Serving in the Mexico Guadalajara East Mission: Hard work pays off! Baptism of the Lica Juarez family! January 30, 2017

Hey everybody! i hope everyone is doing great! I'm just down here in mexico enjoying my vacation haha. Jk this is the hardest ive ever worked on a vacation! Well this last week was awesome! we worked really hard with our investigators, Laura and Antonio so that they could be baptized! we were visiting them almost every day and having awesome lessons with them. so let me tell you a little bit more about them. Laura is a single mom about 40 years old. She has two sons, Antonio who is 8 years old and Fernando who is 6( don't remember if i said this before but oh well). It has been amazing to see the change in Laura's life and to see just the light in her eyes from living the gospel. She wanted something better for her sons and she found the church and has loved it. Her boys are so awesome as well, they're the funniest little dudes who are way smart as well! they pay lots of attention in Sunday school and always tell us what they learn and its so awesome to see them growing as well! Laura told us that she was a little nervous throughout all the week and we just told her that its normal and everything will be ok. the baptism was really special as well! they just looked like a beautiful family that was making the first step towards eternal blessings! We sang a special hymn as well during the baptismal program that Laura later told us helped her feel at peace and calm. The only worry she had beforehand was if their was going to be hot water haha, and we told her that their would be, sadly we lied though haha. Who knows how but we filled the font with hot water and it got real cold real quick. Laura put the example for her son and was baptized first and i had the privilege to baptize her. As she came up she was just smiling as much as could be and you could tell she was feeling the spirit at 100%. Antonio was really funny because he was kinda freaking out about the cold water and his mom just told him to hurry up and get it over with haha, it almost looked like we were forcing the poor kid, it was pretty funny though! They are so great though that on Sunday we had asked a member to pass for them a half hour before the services, and when he passed by he called us and said they weren't home. Well we called her and she didn't answer her phone so we started freaking out a bit, but at that moment they showed up at the church! they got their a half hour early and by themselves!( in case you didn't know thats a miracle in itself). They looked so happy to be their and again just like the cutest family! I had the privilege as well to confirm Antonio a member of the church and my companion confirmed Laura. The best part of all was to see and hear about their determination to be baptized! When we visited them last night Laura told us that Antonio had woken up a little sick and he said that if he couldn't make it to the baptism, just to bring a little water and throw it on his head hahahhahhaha!! but she said no and that he was going to be baptized! Im so happy to see these children of god make one more step to be able to receive eternal blessings, and I'm really happy to see that hard work does pay off! Anyways other things that happened this week, We had a worldwide training where they announced alot of changes in the missionary lives! our missionary daily schedule is going to change(more details to come on that in future weeks) and where as we used to have 9 key indicators that we reported on each week we know just have 4! The first presidency of the church really wants to hasten the work of salvation and they have made that very clear! so we should see big changes in the mission over the next month and especially over the next few months. After the training we did divisions with Elder Luna and Elder Anderson to help them meet the goals of 20 new investigators in a week, well we found 10 that day haha. They were really grateful for that help and it was awesome for us as well to see that miracle! Thursday we did a special fast as a zone asking for a miracle. I don't know if i said this or not but we had the goal in this zone that if each ward baptized in January the stake president would take us to the temple! and their was still one ward that hadn't, so we asked for a miracle by doing the special fast! after much stress and many calls to see what was going on in that ward, the end result was that they wouldn't be having any baptisms. They have an investigator who could've been baptized, but wanted her son to do the ordinance and he lives too far away to have made it there... so more than likely we will put the same goal for February, i just hope im still here to be able to go! Saturday we did divisions with Elder Menchu and Elder Fullmer! again to help them meet the goal of 20 new investigators. The whole zone met that goal so today the stake president will be taking us all out to eat at a V.I.P. Restaurant, the best part... ITS A BUFFET! I'm pumped to put it simply haha. That was this week! on Wednesday of this next week a general authority is going to come and give us training which should be sweet! Saturday we go to Guadalajara to have a special counsel with him as well. Im loving the mission! Im seeing so many miracles and Im having so many great experiences here i just love every moment! I hope each and every one of you can always see the hand of god in your lives! its always there, its just a matter of whether or not we look for it! Love you all have a great week! Love Elder Griffin

Divisions with Elder Luna and Elder Anderson! I love buggin them since they cant do anything about it since i'm a ZL haha!! and we made a map of our area im really proud about! and the baptism!