They eat a lot of corn on the cob...

Hola


Buenas tardes! Today I completed 14 months in the mission! I can't even believe it. That means that I'm counting down out of the double digits and into the single haha. I'm still here in Comitan and I have over 8 months here now haha. Changes aren't for another two weeks so that means I'll have almost 9 months here! I still don't want to go. I write the President every week to tell him I don't want to go haha. The weather is too good and the people are amazing. These last two weeks were a little rough because it was a two week vacation for the schools so pretty much the city was empty. The vacation was for the Semana Santa (Holy Week) for the Catholics. No one left their houses or if they did they left the city haha. But everyone is back in school and the city is packed. As missionaries we only have a certain books that we can read besides the scriptures and I'm almost done with all of them! The books are Jesus the Christ (talks about the four gospels of the bible and the life of Christ), True to the Faith (basically a dictionary), Our Heritage (story of how the church started and how it is today), and Our Search for Happiness (helps a person know about our church and how we can know what church is true). Total, I calculated it, and its 1,252 pages with all the books haha it has taken me forever to finish them all but this week I'm going to finish the last book so that's exciting this week.


 The pictures are of a family home evening that we did as a ward last night that was super fun. A lot of people came. There is one of me with a little kid. I love him haha  I want to bring him back to the states he's my little buddy here in the ward. There are other ones of us eating snacks. They eat a lot of corn on the cob with hot sauce and mayonnaise here...it's really good haha. The other one is a door mat of a soccer field and yeah. 


  Elder Bednar is coming! We're going to travel up to Tuxtla Friday (Editors Note: So today), stay the night there and have a conference with him Saturday morning. What we think will happen is we will head back but stay in San Cristobal Saturday night because our Stake has a conference with him there Sunday morning! I'm sooo excited. We have been studying some talks that he has given to prepare us. I learned a lot about prayer. From everything he has talked about I figured out three main things that someone needs in a prayer. Faith, the right question, and the willingness to act on the prayer. The right question means when we need something we have to ask it but with the answer as yes or no. You have to be willing to follow the answer whether it's what you wanted or not. The prayer can be in public or in private but it needs to be from the heart. If it's in private, you need to take time after your prayer (two minutes or so) to listen or feel the response. You have to give thanks in the prayer too. You have to plead for the things you need and also the needs for others. But you have to do as much as you can to receive an answer, you can't just wait for it. For example, Joseph Smith investigated different churches and the bible. He went to the sacred grove with a sincere heart, willing to obey the response, and the Faith that he would receive an answer. His question, which of all the sects should I join?, was a correct question to ask to get a yes or no answer. Answers to prayers come through good feelings, other people, dreams, reading the scriptures and going to church. Pretty cool stuff, huh? It's one of the many things I learned on my mission. Smile! Love you all! 

Elder Braden M. Spence 

I have permission...

First of all, yes, I have permission to send the pictures of my companion getting a shot haha. It was really funny. It wasn't too funny because this week I got super sick too...I have no idea what I had but I couldn't work Saturday because I didn't have any energy due to a full night in the bathroom. Got to love Mexico. But yeah, we had a pretty rough week but we feel a lot better. 

Today was a really cool day. Some recent converts we called and asked if they wanted to go with us to see the river in Tzmol and they were super excited. They picked us up and we went and they bought chips, sodas, chicken, tortillas (like always), and salad and we had a picnic in this river type thing. It is pretty famous here because the water comes out of a mountain and no one knows where from the mountain it comes from but it's pretty sweet. There is one part were you can see it pouring out of the side of the mountain into the water. I don't know how the pictures turn out but in real life the trees there are super green and really pretty. The water is not really blue, but it was pretty blue. It was really nice relaxing out there. It was like a 15 or 20 minute drive too so it wasn't bad at all. The other pictures are of another cool beetle bug and there are two giant Catholic church's downtown and they look pretty sweet. 

So in two weeks Elder David A. Bednar of the Twelve Apostles is coming with someone else in the 70! We are super stoked. Friday we are going to travel up to Tuxtla, Saturday morning we are going to have a conferences with all the missionaries in our mission and him, return Saturday in the afternoon. Sunday we are going to wake up early and go to a place called San Cristóbal for a Stake Conference with Elder Bednar too! I'm super lucky because he is only visiting one stake here in Chiapas and I'm in that one Stake haha. It should be fun! But yeah, life is good and fun. Mexico is sweet, and just so you know, the WWE wrestling federation is still super super popular here in Mexico haha as well as ICarly. Oren y lean.


Elder Braden M. Spence

We know we look crazy

So it's been a while since I have written...sorry, way to lazy. But the mission is going well. We have been doing a lot of really cool things lately. Some of the other missionaries had that craving to go to the pyramids and I wanted to go again so I took more pictures. It was fun. We did sacrifices of each other which a lot of people were looking at us pretty weird haha but we didn't care, so it was fun.

 We also had an activity in our ward where we did the whole tree of life thing. You had to fallow the string and go through the church and around trees, under bushes all blind folded and at the end you got a doughnut. The string represented the scriptures and how we need to read them often and listen to the words of the Prophets and if we don't we can be spiritually lost haha it was fun. Don't judge us, we know we look crazy in some of the pictures but we all had a good laugh. 

We had a member tell us a really cool story that I thought I would share. There is a lady named Elena in our ward. She was married and has two kids and is living with her family and mom. They don't have any money. Her Dad lives in the states and her ex-husband pays child support to help her and her family out. They have been members now for 10 months and never went to the Temple. The week that they wanted to go they didn't receive any money at all from her Dad or ex-husband. They were praying a lot because they really wanted to go to the Temple but also needed money to pay for food. It was the last night to be able to have interviews to go to the temple and then they received some phone calls. One was from her Brother who is also in the states to tell her that he wired money to her just to help out the familia. Then next one was from her ex-husband who called to say sorry that he lost track of the dates and sent money too! They had enough to buy food and make the travel to the temple 4 hours away for the first time! It is so cool how God always answers prayers :)

Other photos are of another cool beetle bug, we made karate pictures and other random things haha I love you all. Smile. Oren y Lean

Elder Braden M. Spence