el Día de los Muertos

Hola!

     Well another Wednesday email! This week and a half was another grinding one. First of all, we have had our first few zone meetings. I wanted to find out the average time we have as a zone in the mission field because I noticed that we are all so young in the mission. Our average time is 7.8 months in the field. For our first zone meeting, I used an example of the 2000 stripling warriors and how great they did together, and how we can do the same. We are seeing a lot of success so far! So this week was Halloween and el Día de los Muertos here in Mexico. Halloween is the same. The kids go around asking for candy. There were a ton of families in the street, but we had to give them what they wanted in order for them to listen to us. So I went and bought a bag of candy and we went around passing it around contacting every family we saw. haha. It was fun and we set a couple of appointments that way. We were walking down one street at around 8 pm, and we see a group of people clapping and dancing to music. When we got closer, we saw that the group of people were clapping around a witch that was doing something on the ground with dolls and stuff...haha we just kept on walking. Well, I didn´t see the cable on the ground connecting the music speaker to the outlet. I kind of tripped over it, and the music went completely silent....My heart sunk. haha. I got the cable and was trying frantically to put the music back on, and it finally turned back on before anything happened. haha. So on Monday, we went to our monthly meeting with President Whitehead. One of the main topics was about our safety. The APs really drilled that subject and what we need to do in a lot of situations. And President talked about how the spirit in the secret of having success. If we don´t have the spirit, it is impossible to have success. I liked all the messages a lot. Yesterday, we had our zone meeting to share what we had learned with President. I got to share the message about our safety and what to do, and about how to have a lot of excitement what we are inviting people to go to church. To give an example of that, I casually started with a debate. I started saying that the USA is the best country in the world and why. Then, a sister (which I had prepared before so she would know what to do) started saying why Mexico was the best. So with the sparks beginning to fly, I get 2 americans and 2 mexicans debating which is the better country to live in. I choose our missionary from Uraguay to choose who won. Of course, he choose the USA. haha. One of my favorite things said by the americans was,´´my friend, if you live in the USA, you can drink water from. the. tap!´´ haha. The point was, in the debate of the countries, there was a lot of enthusiasm, and the 2 sides were using all sorts of imagination to convince the guy. The same should be used when inviting people to church. We need to say all of the benefits we receive and the blessings of going to church with the same spiritual enthusiasm. haha so that´s all I have for this week. I also received 3 cards from Cheryl! I laughed so hard at all 3. haha. When I was transferred from Las Torres, those cards were already in the house of the Zone leaders to give to me, but they forgot, so they just barely got to me now. But thanks for those! I love you all!

Con amor,

Elder Barton

A few pics of home