A Visit From Elder Christofferson

Alright well Tuesday not much really happened!  We didn't leave until really really late because Pres. had to sign off in works and I had to make our budget which was not too bad!  We had one cita with The family Alva and so that was nice!  They are doing good and we are going to the temple with them on Saturday!

Wednesday Elder Christofferson came and that was awesome!  It was one of the most amazing meetings I have ever been in!  He was awesome and you could really feel the spirit really really strong and it was awesome!!  I learned tons and was so happy with what I was able to do and feel!

Then we went to the area and we did divisions with a member so we could divide and conquer!  We had tons of good lessons and we were able to find a couple really really awesome news!  This member is awesome though!  He works in the MTC down here and so he teaches really awesome!  It is awesome to be able to teach with someone that didn't serve here because you learn a lot more!  We have really had some good success!  Lucina is ready for her interview tomorrow and hopefully she is ready!  She has progressed nice and has had a really quick learning time!  She is really really cool!  More to come on that tomorrow!

Thursday Today was a decent day!  We didn't do much!  Nothing really to report on many Investigators!  Tomorrow we have an appointment with the Family Alva and that is all we have planned because we are going to Polanco!  I think we will just have a normal chill day tomorrow in Polanco!  Besides that today we taught a few actives, we got the Pila (font or baptistry) cleaned and Lucina passed her interview and so I will be baptizing her on Saturday at 3!  We are super excited!  We are seeing tons of miracles and we are so excited for that! We are glad she was able to pass her interview!  She really understood in the little time that we had to teach her these passed few weeks!

Friday!  Today was a Polanco day and since my comp has to get his green card renewed I had to do the renovacions and so that was interesting!  It was interesting!  I was able to know how to do some of his job too!  It was cool!  We got back and we went and saw the Family Alva!  They are doing good and they are excited to go back to the temple tomorrow!  We will also be going with the ward and we will be baptizing so basically the same thing that we did last week! It will be nice to get everything done like that!  Then we wil be back and we will clean the house and do all the things we need to do before the news get here!  It was a good day today!

Saturday!  Baptism and temple day!!!!  Today was literally the same thing we did last week!!  We went to the temple in the morning with our ward!  We showed up a little late and they totally left us!  It was so crappy!  We called and the worst part was they are like oh yeah we saw you but didn't think you were coming?  I was like we planned this activity why wouldn't we come?!  That doesn't make any sense!  We were a little upset at first but it was really quite funny that they saw us walking to the church at nine in the morning what else would we do?  So after that we got back home and we had Lucinas baptism and that was awesome!  It was nice to see her come so long and so far!  We were all really excited about that!

Then we took the Family Alva to the temple and that was so much fun!  We are just struggling with the abuela because she just is so indecisive and it is so hard!  She like won't commit!

Douglas forgot to sign his letter this week!  Today was a busy day.  The new missionaries entered for this transfer and he gets to host them in the mission office.  I wanted to include Sister Stutznegger's account of Elder Christofferson's visit.  It is a little more informational than Elder Orchard's recap:)

August 26, 2015

A visit from an apostle..really?  Keith was surprised when that call came from the states.  There are over 400 missions in the world.  There are only 12 apostles, and some of them are not in good enough health for travel.  What are the odds of our little mission getting selected?

And yet we were.  For two weeks we prepared.  The missionaries were given reading assignments.  The church was given special attention by church maintenance.  Missionaries were told to arrive one hour early, fasting and ready to be feed by the spirit.  We even took a few minutes of that hour to "practice" a quick mission photo in case there was time.  And then we waited, listened to music, and prepared ourselves.

Elder Christofferson was worth the preparations.  A beautiful musical number by seven of our missionaries set the stage for 90 minutes of learning.  He took questions and turned them into sermons.  He used scriptures to further our understanding.  He shook everyone's hand and spoke with great kindness and insight.  And when there was just 6 minutes left before he had to leave for another speaking appointment, our "practiced" missionaries got the cherished picture of all of us together.

Many of our missionaries have not even been in the same auditorium or city as an apostle of The Lord Jesus Christ.  This day left a lasting impression!

Elder Olson and I Hit A Year

Tuesday.  Alright well today we had time to visit a few people!  We were able to go and see Lucina and she is doing awesome!  Laura also got prepared for her interview which will be on Thursday!  Hopefully she passes that just fine!  We think she will so things are looking good!  We also put a fecha with the daughter of Lucina!  For the 19th of September!  We have been truly blessed with her!

Wednesday we had a few citas today and so that was good!  We finally saw the family Alba and they are doing good!  The kids are loving what we are teaching!  They are going strong!  Really everyone except for the Grandma!  She is just kind of difficult more than anything!  She is slowly coming around but it seems like every day we have to almost re-convince her of going to church!  However we taught about the Tithing and she loved it!  They all committed to going to church and paying it too!  Griselda was like look I love the way you guys pay and use tithing!  In my church like I don't know if the pastor is just buying himself a new car and house and stuff!  So we hurried and reiterated the fact that only in our church do we do it like that!  That doesn't mean they do it this way in the other religions!  It was a really good lesson we had!

Thursday we went and got tacos in the morning and they are sooo good!  We also just had some citas today.  Laura passed her interview and so that was awesome!  Elder Olson and I hit a year and so we were going to go out for tacos again but that didn't happen! Sadly the member cancelled on us!  So we went for cokes instead and just called it good!  We will get tacos two for one on Saturday I think so that will be really good!

The shirt burning ceremony

 

 

Friday was a day we spent cleaning the church and running around like a chicken with our head cut off!  We kind of did really bad planning and had to cross the area multiple times it was bad!  I need the walking though!  We were able to see the family Alva and also Lucina!  It was awesome we just got invited to a family home evening that a member put on and called our investigators!  It was really really nice!  All in all things were really good!

Saturday!  This was an awesome day!  We went to the Temple for the first time and it was sooo beautiful! It was packed but we went with all of the youth and had an awesome turnout! What was fun was that they just didn't have transport planned to get there.  So we walked to the closest metro/Micro stop and we tried to contract a micro driver!  It was pretty funny!  The guy was like I will take you and bring you back for 900 pesos, kind of expensive but it was fine.  Then we came back and had our baptism!

 

Laura's baptism

It was one of the best baptisms I have had here!  There was tons of people that came and the Primary sang a special musical number and everything was so great!  They had her visiting teachers there to meet her and we just were super super excited about everything!  Then we went and picked up the Family Alba to go back to the temple.  We shoved six people into one little taxi and off we went!  We toured the temple for the second time and after they were like wow what do I need to do to enter when it gets opened?  We explained what and they are super excited!  Things are going really really good and I am so happy with what has been going on in the Lord's work for really the last two months! We have really seen changes and miracles here in Leandro Valle!

Sunday well I got a little upset today!  Griselda decided to go to her christian church and take half of our investigators with her!  It is just really hard to teach her right now!  I think this week we are going to have to go over the restoration!  She likes our church but we just need something to convince her!  She isn't completely sure about everything!  It is just so frustrating when you feel like you are teaching clearly and they say they understand and are doing everything they need to be doing but they are still too tied down to come to church!    Besides that things are going really really good!  We are just trying to push on and figure this out!  I am sure we will get some help from the Lord to be able to do it!  Other than that everything is going good!  We had a family that was in teaching just show up this week which was nice!  We will go see how they are doing and I will be sure to keep you posted! This week is going to be busy and stressfull! 

Tomorrow I will have a meeting with President to talk about our budget for next year. Wednesday we are having Elder D. Todd Christofferson come and then after we are doing divisions with someone so we can actually get things done!  Thursday we have to find a new house for the new missionaries coming into our  ward!  Friday we are going to Polanco and Saturday back to the temple and we have Lucina's baptism!  Crazy week and then we have the "news" coming in next Monday! Wish me luck!  

Love you guys!

Elder Orchard 

Food pics.  What else?

Some Weeks are Better Than Others

Tuesday, We finally found Lucina again and that was good!!  The only problem is that she like has no teaching and she will be getting baptized in two weeks!  We need to kick it into gear and get her taught!  Also we had something kind of cool happen!  A few days ago we were looking at the house of the missionaries in the other area of our ward to decide if we are going to close it or not and this lady calls us and is like hey my mom is a member and so is my son like come in!  So we taught and it was all really cool!  He is 12 and is ready to get the priesthood and his mom is also really cool!  She just needs to get married and then she will totally get baptized!  They are really a cool family and hopefully we can help them here soon!  Sorry this week is kind of lame but I am trying to make it more interesting!

Wednesday, we were able to get a member to go with us and we had a really good day!  We were able to see a ton of our investigators and they are all doing really good!  We tried to put a fecha with another person but it is kind of hard because she needs to get married but her husband doesn't completely want to right now.  Which makes no sense because they have grandkids!  Sometimes I just don't understand people's logic!  Honestly like nothing really that cool happened today!  We were able to get a lot of with member lessons but other than that it wasn't like really super cool!  

Elder Olson, Elder Orchard and Elder Blotter with Pez dispensers I mailed:)

Thursday we went and cleaned out houses and that was a good time!  Nothing too crazy happened but we worked all day and it was really tiring!  But we were able to get a couple good citas in before the night was over!  Just trying to work when we have time!  

Elder Olson

Friday we had a pretty decent day!  We went out with the Jovenes (young) to try and find some less active aaronic priesthood because that is something that we really are missing out on here in our ward! So we just starting trying to find people and we were able to get some really really good visits in!  We found people who said they were going to go to the church and so I guess we will see if that really happens on Sunday!  Our new young mens president is a stud!  Kind of interesting is that our ward has just called a bunch of young new leaders and things are taking off here in the ward!  

Saturday, today was pretty crappy!  We like could not get anything going today!  From the begining of the day it was kind of crappy!  I had to take some Elders to the temple so that they could buy scriptures.  Then our prefood appointment cancelled and basically from there on it got pretty crappy!  We just couldn't find anyone in their house!  People wouldn't open the doors to us and we just had a crappy day of work!  We did tons of walking though!  Like a lot!  You have to have days like this occasionally though!  It happens to the best of us!  We are hoping that we can have a good productive day tomorrow!  Hopefully these people all come to church like we hope they do!

Well we had our big family bail out on us today.  They got back from Puebla late last night and they just couldn't get up but it is whatever!  Our Ward mission leader is being a beast!  We started making a ward mission plan and we are just seeing awesome things come from all of this!  We are so happy about it!  We are seeing the ward step up and we are so excited for what is to come!  It is like contagious!  We usually have two young men at church on Sunday, well our new young mens president went with us and these two youth to go do visits this week.  Well we had eight jovenes in church today which was awesome!  And they had success and so I am hoping the other organizations do the same thing!

I love you guys!  Have a good  week!

Love,

Elder Orchard

I received these pictures without any explanations but I think they speak for themselves.  That is one CRAZY storm!

I am guessing this is the FREE Dominos they got a few weeks ago!

Here's a little bit of his letter to me that I wanted to share:

The toe feels good no problems with that.  As far as my year we are going to celebrate a little bit on Thursday.  I mean there is not much we can do on a Thursday maybe go for tacos and cokes I don't know though!  But yes definitely will be celebrating together.  (Elder Olson celebrates his hump day on the 20th and Elder Orchard thinks that MIGHT be his date as well.  It's kind of a grey area but why not celebrate??)  We have not been to the temple open house yet, the goal is to be able to go three times this week and then a few more next week!  We want to go a lot! Hopefully we can get into a session or something here pretty soon after it opens, at least to do baptisms.

An Ingrown Toenail

Alright so Tuesday we were getting ready to work!  The other Elders in our ward are going to have special changes and so we just doubled the size of our area so it is like 20 streets by 20 streets ish!  So we are excited because we found some people a little while ago that we get to go teach over there in the other area!  We have been trying to work hard and get tons of people who are waiting!  Tomorrow we have plans for two news and we will hope for some miracles!  Today I just worked like crazy in the offices while Blotter and Olson went to Polanco with an Elder.  The work was good today in our area!  We ate moley which is so good!  Not very often do we get it because most of the Americans don't like it, who knows why!  We also were able to put some fechas with the family Alba! They all accepted to get baptized on the 12 of September!  We are super excited for that!  We have worked really hard with them and we still have a long ways to go!  Hopefully we can still continue to be blessed!

Wednesday...so the big story from today has to do with some people that have come to church twice and finally we were able to get their address and a cita to go and visit them!  Well we get to Rio de churrubusco and knock on the house number 2307 like they said.  Well this lady comes out that totally wasn't them!  So we call and I am like yeah here we are in your house!  And they are like no we live on avenida de churrubusco!  Well we are determined to find these chosen investigators!  So we figure that we need to take metro bus to get there and it will be fine!  Well we start our trip and we get off the stop and we realize that we now in someone elses area and so we decided okay teach them today then pass them to the ward!  Well there aren't any missionaries in that ward and so we were excited because we still get a super chosen family of four! So we finally get to their house like an hour late and they were really cool about it!  Well we start talking and deciding  how to begin teaching, turns out they were just really less active members that want to get active again!  It was just really a weird experience!  They are awesome though and I'm glad they have decided to come back!

Thursday was just a normal work day!  We had citas with our two progressing investigators and they went good!  They are doing so good and we have been able to see a huge change in the family Alba!  They are doing good now and are getting excited for activities and all that good stuff!  We are going to take them to play soccer with our priesthood on Saturday and things are going really good with all of that!  Laura is still doing great!

Friday I got an ingrown toenail out and we went to Polanco!  Not much to report from this day it was good!

Saturday we went out to work hard!  We had a really good day!  I went back to the Zone Paraiso (first area) to take the other secretaries there so they could capacitate and that was cool to go back again!  That always will be kind of my home I feel like!  So we went out after to work and we did pretty good!  We were able to go and visit Laura and the Family Alba!  They were doing good and we were happy with what we were able to teach them!  We actually made a deal with Laura that if she reads all of the Book of Mormon before her baptism we will get her the cool leather bound ones that we use!  So she is doing great! She is just dedicating an hour of every day to read and she is progressing like a stud!  

Sunday we were really blessed!  We had committed five people for sure to go to church on Saturday and so we were just praying that they would all come and all show up on time!  Well we got to the church and none of the chairs were set up!  This was frustrating because we were at the church the night before and they were all set up!  So we had the typical missionaries get everything set up and ready!  It is okay we are there early to help!  Well needless to say everyone we were waiting for came to church!  We also had five more people that hadn't confirmed that they were coming show up!  We were able to put a couple fechas in the church and we really were blessed!  Another thing is our ward has started to step up!  We are working on getting a new elders quorum president and a better ward mission leader!  They have home and visiting teaching and it seems like they are actually kind of doing it!  The missionaries haven't spoke every other week in church!  Things are really moving the way that we want them to!  We are happy with the work that they are starting to do!

Have a great week!  I love you guys!  

Love,

Elder Orchard

A typical view from a mico ride!  Everyone is always making out on them.

I got these pictures sent to me on Facebook from Sister Stutzznegger.  She is AWESOME!  She said, "Orchard finally made the moving crew!"  It was fun to get those mid week.

There are more missionaries going home than entering the mission so each transfer there are apartments to close down.  The office Elders get that assignment.

A little McDonalds for breakfast with President Stutznegger.

Some older pics I found in dropbox today.  I know they are older because I see Elder Norr hiding behind Elder Blotter and he went home a few weeks ago.