We Had An Amazing Week!!

Wow this week was crazy!  We had an amazing week!!  We were super super blessed throughout the whole week!  We are just trying to get things ready because Elder Olson found out he is going to train!  So we are just trying to get the area all ready for him!  However this includes a lot of things!  Like finding a house which actually is a lot more difficult than it should be here in Mexico!  When you aren't looking for a house you find thousands but as soon as it is important there are zero houses!  So that is kind of where we are at right now!  But I guess I will give a recap of the rest of the week!

Monday we went and taught a family that we had found the week before and it went really really well!  We taught the book of Mormon and they were totally into it! Then we had normal P day and went to a family night at night! It was a good day!  Very productive!

Tuesday we had tons of appointments and so we were going to do divisions but then five minutes before starting we had a member cancel on us and we had no idea what we were going to do!  We just decided that we needed to work as hard as we could to try and get the majority of the visits done! The good news was that we had our family night canceled and so it was one less visit! So we went and we taught the family Camacho.  It was an amazing lesson!  We taught the restoration and the spirit was sooooooooo strong!  It was amazing!  Then we went with a less active that hasn't gone to church in years and he committed himself to go to church! Hopefully he actually goes! We also had miracle number one of the week! We were out contacting and I remembered an old investigator that we had taught a few times and so we ran to her house to see if she was there. Turns out she had moved but her family still lived there.  They let us in and we taught them and we found a new family that we are really excited to see progress! They have potential!  There are six kids that are between the ages of 8 and 13 so it is kind of a party when we teach them but it is awesome to have found a family like this! We truly were blessed!

Wednesday was a different day.  Presidents Grandchildren were in town and one thing that they wanted most was to be able to have dinner with the missionaries! So us the Assistants the Nebekers and the sister training leaders got invited to a dinner with President and his family!  It was super fun to be able to be there with them and to spend time with them!

Sister Stutznegger, "Dinner with some special missionaries tonight - it was one of the grand kids requests - time with some missionaries!"

Sister Stutznegger, "We think the twins liked Elder Orchard."  Laura Stutznegger (Pres. and Sis Stutz's daughter) wrote about this picture, "Jenny, my boys were infatuated immediately! He was so cute with them!! Elder Orchard is a fantastic missionary!!"

They made pulled pork sandwiches that were so good!  I think I ate two or three!  I ate my fair share that is for sure! But then after we were just sitting there and it was really cool to have a conversation with their grandchildren about how the mission is and funny stories and stories that we have been blessed and give them advice for the mission it is definitely something that I am going to remember!  Then we just came home and got ready to go to Polanco the next day!

Thursday was Polanco day but it was actually pretty weird the way everything went down!  So I went in the morning and we went with the assistants but then after we ate I headed home to be able to do appointments in the night!  I had a super good night with Daniel on divisions we got tons of stuff done! We were able to see some less active families and go and see the crazy kids again!  It was a super fun day! I learned a lot from Daniel just like always when I am with him! He is such a good guy!  He gets it and it is awesome to have members like him in your ward! We are blessed to have many that are always willing to help us!

Friday we went and cleaned the Pila.  It was fun and luckily it drained almost completely this time so we didn't have to completely empty it with buckets!  Then we went home and got all ready to head out and teach!  We had another good day! We got a fecha put and so it was super nice to do that! We will be baptizing next Saturday and Sunday it will be an awesome way to finish off my time here in Leandro valley! Then we went to two family nights.  Elder Olson got really close to putting a fecha with a lady that has gone to church for years but she just won't get baptized for some reason! We are trying and we at least got her committed for in August but we invited her to pray and to see what God told her!  It was a super powerful lesson is what the Nebekers and Olson said! Then I went and worked with a family that we are trying to get married!  We had a super amazing day again!  

Saturday we went to a baptism for a kid in the ward!  It was super cool! Then we went and tried to find some people we have been wanting to see!  Then we headed out to try and contact Julio since we haven't seen him in forever! We only found his brothers and so like a good missionary we contacted him and we put an appointment to go and visit him on Tuesday we will see how it goes! His mom also said that she would take him to church tomorrow if they got home in the night and didn't stay with his brother!  Of course they did stay with his brother far away but it was still a good day that we had!  Then we went with the Family Alva.  We hadn't seen them and they had been passing through some difficulties and so we went and had an amazing lesson about church assistance hopefully they actually go tomorrow!  But other than that we had a good day that was productive! 

It capped off an amazing week that we had!  We ended up finding twelve new investigators and we have really upped our teaching pool!  We needed it! We got blessed for sure!  Hopefully we can put some fechas with more people this week so that way things can be good to go for when Olson's first son gets here!  We are really excited! 

This week we had a really really cool experience that I wanted to share with you all! When we were cleaning the font we obviously didn't go dressed as missionaries! Well we got in a taxi and just started to talk with the taxi guy and he didn't know that we were missionaries but he was talking about how he just doesn't understand religions and why there are so many and all sorts of stuff that make people golden investigators!  So now we transformed into missionary mode and just taught him what we knew and said we had a book that we knew would help his life if he would just read it so of course he was so ready and we gave him a book of Mormon and taught him for a sec here in the offices it was a super cool thing that we could do! It made me realize that missionary work is really not hard!  God is constantly preparing people to be taught the gospel it just is our part to help them find the gospel and teach them!  There is a scripture that is in Doctrine and Covenants that I really like that President has shared with members before that I would like to share it is in seccion 33 verses 8 and 9

 8 Open your mouths and they shall be filled, and you shall become even as Nephi of old, who journeyed from Jerusalem in the wilderness.

 9 Yea, open your mouths and spare not, and you shall be laden with sheaves upon your backs, for lo, I am with you.

It is really as easy as this!  Open your mouths and they shall be filled!  A lot of times we don't want to share the gospel because we don't know how to or we are scared but this is a promise that the Lord made that goes for all the people that want to share the gospel! Be it missionaries or members if we will just open our mouths it will be filled and we will know what to say!  I know this is true!  If we put of our part the Lord will bless us with the words!  We will never find people to accept us if we don't open our mouths and try! Have a great week!!  I love you all!!

Love,

Elder Orchard

Man Stuff, Cinnabons and Some Great Teaching Moments

Well this week was pretty crazy!  We had made tons of new plans to go and find all these new people and all these families!  Well needless to say all the goals we put were pretty good but it was hard to be able to get all of them fulfilled.  We came up short on a few but honestly had a super super successful week!  First off we were able to find four news and put two fechas! That was awesome for us!  We are super excited for it! It was a super hard week but we made it through it. 

Tuesday was an interesting day.  We woke up and got everything in the morning done.  Well while we were showering we ended up getting a total of about 6 missed calls from sister Stutz. (For the rest of the day and the entire night Elder Orchard and Elder Olson were on special assignment.)

Wednesday well at this point we finally got to sleep at about 8 in the morning after we made it back to Presidents house because he had a meeting with the area presidency so we were going to wait for him at his house and Elder Olson Sister Stutz and I went up and slept for about three hours.  But a good note at this point the Mexico City airport now has cinnabons! you better believe that we ate them! They were just as good as I remembered them! It was awesome!  So then we went home and worked on getting another flight booked for another sister who had to go home and Pres had some interviews to do and so we got everything headed out to go and teach the Family Garibay which went really well.  We put a Fecha for the 24th of April with them Tania and her son Santiago will be getting baptized together and they are super excited!  Santiago who is 8 says that it is urgent that he gets baptized it was so cute and it was a super good lesson we had with them! Then we went with the Family Macedo to eat and have a family night and then we went home and went to bed at 8:30 because we just couldn't stay awake anymore!

Thursday was a really really lame day! We need to find a house now that we won't have secretaries and so we spent all day today looking for a house and we found nobody! Then we went to Priesthood Executive comitee and nobody else showed up and so we went for tacos with Daniel it ended up being a really really slow day as far as work went.

Friday we went and ate with Pres and the office staff which was nice then we went and had a lesson with some member that and then looked for a bunch of other people and we couldn't find anybody in their house!  We also started to do man stuff hanging things on the wall drilling all sorts of man things!  and yea that is about all that happened!  

Saturday we woke up and cleaned the storage room in the basement! This took forever it took about five hours to get done! It was exhausting!  We had to completely take everything out and put it in so that way it would all fit! Well we got it done! I took pictures but I forgot to take a starting picture! I just got one of when we were half way through! 

I looks great now and we are glad that we could get it done! It was something that needed to happen!  So once we finished here we went to eat.  The sister we ate with was having her three year old sons birthday party so she order a taquero and it was amazing! We ate so many tacos! And better than anything else is that we didn't get sick!  Then we went out to see the Family Garibay they are doing good and their kids are so great! At church they just love to learn and sit and sing it is awesome!  We taught the plan of salvation and the little kid leonardo was like so let me get this straight Satan wants us to be miserable because he is miserable and if we follow Jesus and keep the commandments we can be happy? It was probably my favorite teaching moment so far!  The little six year old understood exactly what the plan of salvation was!  And then they were talking about how the kids like to teach their dad when he gets home from work exactly about what they learned! it was super cool!  So we finished there and we had recieved a reference for a family that lived right there close so we decided that we needed to go and contact it!  We ended up finding a new family that has some potential! It was super cool to see the Spirit work in them! They weren't really all that interested but they let us share our message and then after they wanted to learn more it was super super cool!  You could feel the spirit really strong in the lesson!

Sunday everybody went to church that we were waiting for! It was awesome!  And the Camachos came which was super super cool! We weren't able to go and see them this week and so now that they just came on there own was super awesome!  Hopefully we can put a fecha with Silvana soon.  We also have one other little girl that we are going to put a fecha with probably this week hopefully tomorrow!  If everything goes right!  So we had a total of five investigators in the church! Three with Fecha and we have a baptism set up right now for my last week here! That will be super awesome!  Hopefully we can get one for this week and help some people get progressing before I leave! It is going to be super weird when I am not here anymore and have a new area! I think that this will be my last area that I am getting ready to go to!

Alright well this week I was reading a book called the power of Everyday Missionaries and it was super cool what I was reading and it was talking about blessings we get as members and missionaries who share the gospel with people that I thought was super cool! It comes in Doctrine and Covenants seccion 68 verse 5-6 and it says

5 Behold, this is the promise of the Lord unto you, O ye my servants.

 6 Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come

I really like the way it talks about how we need to just take the fear out of our lives to be able to share the gospel and the Lord promises that he will be with us and he will put the words in our mouth that we need! He won't let us stand there alone he will be there with us! I remember a little while ago we received a reference and we got there and it was a restaurant and so we didn't really want to contact them.  Part of that I would say was from the fear we had but we said we just have to do it and we will be blessed! So we walked in and asked if the lady was there and we got rejected super hard!  However I was grateful for this outcome because contacting and getting rejected was better than not contacting it and missing out on somebody that the lord has been preparing!  I am grateful for the short time I have to be here on a mission!  I have been able to grow and love the Savior in this time and it has been amazing to be able to see other people change their lives like I have been able to see!  Have an amazing week and don't be afraid to Open Your Mouths!!

Love,

Elder Orchard

There was no explanation with this food picture.  Perhaps he wanted me to see that he ate a salad??

(Some pictures I was surprised with on Facebook this week.  I love being connected to those sweet people in Mexico who are taking care of my son!)

Great!!! The missionaries of the church of Jesus Christ of saints of the last few days. If you had the opportunity to welcome you to his house and hear them would change his life!!! They carry a message of love, faith, hope, and you will know better to Jesus Christ and the nature of God.

Translated from Spanish  (Taken from Sergio Macedo's Facebook page)

We love having comida (dinner) with Hermana Marcela every Sunday. We have been treated to a delicious, authentic meal each week. She always has homemade soup and fresh tortillas. Today she was happy because her son came to church and joined us for dinner. There's a special place in heaven for women like her.  (From Sister Nebeker's Facebook page)

The MTC, the Embassy and the Airport All in One Week

Alright well this week was pretty crazy busy! And somehow we were able to get all sorts of stuff done! We had 20 lessons which is a really good week for us especially when you consider what happened and everything we had to do!  It was pretty cray cray!

Monday we went to the MTC to pick up a credit card for one of the missionaries who went to the Provo MTC but he was assigned to the Mexico MTC and so they sent his card down here instead of up there.  So we headed out with Daniel because he was showing us how to get there.  We left at 7 and we did good time and made it there by 8:30.  It was a lot of Metro riding but it was against traffic luckily so it wasn't as crowded as it could have been.  So we got there and the lady that I went to pick it up from wasn't there and so we headed out to Daniels class.  He had told us he wants his kids to speak more spanish and so he wants us to show up and pretend like we had the same time as them but we had just been applying the speak your language portion and that is how we speak so well now.  So we went and that was fun we were with them playing along but we still didn't speak super super well.  We made some errors on purpose but then it touched us to actually teach.  So we decided that we had to do it good! So we just started speaking like we speak and they were like wow how have you guys done that? Well that is when we told them and they didn't think it was super funny but Daniel did and so it was a good time! It actually ended up being really really good for us we were able to feel the spirit really strongly there! Had one of the best lessons we have actually had together!  Probably in my whole mission! So we finally got done and picked up the card and headed back for home! We ran into a bit more traffic and so it took a while to actually get home! We made it home in like 2 and a half hours! It was bad! 

Tuesday was probably one of the crazier days we have had! We were suppose to go to Zone conferences because Elder Olson had some stuff he needed signed by about half of the mission so rather than calling them in one day we decided to go out with them and get it all signed and taken care of.  Well at least that was the plan.  Monday night we got a call saying that one of the temporary missionaries we have is going to go to the embassy to get their Visa taken care of and we had to take them with all the craziness we had going on.  So at 8 in the morning we left in a taxi to go out and get the visa taken care of. Her appointment was at 10 and so we got there a little early like we needed to and everything went great. The only problem is it actually takes quite a bit of time to get the visa once everything is turned in.  So we ended up just sitting there waiting until she got it at the Costa Rican embassy.  Their couch was super comfy but we sat there for about three hours ish.  So we finally finished that and we got home and we were just getting ready to go out and get some work done, but wait there is more! We also have to take some sister missionaries to the hospital for an appointment at 6.  BUT WAIT THERE IS EVEN MORE!  We have four appointments set up and two at 7 :O Elder Olson looked at me and said how are we ever going to do this?  So we called Pres and said pres is it okay if we do divisions and if I go with a member to work and Elder Olson goes to the hospital with Beto our taxi friend.  We got permision and so we headed out to start getting work done while Elder Olson went to the Hospital and I left with Daniel to do some visits. Things went good!  We had good lessons and we felt the spirit and that was super fun!  Olson finished everything good as well and they we were able to get everything done which was a miracle.

Wednesday we had a missionary that was going home. So I woke up at 5 with him to get him all ready and everything and then headed to the airport with Sister Stutz.  We got back and then it was time for us to go to zone conference.  It was a great zone conference! 

Pres was super sick and so he couldn't go but it still was amazing! It definitely was different but it was still an awesome spirit you could feel! Elder Nebeker did an amazing job capacitating us!  So we finished with zone conference and then we went back to the office to hurry and change then head out to our area!  We had a couple with member lessons and we are working really hard trying to get a family married we just are having a little bit of difficulty with it right now with the law but hopefully we can get them married here soon!  

Thursday this was probably the coolest day of the week!  Zone conferences got cancelled because of how sick Pres was.  We were all pretty worried about him! He thought he had got pneumonia again. So we were in the offices and we were going to do financial stuff but all the church pages we used were broken except referrals and so we just kind of sat here waiting and hoping but we got an email about a reference that lives in our area.  She had filled out her information on mormon.org.  So we said we would go contact her that day to see how it went!  Well we get to the place that we thought was her apartment building.  We talk to the guard and he is like no she doesn't live here but there is another complex across the street maybe you will find her there.  So we walked away kind of sad knowing she wasn't going to be there.   Well we get to the building he said and they said yeah she lives here this is how you get there. We were stoked! We walked off all happy and we get to the building where she lives and we climb the five flights of stairs and we knock on her door and nothing.  So we knocked again and she opened the door and was like oh hi how are you guys.  I was like good and you?  I am good.  Finally you guys are here.  We asked her if she knew us and she said yeah.  She let us in and we started talking and it turns out her husband is a member and she wants to join the church with her kids and all sorts of cool stuff! She was super super chosen!  She asked what she had to do to be a member and when church was and where and all that stuff!  We left her some folletos and put an appointment for Saturday.  She was like where can I go to buy a book of mormon and so we also gave her one to read! It was awesome so we found a new little family to teach that are ready to hear us!  The lord has definitely been preparing them!  

Friday we had a long hard day! We dedicated ourselves to looking for a house!  and so we just walked and walked and walked and tried to visit all the people that lived close nobody was home! contacts wanted nothing to do with us and so we finally got into a members house and then that was all we had time for! We had gotten to the area a little late because Elder Olson went to Migracion and so that took a long time and it was a long day that I was glad to finish! 

Saturday we ate with one of our grandmas from the ward! She always gives us amazing food and she is great!  So we ate there and chatted with her for a good little while.  Then we went and saw a kid who had stitches to see how he was doing! It was good to visit with them.  Then we went to go see the Familia Garibay they are doing so good. They did their homework and were super ready for everything. We took them to an activity in the church and we also gave them a guided chapel tour.  It was super super cool!  Laura also went with us.  She texted us and said is it okay if I invite a friend and we said of course it is! And so we met with her too! It was a great day all in all! They said they are ready for church! 

Sunday everyone we were waiting for came to church except the family camacho.  It was a great day!  We had a great week as far as everything went! Numbers were awesome!   We were able to see lots of miracles and blessings!  It was super super cool!

This week in my studies one thing that I loved was a scripture that was shared in zone conference! There were tons that were shared and I was having a hard time picking which one I wanted to send home but I think this was the one that I could most see present in this week we had.  It is found in 

Alma 13:24

For behold, angels are declaring it unto many at this time in our land; and this is for the purpose of preparing the hearts of the children of men to receive his word at the time of his coming in his glory.

It was something that we feel we were able to experience as a companionship! Sometimes it is hard to find the people that are ready for the gospel but there are many angels that are here preparing them to be able to receive it!  I feel this way with Tania!  I know that Angels were preparing her and her family to recieve the gospel at this time!  I am grateful for the time we have as missionaries here to be able to help these people reccive the restored Gospel!

Love

Elder Orchard

Definitely the Worst 24 Hours of My Life

First off sorry I am a day late!  We had a pretty crazy day yesterday and a crazy day today!  Part of the office experience!  Well this week has been quite different from anything that you have heard from me!  I guess the biggest highlight of the week was my colonoscopy!  Even then I would say it was more of a low light! Olson would probably tell you all it was a highlight! It was something else that is for sure! They let me keep the video though don't worry we will watch it when I get home! 

Tuesday was the day that Sister Stutz got home and so we went and picked her up at the airport and so that was good to get her back!

I guess the week before at changes and after she left it was pretty crazy and so everyone was really happy she made it back and was okay! Then we went and saw the Family Camacho and that was really nice!  We had a good little lessons with them! Hopefully they can keep going to church! It has been awesome to see their progress and everything they have been able to do!

Wednesday today was the day that will forever and always go down in history as the worse day of my life!  I can't even begin to describe how bad it was! Hopefully the description I can give will do it justice!  So we get to the hospital and everything went good they took some blood they got an IV hooked up and we just kind of hung out at the hospital for a few hours until I was ready to start my preparation.  So six hits and the nurse comes in with the stuff.  I have to drink four liters of water in four hours and then spend the rest of the night with diarrhea.  So I started going and it tasted awful!  I didn't know something could taste so bad! So I end up finishing right in line with the time with the first liter but then as I start the second liter I get super super nauseous and I felt like I was going to puke.  The doctor brought me some medicine for the nauseousness and I jumped back into my preparation.  I get a little bit down and then it hits me that this medicine has done nothing for me and I just start puking.  Luckily I had gotten the garbage because I knew that I was going to puke!  Well by this point I am like three of the four hours in and I have not gotten anywhere near where i needed to be!  Finally the time is up and I hadn't even finished because I started puking everything I drank up! My stomach was empty!  So the nurse comes in and she is like okay you have until 2:30 am to get it finished then we have to stop.  I just keep pushing on but then all of a sudden the preparation starts working.  So I just am instantly glued to the toilet seat!  At one point Elder Olson says ¨Why are you washing your hands?¨  It was at this point that we started playing the game sink or butt.  After about two rounds it wasn't all that funny though!  It got too easy.  So there I am on the toilet and I keep drinking the preparation and all of a sudden I feel like I am going to puke again! And it happens so I guess I can say I have officially double dragon-ed! (puking and pooping at exactly the same time). So then 2:30 rolls around and I had almost drank two liters of the prep.  That is half of what I was suppose to drink.  So I finally end up falling asleep. 

Thursday is part two of the worst day ever.  I woke up bright and early to go to the bathroom!  And stayed there a pretty good chunk of the morning.  The doctor comes in and says I don't know if this will work exactly how we want it to.  Hopefully you are really welly cleaned out but to make sure we are going to give you an enema.  Elder Olson wasn't really paying attention at this point and so he was watching the tv and he said all he heard was volteate(roll over) and he said he thought oh they are going to give me a butt shot.  Then everything clicked in his head and he said he will never forget my face and the experience.  Then they ended up carrying me down to the room and putting me asleep so they could do the test.  Next thing I remembered was talking to the nurse about all sorts of stuff!  She constantly was coming in saying.  Doooglas respira. It really just was not my day!  But at this point it had ended so that was good! After this we went back to Presidents house and we watched Brave with Sister Stutz.  The day ended better than it started but it was definitely the worse 24 hours of my life!  (For those still reading, the test results came back normal.  We are now waiting on the biopsy results but there is no reason to believe those won't be normal as well.)

Friday was back to work.  In the morning Julio had called us. He was wondering when we could go back to his house again.  So we decided to go out and see him.  Turns out he hadn't gotten back from work and so we never even talked to him but we put an appointment to go back the next day and then it was time for us to go home so Elder Olson could work on doing some migracion stuff we hadn't had the chance to do since for the past two weeks we have just been sick!  

Saturday we had a super busy schedule!  We had tons of appointments that had to be done and two family nights.  We were ready to work hard! We had everything planned and so that way at night we could do divisions for the family nights and Julio.  Well we did all the visits we needed and it all went exactly as planned! So then we did divisions for the family night.  I went with a member and Elder Olson went with Elder and Sister Nebeker. So Daniel and I took off to Julio. Well there was nobody there.  We didn't have any back up plan because I failed that day at planning.  So we started going with some of the less actives that we had that lived close! Literally nobody was home! We just walked and knocked and talked with people and it was a rough night for us! We finally said forget it we are just going to join the family night.  So we went and had just enough time to eat Tostadas de Tinga before we had to go home! I ended up being a really good night!

FHE at Angie's house.

FHE with the Bishop's family.  He has been the bishop for 8 years!

Sunday was just a normal day with a family night at 7:30 which makes it a little awkward and hard for us! But we had a good day! People actually came to church! The Family Camacho was there and we had a few other less actives we were waiting for show up!  All in all it was a really good week! Besides the middle days we felt good! 

Alright so this weeks little spiritual thought comes from one of my study sessions.  I was studying about the importance of the spirit in our teaching and I was able to find a cool scripture in the bible to talk a little bit about how people can tell a difference between when we have the spirit and when we don't!  A few months ago we were teaching a family and they didn't want to change religions because she said she has just felt the spirit so much in her Christian church.  It like knocks her down and people are screaming and going crazy and crying.  Her husband said, "That is what a rock concert is like as well.  But when the Elders come you can feel a difference" and he started to explain a little bit about peace and love and how the spirit feels.  Well I was able to find an amazing scripture this week that talks a little about this it is found in Mathew 7:28-29:

And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

29 For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

When we have the spirit and the Authority like it says here people will be able to experience a difference!  I am so grateful for the spirit here as a missionary! Without the spirit we couldn't have success as missionaries! In the teaching it is what the people can do to be able to feel a difference in what we say, to feel that the church is true! Without the spirit we are just two kids knocking on doors!

I love you guys! Have a great week!

Elder Orchard

Moving Day in a Taxi

Alright well sorry I am super late!  My companion got super sick on Sunday night! He had a 102 degree fever and on Monday when he woke up it still hadn't broke and so we had to go to the hospital and we just barely got released yesterday! I figured since that happened I won't have much to write about next week and so I am just going to combine it all right now!  It seems like a lot has happened since I talked to you guys last!  A couple new promising investigators and a baptism!  So here we go!

Tuesday we had a very very long day!  We had big plans to have two different family nights but one of them canceled on us and so we had to fill the time with a lot of contacts and trying to find less actives and all of that didn't really work out for us!  We walked and walked! We contacted in the street! We knocked doors! We went with everyone we could think of! Even active members and nobody was home!  So then we went with the young men to try and find some young men and that didn't work either! We ended up walking around the whole day with nothing! Then it was finally time for the other family night and we were excited to finally get into a house!  So we got there and they had invited a friend to listen to us again! It was awesome to see how we had hoped this activity would work! It was a blessing and we were so grateful to be able to see everything we had done finally go right!  So we talked with the friend after and set up an appointment to go back and teach them! She had even said that she had always wanted to go into the church but she didn't think she would be allowed in!  We are excited to be able to teach her!

Wednesday was more of the same!  We had the food with the Family Macedo and that was awesome I love eating with them!  So we did that and then we headed out to find more people but that was never really that successful!  So then we ended up going back to the family Macedo house so that way we could have the family night with them and it was probably one of the best lessons I have ever had in my mission! You could really feel the spirit and it was awesome!  The mom was there and she hasn't gone to church very frequently and she just broke down and let us know everything that was going on and it was awesome to be able to have the spirit guide us through our planning and through the lesson!

Thursday was a day where we didn't leave the offices.  Elder Olson had to go to Polanco and so I stayed for a capacitation that we had! Turned out the person who gave it was related to someone that lives in our neighborhood!  So that was pretty cool!  

Friday was really the crazy day of the week!  With changes coming up on Monday we had to open up two houses and get everything furnished so that was our task today!  President wasn't able to help and so we paid someone from our ward to drive us around and get everything done in his van!  Well we get the van all loaded up and we take off and then the van end ups dying on us!  It just stopped working out of nowhere! So we get it towed to a mechanic shop and we paid someone else there off the street to help us with the first of two trips and we decided we will figure out what we do from there!  Well we get the trip done and then we head back in Betos Taxi and decide we will just take two really really long trips to get everything done!  So that is what we did! I don't think a taxi has ever been so full before! We ended up getting everything done and we got home at 12 at night!  It was a very very long day but it all had to get done on that day because we had our baptism on Saturday!  So it ended up being a super crazy time!  It was fun though I hope you enjoy the pictures we sent of our trips!!  

Saturday was a really relaxing day!  We got our work done and then just the normal we went and cleaned the font and got everything ready for our baptism! Lucky the young men had an activity so that way they were there! The baptism went pretty good!  I didn't think we would end up having enough water for it but somehow we pulled it off!!  It was a good day!

Sunday just the normal changes thing to get things all done! 

Monday was changes day but the Pope was also here in Mexico and so that made traffic crazy!

I got this picture from Sister Stutznegger and not from Douglas.  I don't believe he was there.  This is what she wrote about it:  "El Papa" is visiting Mexico City - quite the sight! Our missionaries have all walked this plaza in downtown Mexico City. This plaza - Zocolo - is about 3 miles away from our mission office.

We ended up getting everything figured out for the news they got here but Elder Olson was super sick! He had a 102 degree fever and so that was scary but the good news is one of the assistants is a doctor and so that helped us a lot but we ended up taking him to the hospital and we stayed there until Thursday morning.  Then in the afternoon we had to do special changes for some dumb missionaries and so we had to run beds around for a trio and change the mattresses for people that have bed bugs and so that was the whole day on Thursday for us! Again with the taxi! The police stopped us twice this time though but with a little bribing with money we were able to go along without any problems!

Friday we had tons office stuff that we hadn't done all week! It was pretty stressful!  But we got it done then I went to the doctor and we stayed at Presidents house!

Turns out on Thursday I will have a colonoscopy so that is the only new news we have from the doctor!  Sounds like a whole lot of fun doesn't it!  Well I think that is kind of my quick two week letter hopefully it makes a little bit of sense!  I hope you all have a good week and I love you!

Elder Orchard 

I Love This Time I Have to Be A Missionary

This week felt like it took forever! Who knows why!  It was pretty weird and pretty hard to get going for some reason!  We had a pretty decent week and we have been doing good with the people we have but I tell you what it has sure been hard finding people to teach!!  We are kind of at a hard place right now!  Contacting isn't giving us really any results and so we are trying to start and put a little more importance in the members!  We also had an awesome night with Pres on Friday but I will tell you about that in a little while!!  

Monday we were in the offices in the morning and then we went out to the area for a little bit in the afternoon.  We didn't really have tons of great lessons or anything!  We just went out and did some contacting and visited a couple people!  Then we headed to our district meeting and called it a day because it was then time to go home.  

Tuesday we went and saw Abraham and taught a lesson there! He has progressed so much and you can really just see the diference that living the gospel has had in his life.  He has really been doing everything we have asked and he is progressing perfectly for his baptism!  He is really really excited for it!  He will have his interview next week.  Then we went with the Family Camacho.  They are doing good it was nice to go see and talk to them!  They committed themselves to going to our activity on Friday and so we are very very excited to see all of that!  We are excited and lots of people are saying they will go and so we are hoping for a good turnout!

Wednesday we taught a with member lesson at the food to Kathia one of the Cousins of Daniel.  We feel like we are really close to having her commit but she just is missing a little bit!  She is starting to read the Book of Mormon and we are hoping that can change her life.  It is hard because she doesn't really want us to teach her all the much because she has already listened to missionaries before. She actually really really knows a lot and so that is the hard thing.  She just hasn't really had a change of heart to be able to open up and listen and accept so we are hoping for that!

Thursday was a really rough day for us.  We had to wait for the internet to come to the Nebekers house.  So we were there and waiting and waiting and it took them sooo long to get there!  We spent a good chunk of our day there waiting for them. Then by the time we made food for us and headed out we had time for a few appointments before we went to our Priesthood meeting.  So we were just about to go and then they ended up canceling because we couldn't get keys in time to get it open and nobody from the bishopric could make it there.  So it was kind of depressing but it happened!  

Friday we went to the temple.  It was awesome to be able to get there and do a session again.  Then we ate in the cafeteria which was ehh.  Not my favorite but it took away my hunger so that is good.  Then we got home and just got everything ready to go for the activity and so we headed out to that and it was awesome!  We had an awesome turnout!  Pres gave an awesome Presentation on members and missionaries and the ward loved it!  We had all sorts of success and it was just awesome to be able to see everyone there together working as a team!  The Family Camacho was totally into the activity and everything it was amazing!  Hopefully we can start to see changes so that way the ward just gives us references so that way we can find some new people.

Daniella is only 4 but she can recite all 13 Article of Faith.  Picture compliments of Sister Nebeker.

Saturday we ate with one of our favorite ladies from the ward!  She gave us some awesome food!  Then we headed off to the temple with Abraham and a family that was a reference! They were super cool and super chosen! Then only problem is we found out after that they didn't live in our area! They live on the other side of the mission! But I am sure here soon they will get baptized! They are really great and they have lots of potential! They asked great questions and the spirit was definitely there when we were talking about the family and put on a video! It was really really cool too bad they live sooo far away!  

Sunday was pretty lame! Just the usual church and meetings and food! Then we went to our missionary correlacion meeting which was good and we had a family night which was fun! We ate good food and played a really fun game!  It was a good day!  Then we just came home and kind of crashed because we were tired!  It was a long week and we were just exhausted! 

I "borrowed" this picture from Facebook.  The person that added it said  #fhe #halftimeshow.  I'm just guessing that Elder Orchard may have gotten a peek at the Superbowl!

This weeks little thought comes from Alma 26! It seems like I quote this a lot!  But it is something that I love and is so true!  It is talking about the success that Amman and his brothers had in missionary work and it is something that I really really liked! It reads like this:

15 Yea, they were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought them into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and they are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work.

There are tons of people around us that are encircled about by this everlasting darkness!  They are looking for the Gospel and when they find it they can come into this everlasting light! It is such a joy to be able to do what this scripture says and be instruments in the hands of God! I know that us as missionaries really don't do much as far as the conversion process for other people! But when we are converted to the Gospel we can be these instruments in the lords hand!  This is not an experience that is exclusive to missionaries but a promise that goes for everyone that opens there mouth to share the gospel!  I love this time I have to be a missionary! It is crazy to think that it is winding down!  Helping people find this light is a great blessing and I am grateful that I have been able to do that with a few people down here in Mexico city!  It is a great blessing that we have to serve!

Have a great week!

love,

Elder Orchard

Sister Nebeker with a "sweet woman that had them for dinner".  Picture compliments of Sister Nebeker.

Elder Nebeker with his trainers.  Photo credit to Sister Nebeker.

Nebekers are Finally Here!

Heyyyyyooooooo

This week has sure been something!!  It was kind of a long and hard week for us!!  We spent a lot of time getting things ready and trying to make everything work out and it is just kind of going right now!!  We had a lot of good things happen and somethings we are not all that excited about!!  I guess first off is the Nebekers are finally here!!  They are starting their training right now!  The family just keeps getting bigger!  It will be awesome to have them here and we are super excited!!  It will be a good learning experience for all of us!!  So that is kind of the biggest news of the week!!

In other news next week we will be having a baptism!!  Abraham is finally gettting baptized and he is awesome! He is doing great!  Things are really just rolling with him! He studies he does his homework and he understands!  So next week we will be getting into the water again! It has been quite a while!  About four months!  It has been quite a little dry spell!  We are hoping that our ward can start to have a lot of success and start having more baptisms in our ward!  We are hopeful that the Senior couple can come and help us get somethings going and get the work really moving! Apart from that we have the president coming to introduce them in our ward and give some presentation to our ward about members and missionaries! We are super excited to see what he will say!

Alright well on Tuesday we had a really slow day!  Literally nobody was in their house! We just kind of walked around for a little while!  It wasn't our best day ever! Really nobody was there to visit!

Wednesday we had a pretty good day though! That at least kind of made up for what had happened on Tuesday!  We went and saw an investigator that we are kind of working with! She is being really really difficult!  But it was cool because we were with our member that works in the MTC so we did some practices with her and him to work on things and it was really fun!  Then we saw our ward mission leader and worked a little bit with him!

Thursday we had probably our best day of the week!!  We went with the ward mission leader to eat and then we went and only had time for one visit before we went to our PEC meeting! So we went with a family that was in teaching a little while ago!  So we went to see what we could do! They went to church a lot but never actually got baptized! Well turns out the coolest most chosen one of the family is Rodrigo the 12 year old! He put the goal to go to church every Sunday this year! We are hoping that he can get baptized soon!  But they are a family of five and so we have high hopes for them!  Then we went to our PEC meeting and our ward just had tons of great ideas!  Hopefully they actually do things rather than just leaving them as it is!

Friday we went and taught Abraham and it was so easy! It is awesome when people actually do what we leave them!  It is actually really fun to have them teach us as missionaries!  They learn a lot more and you can really see their progress!  And what they understand!  It is really fun to teach abraham it reminds me when we use to teach Laura!  We can teach a lot more in depth and he follows along!  He has really really good comprehension! And then we tried to go see Camacho but they weren't there! IT was so sad!  We are hoping we can see them again this week before it gets too crazy!  

Saturday!  We went to the Airport to pick up our Kids!  Then we went out to a buffet and ate before we went to stake conference!  It was really good!  Elder Valenzuela is amazing!  He says all sorts of powerful things!  I learned a lot!  

Sunday was conference again!  It was probably the best stake conference I have ever been in!  The messages shared were soooo powerful!  Pres gave an amazing talk!  Elder Valenzuela also killed it with his talk!  I left very uplifted spiritually!  It was awesome to see!

Alright the spiritual thought of the week came from an experience Elder Olson and I had about a week ago!  We were talking about how we haven't really had as much success as we wished here in the offices! We are in a pretty hard area as far as baptisms go! Sometimes the work gets slow and we don't baptize all that much!  So we were getting a little disanimated over it!  And we read something in preach my gospel that says we should try to serve and make the ward better wherever it is that we are assigned!  Well in the long time we have here we have seen our assistance (attendance??) at church go from an average of 55 to an average of about 85!  We have only baptized a couple people here but the whole demeanor of the ward has changed!  We have every major calling filled now!  We have our PEC meeting we are making the changes that we need to be an amazing ward!  So that made us cheer up a little bit!  A lot of times as missionaries we base our success off of baptisms! But there is a lot more that goes into it!  There is a scripture in Alma that talks about missionary work!  It is an amazing story that talks all about exactly how it is being a missionary!!  But just one of the verses I love from it goes like this:

 27 Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.

 30 And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some.

 31 Now behold, we can look forth and see the fruits of our labors; and are they few? I say unto you, Nay, they are many; yea, and we can witness of their sincerity, because of their love towards their brethren and also towards us.

This scripture has really meant a lot to me in the mission!  I know that it is really tough being a missionary! Sometimes it is just really hard!  You get disanimated and feel like you can't go on! But I know that God will always be there to do what he did with Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah!  He loves us and wants us to have success!  When we put our trust in him and we are patient in everything and keep working hard we will see the success that we have had when we look back! Just like Elder Olson and I experienced!  Have a great week! I love you guys!

Love

Elder Orchard