! I will miss Elder Neyra, but the things always hapen for a reason, so we will see what the Lord has planned for us now!

I sure love you all,

Elder Holmes

so here are some of my pics from this week! the baptisms of marlen, mayra, and laura. A pic with elder marquez if you forgot what he looked like (the elder in the middle is also one of my good friends and they just called him as assistant.) and then one with a hermano in my ward who is really chill. His name is rafa! it was his birthday and i gave him my shirt because he really liked it when we played soccer one day. and also one last photo with elder neyra