Serving in the Mexico Guadalajara East Mission: The hardest working week ever.. October 24, 2016

Hey everyone!! so this week me and my companion have easily worked harder than i have ever before worked on my mission. and let me tell you why. on tuesday we had a zone meeting which i felt went really awesome honestly. we had a cool activity making "churches" out of plastic cups, focusing on christlike attributes, and lots of cool things we talked about to pump up the missionaries and to help them have the desires to work hard. although just my luck, nothing goes as planned haha. the same day there was a funeral in the same church where we had our meeting, in the same room actually, just the little dividers that they have in churches to seperate us. so we had to be extra reverent during the meeting and we had to try and keep the peace. to help animate the missionaries more we invited the stake president to come and talk at the zone meeting and explain the goals that the stake has. at the end of explaining these goals he made two promises, any companionship that has 50 or more lessons in a week, will get to go to sirloin stockade for free!( sirloin stockade is a buffet that i do believe i described my love for a few emails ago). so that was amazing and the other is that if each companionship has a baptism in november, the stake president will take the whole zone out to eat at a very fancy V.I.P. restaurant, the same restaurant they take the general authorities to when they come to visit here. So after announcing that the entire zone was way pumped to hear the rewards. Side story: after the zone meeting all the missionaries were asked to sing at the funeral, it was kinda cool but also kinda weird since lots of people were sad, i felt like we sung good though. Anyways me and my companion decided that we should be the example for the whole zone and get those 50 lessons. My feet havent hurt so much since my training, nor have i ever had shin splints again since my training, and remember how i said we only used the "missionary pace" when we were late to appointments? well this week we basically used it 99% of the time. Me and my companion did divisions with members every day so we could have more lessons and we visited so many people and we had so many crazy things happen and so many plans fall and so many miracles happen, this week truly killed me mentally and physically. A member told me that during his mission he had never been more tired in his entire life, i thought i was tired during my training, but now i really know what he meant. Getting out of bed is the hardest thing to do every morning, but we do it because we know that if we dont then we wont be worthy of the blessings of the lords. at the end of the week though we were able to meet the goal of 50 lessons though! me and my companion are very happy about this, and we will now be able to rest a little bit haha. Mainly because this week we have interviews with the president, and since were zone leaders we have to be in the church all day to organize them and help things go smoothly, and friday we will be in guadalajara to renew my visa and have divisions with the assistents. Im so happy down here! im suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper tired but i couldnt be loving life more! this are is so awesome, the members here actually come up to US and ask US when they can help US! its a miracle because in none of my other areas has that happened! not to mention i have a great companion! me and Elder Bocanegra get along great, we mess around and joke around alot but we also get work done! also i love morelia! last week on monday we went to a HUGE mall and i literally felt like i was in the united states haha. everything about it just reminded me of the good ole' USA. so that was pretty cool. and today we went and ate at the same taco and torta place that me and Elder Herrmann and Elder Smith came to about 3 months ago! and man that is good food haha. oh i almost forgot to say, i confirmed someone yesterday! i have baptized 3 people while on my mission but yesterday i had the opportunity to confirm a convert that the sister missionaries here had been teaching. that was a really cool experience as well. Well as you can all tell im working hard and loving life haha! also i would like to give a happy birthday wish to my best friend ever, Kylee! hope you have a great day sis! Well I love you all and i hope you all have a great week! Love Elder Griffin

Zone Meeting... "Pumping up the Missionaries" "building churches"