Serving in the Mexico Guadalajara East Mission: week 2 as a district leader! August 1, 2016

Hey everyone! so this last week was pretty good i guess, i dont know im a little down just because our numbers weren't that great this week and not alot of people came to church, but im still happy and i feel like im doing all i can to help the people down here, and i just have to hope they use their agency for good! but yeah im doing good haha. Anyways let me tell you a little about this week. First off i went to pantla this week to do divisions with Elder Menchu. Hes a really cool dude from guatamela and hes really chill and laid back. hes also a really hard worker though which is great. while we were in divisions we had a few fun memories haha. first off we bought pizza tuesday night and feasted like kings, even though it was a small pizza haha. then another funny story is as we were walking two old ladys(jehovas witnesses) who were sitting down called us over to the little table they had and told us to take a book or whatever we wanted, and at first were like no thanks we gotta go we dont have time but they just kept bugging us, so finally we went over and i took some book that apparently talks about Jesus Christ and my companion took a little pamphlet and after we started reading them just to see all the mistakes they had haha. when we were in divisions we also went to see some crocodiles! in their area in pantla their kinda close to the beach, so after a lesson we went to ixtapa and the beach to see the crocodiles and take a bunch of pictures there and that was way fun! the crocodiles were way cool to see! makes me wanna go home and hunt some alligators haha. then after we went and took some pictures on the beach which turned out really cool haha. also i made a new friend! his name is donkey! haha he was close by the beach and he would walk right by us as we walked, and when we stopped he would stop, and when i would run he would start running too! so we messed with him for a bit and that was really funny haha. After we had the divisions me and Elder Aldana had our weekly planning in the church and after we finished we started cleaning the baptismal font! whoever had a baptism last didnt drain it, the water had been sitting there for a way long time and had made really nasty mold. the branch president helped us drain the water and then we cleaned it out a little bit just to get the mold off, but were still gonna go through and clean it with soap before we have our baptism. speaking of that, so thursday night our zone leaders came from Lazaro and Elder Aldana and Elder Ojeda went and did the interview for our investigator and me and Elder Creason(my Grandpa) went to work for a bit in my area! that was cool and i learned alot from him. but long story short our investigator didn't pass the interview. just because she doesn't know if Joseph Smith was a prophet or not and she also doesn't know if the book of Mormon is true. so were gonna keep working with her until she receives those answers. friday was probably the hardest day of the week. we walked a long ways to visit our investigator and see how she was and talk about everything and that went good, then the entire afternoon we had 0 lessons. first off our lunch appt canceled on us, we called her and told her we were gonna be late and she told us she was in Zihua... so we ended up eating with the branch president haha. after that it seemed no one wanted to have lessons, we even had an appointment with an investigator for 5 at the church but she never showed up... so then we just waited until 6 for the english class but no one showed up to that either, and then at 7 there were only 3 people there for the family home evening, so by this point i was honestly pretty discouraged, but we just went back to work. we ended up going to a less actives house and he had just killed a pig, so naturally, I, Elder Griffin wanted to help cut it up haha. so we helped him chop it up and skin it and yeah it was cool. saturday i had another little test of patience. Satan really tried me this time, because we went to visit our ward mission leader who is inactive, and he wasn't home but his mom was. she was just really rude and onery and plain mean asking us why we hadn't come to visit him and where were we and how other people had come to visit but ´where are the missionaries?´ i left about ready to tear a coconut tree out of the ground and throw it at that lady. but i repented and forgot about it and the rest of the day was good. then sunday was normal. then later we were able to do some service cleaning up some huge coconut leaves or branches or whatever you wanna call them haha. the lady is pregnant so she cant do it and her husband only rests on sunday so we helped them and that was cool. and that was this week! Sure had its ups and downs but im still pushing through each day and im fighting the good fight! i hope everyone is well at home and i just want you to know i love you all! thanks for all the love and support and prayers! have a great week! Love Elder Griffin

Divisions in Pantla, Ixtapa Beach and Crocodiles