Mitzmutzatzacuiltitimanizque

Hello family.

Before I forget I'll let mom know that my release date is August 10. Sorry it took so long but I read the letters and by the time Monday comes around I've already forgotten anything that you asked me to do. But yeah, that's my release date. Oh and Minerva and Dianna are from Mexico, like everyone else around here. They're from one of the more northerly provinces of Taumolipas. Speaking of them I appreciate how you want to help them out Mom. Minerva, unfortunately does not speak english, she's also pretty blind, she has to hold things right in front of her nose to see anything. I forget what it was that happened to her or that she has but it has something to do with cataracts, I think that's what they're called. Somehow someway her eyes got messed up and she can't see. She is %100 dependent on Dianna just to get around or do much of anything. And being undocumented citizens living on $70 a week they're opportunities for medical help are rather limited. In fact just recently they got the bill from the Mental Hospital where Dianna was and it came out to be a little bit over $4000. They were rather beside themselves what to do about that, their nearby family is all chipping in a little bit but all of them are generally unhappy about that. The whole episode is rather embarrassing, especially seeing as though it was the Bishop who checked her in there and as far as we know, is leaving them to hang on with this huge bill. So needless to say they haven't been all that happy lately. But at least the Adventists haven't come back since we drove them off last saturday. It's an improvement, instead of defending them from a whole other church and our own ward, now we only have to defend them from our own ward.

Despite all of that this week was pretty good. Actually it was great. The area we've taken over contains many wonderful opportunities. This week we set baptisimal dates with three new investigators on the very first time we taught them, which were in members' home with the members themselves present. Which is perfect, that's really the ideal lesson, teaching an investigator in a member's home with the member actively participating in the lesson. The part is both of these guys have been coming to church to weeks now, one of them actually lives with a member family and recent convert, and the elders who were in this area before never knew about them at all. When we talked to them we told them about all of this and they were just like "Hhuh... That's cool." They didn't have any idea that a couple of member families had been bringing investigators to church for a few weeks now.

We also had a "specialized training" meeting this week with the Mission President and his wife. One of the many subjects was 'working with the ward council'. Which was the perfect opportunity see if we could get some of the higher powers in the local church authorities to fix some things about our ward leadership. One of the ZL's in the meeting asked me to sort of describe some of the difficulties we have with working with the our ward council. I then explained about how our ward council insists that investigators should get themselves to church and that members were not to give any rides, I also described about how we generally avoid working with the ward council and we ask individual members to give rides to investigators and ask them not to mention it to the Bishop. At that point President interrupted and said that has to stop. We can't make the members choose between us and the ward leaders that creates unhealthy divisions in the ward and makes us enemies of the Bishop (Too late!). He said that the system we have in the church must be upholded and even if it isn't running how it should be we should respect our leaders. He then said that our leaders definitely don't seem to be doing what they should be doing and that he would have a word with the Stake Presidency (success!) and would see what he could do. He said that we must do all we can to help the bishop and other leaders realize what their responsibilities are. He then made an interesting comment that we (the missionaries) have to come at them or pressure them from the bottom, that he and the stake leaders had to come down or pressure them from the top, and that others have to pressure them from the sides. We need to be doing all we can to get the ward leaders to do their job but at the same time we can't tell them how to do their job, we just have to 'teach correct principles and let men govern themselves'. He encouraged us to make visits to our ward leaders and go through a few things out of Preach My Gospel with them and do it in a non-offensive non-condescending way.

YEah... So that battle still goes on, though now we finally got the momentum of the stake leadership coming down on the bishop's head so hopefully we can expect to see things improve soon. So that's all I have to say today.

The pictures are of some graffiti and me and a part member family, Artemio, Maria, and Katrin. The girl, Katrin is a member, her parents aren't baptized because they're not married to each other and they can't get married to each other yet because they're not yet divorced from their spouses, both of which are in Mexico and they haven't seem them for like 10 years. It's been a frustrating nightmare trying to get ahold of layers, the Mexican consulate, and people who might know anything about how to get divorced from someone who lives in another country and don't know his or her whereabouts. They're way ready for baptism, they just need to get married. Also they're really, really, really simple people. They're so ignorant of so many things it's almost cute. Artemio grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere Mexico, never went to school, can barely read and works as a butcher. Maria grew up on the outskirts some little Indian village on the slopes of some Volcano somewhere in Mexico, likes to talk a lot, and teaches us all of these cool Aztec words and sayings. For both of them the world of lawyers, laws, parking tickets, licences, and other such trappings of the modern civilized world are completely alien to them. And they're trying to go through this horribly complicated legal situation. All we've been doing is telling them to go to the Mexican consulate (which lies out of the mission boundaries, so we can't go with them) and get some lawyer to divorce them. I'm so afraid that some lawyer will just take total advantage of them and rob them of all of their money and leave them no better off than they were before. It's scary just telling these two to go down into the downtown and go into the consulate and having them work it out themselves. So we ask around and we have the Ward Mission leader help them out a bit, but the ward in general is generally unhelpful (no surprise). They're so funny though, we stopped by one Friday night and all of three of them were just sitting in their little two room house doing a puzzle! A puzzle! Friday night, a small family together and doing a puzzle and enjoying each other's company?! Crazy! Who actually does that? It's hilarious! They're just so happy all the time! How do they do that? I really love them, they're one of my favorite families and I hope we can figure out how to get them married somehow.

Okay. Well that's all for today. Have a fun week, peace....

-- Elder Arroz