Elder Tellez 10-29-12 Email

Hello everyone, Thank you so so much for the emails, haha. All is well. The baptisms haven't been coming as much as I would want, but we have been working with the inactive members and they have started coming to church. The attendance in sacrament meeting has doubled since I have gotten here. I think I already mentioned that they are going to split my ward. On the 11 of November, a Seventy will come and do it. It will be a branch and a ward. Wow, it is about to be November again, haha, time flies when you're having fun, right? Tonight we are going to Xalapa for a zone leader council tomorrow. I need to start exercising better again. So, Bianca got a new car, what year is it? Take pics of the inside please. What is the church attendance in Liberty now. We have been having cold weather here as well, ahhhhh it feels like Xalapa. I need to buy some shoes, could you by chance send me like $50???? My health is super good, well, normal. Was this just the first time Josh has been allowed to play? He needs to get his grades up. I hope your toe gets better Gramma. Thank you for that Halloween joke, haha. It is so exciting here. We have been working with the kid, ok, young adult (he is 22)(he is the person in the pics). Anyways, we have been working with him in preparation for his mission. He just sent in his papers last week. Also, his friend, Adrian (we baptized him in September), is so excited to go on a mission. They are both in mission prep classes but Adrian has to wait until he has been a member for a year. The time has gone and we must move on with our lives. I love you all. 'Til next week.

Elder Tellez 10-22-12 Email

Hello family, How is everything going? Everything is well here. E. Carmona is awesome. This week was good. This Sunday I gave a talk and I forgot to put the phone on silence and it went off, it was a little embarrassing, haha, but I learned my lesson. How was stake conference? What did you all learn? There is really nothing new this week, haha. I'm sorry. I took some photos for you. I love the food here. It's a wonder why I haven't gained weight, haha. I am still enjoying my time. Time is going by sooooo fast. Time to go. It is soo hard to think of words to say. Estoy mejorandome el español. Siempre tengo sueño. Mi vida ha cambiado por la mejor. No soy perfecto pero me esfuerzo a hacer mi mejor cada dia. Ahora voy a aprender hebreo y luego portugues. Les amo con todo mi corazon. Fortalezcan sus testimonios del Evangelio restaurado. Ok, ya me voy. Bye-bye.

Elder Waddell 10-15-12

So yes I have seen the northern lights officially!!!! I must admit they were pretty awesome. You can literally watch them unravel. Then they dance and different colors flash. And if you go in really dark places you can see more color and definition but we live kind of in town. So 2 things 1 my camera is not built to take pictures of the northern lights and 2 it broke right after I got horrible pictures of them. Sooooo my camera is broken .... ha sorry. The lens just won't open all the way. I can hear and see the gears trying but it won't work. sooooo I can buy one up here if that's alright. That way I could probably get one that I could use for the northern lights before I stop seeing them. So I guess missionary stuff. I gave a talk in church yesterday. It's a big ward haha. It was on preparing for a mission by gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon.I thought it was pretty good. But I'm getting longwinded. I spoke for like 20 minutes....We met some people that we hadn't been able to meet for a long time this week. Oh it snowed yesterday and stuck.... winter is here. I'll probably be buying a jacket as well. sorry.... we got parkas from a member that would work great... but they're green... doesn't really fit the missionary look. so we'll see. Um things are going great. Just trying to better the work and myself. the latter is the hardest. ha well that's about it for this week. love you
Elder Waddell

Elder Tellez 10-15-12 Email

Hello all, I'm sure it seems like I just didn't send an email last, but I write to you guys every week. It's just that when I send the email and it says that it was safely sent and all that jazz but they send me an email after a couple of hours after I am already off, to tell me that the email wasn't sent. This has happened 3 times. So, I'm sorry, but I lok forward to Mondays so that I can write you. Anyways, the news, haha. Elder Valdez is getting transferred to a different place called Papantla and my new companion will be Elder Carmona. He is cool, he has about 10 months in the mission. Also, my zone will only have 5 areas not 6, they are closing one of them. I met this 80 year old american from Pennylvania even older version of Jeff Bridges. He has been in Mexico for a couple of years, he doesn't have a home. His reasoning for coming here was to start a business, then he went bankrupt and lost everything. He doesn't know any spanish, it felt weird having a conversation in english. Time to say goodbye. I love you all. Send a bunch of emails and pics.

Elder Tellez 10-08-12 Email

Hello, So, conference was amazing, as always. I enjoyed every minute of it. We didn't baptize anybody this week. But our heads are up and we just keep moving forward. I hope you like the pics I have. I enjoyed some amazing Dominos: a 4 cheese pizza, hawaiian pizza, and chocolatey volcano thing. Did you guys send a package? If so, it taking a while. This is the last week of the transfer, I tell you next Monday of any changes. How are Trinity, Everett, and Sam doing, it has been I while since I've heard from them. The missionary board, how is that looking? How is Bianca doing, it has been a while hearing from her too. I am still losing weight and staying healthy (I work out everyday, haha). There is really nothing new in my life. Still happy, haha. Time to go. I love you all.

Elder Tellez 10-1-12 Email

Hello everyone. How is everyone? I'm sorry about last weeks email. I wrote it, sent it, but it turns out that it didn't send and there was an error. Haha, I guess I have bad luck with the whole emailing thing. My week was met with great challenges and super exhaustion. As I mentioned in last week's email that didn't send, we had 8 PEOPLE with a baptismal date for yesterday! As a zone we were going to baptize 19! It was going to be a bautizona, or, when all of the companionships in the zone baptize which is really impressive. We were so under pressure the week, our leaders called us every night and we called all of the missionaries of the zone every night to see how their dates are going. The ending result: my companion and I baptized zero and as a zone in whole, we baptized 3. What a big difference, right? My head basically exploded when I was calling up the district leaders for their reports of the week and when Elder Holland, the assistant to the president called me for the report on the zone. It wasn't because I was angry, but because it was an epic fail. I guess we had something to learn this week. We were too centered on numbers and not the people. We are teaching souls, children of God, and our fellow brothers and sisters. Throughout the week I was reflecting on true conversion and I was thing about the people that I have baptized throughout my mission; were they God's converts or were they my convert's? And then I was wondering about my own conversion, am I really converted? I have a testimony or am I just saying what everyone else says: "I know that....". That's really what we a need to think about. "Do I have a testimony?" That is the reason why people fall away from the church or become inactive because they haven't obtained their own testimony and when they get offended by someone or something happens they fall away. Obviously, you aren't alone, the are great people with the walls of the church the can help you. These were the kind of things that were running through my mind. Anyway, I am so happy for gramma and the outside of her apartment looks nice. I don't want to be captain obvious but time is flying by and we are already in October and 2012 will come to a close then hello 2013, haha, wow. There are no pics because I didn't take any this week, I'm sorry. I commented in the unsent email that all of my pics on my camera from January up until now were magically erased, like what happened in January, haha. Time to start over. Also I said that Bianca should email me because I haven't heard from her in a long time. Ok, gotta go. I love you all.

Elder Tellez 9-17-12 Email

This week was good. We had stake conference here in Martinez. President Lopez came and spoke. We also had 5 baptisms in our zone. We baptized 1 in my area. We had a baptismal service Saturday and another Sunday after the conference. There were 60 or more people in the baptism on Sunday, 15 of which we investigators. We have a goal of 8 baptisms this week as a zone. In my area(s) we are going to baptize 2 or 3. I say areas because we have two wards now, Ejidal and Martinez, because Elder Sulzen (the elder without a companion) is now our companion. I'm loving it here, it is just really hot. It is just a small town, but I know like 6 people who speak fluent english. My direction is the calle articulo (I think) 27 between the calles Martinez de la Torre and Lopez Mateo in the colonia Ejidal. It is the great and spacious building (the only one). I have climbed up the hill, now that was that slow and hard part. Now, I am going down and that is the quick and easy part, haha. The year mark has come (finally), but I still love the mission. I'm so happy for you gramma that you are moving into the apartment, I can't wait to see some pictures. Mama, 2nd counselor in the young womens, haha, that's cool. I love Joshua's section shirt. My favorite part is the "Little John", haha. What is the name of his band director, is he old, does he have a family, is he cool? Yay, General Conference is coming up in a couple of weeks. Happy early birthday to Bianca "the old lady" 23, wow. This will be the last birthday she has with me on a mission, haha. Can you check when the enrollment is for BYU Hawaii in the winter 2013 semester or spring 2014 semester, like when the money plan and application deadline are? Depending on that I might come home a couple of weeks earlier. But I don't know. Ok time for me to go. I love you all.

Elder Tellez 9-10-12 Email

Hello family. How is everyone? I'm great. I'm loving my new assignment as zone leader. My companion is awesome. In fact I have another companion, Elder Sulzen (the tall american in the baptismal photos). I count him as a companion bacause he doesn't have a companion so he stays with us or goes with youth from his ward. Gramma: My mission president is President Lopez. You would send packages to the address of the new mission office that I sent in one of my emails in July. I'm not sure what the location of my house is yet but I will get that info for ya'll next week. Martinez is relatively small. There is no Walmart or anything like that. There are two stores: Bodega Aurrera and Chedraui. Aurrera is a branch off of Walmart but not as cool. Chedraui is a mexican store equal in size to a Walmart supercenter but obviously doesn't a whole bunch of american things. I actually like Chedraui, so that's good. There is a Domino's and it delivers to my apartment, haha, finally. The city is too small to have a whole bunch of awesome restaurants but big enough to have it's own stake. My zone has two district leaders. In total, my companion and I are over 5 companionships (not including us but including Elder Sulzen) or 9 misionaries. There are two sister misionaries in our zone (as you can tell in the photo). The taller sister is brand new in the mission and she speaks really good english (she is from Mexico). My companion is working really hard to learn english so that he can go to BYU. He knows alot already so we talk a lot of english. He ends his mission in January along with Elder Sulzen. That is all the time that I have. I love you all.

Elder Escobar and Elder Jensen went on a 10 mile up and down hills bike ride to Block Island with the Narragansett Elders. Pretty nice scenery!

Elder Everett Escobar 9/10/2012

Hello,

Sorry if there is not too much in this letter. I am writing it in a hurry and so yea that's why. But it does sound like you all had fun this week, except for Aaron's Subway incident. So this week has been busy busy busy with meetings and will probably be that way for the remainder of the month. Please pray for one of our investigators, Michael, he bore his testimony last Sunday and said he is ready to get baptized this month. However, a few family conflicts arose on Tuesday and his adult son, Justin went missing. They don't have any leads as of right now on where he could be ): So Michael is under a lot of stress and I don't know how he is going to handle it. Other than that we are strengthening our relationships with the members and helping them with their callings which helps us in return, find more less-actives and potential investigators. So we haven't done too much teaching with investigators this week but we plan on teaching plenty this week and the coming week after that. We were having a ridiculous time with members feeding us, so I have pretty much spent all of my msf on food that is at the apartment. However, the members as of yesterday started feeling bad for us, because the bishopric complained for us and so now we have 4 families signed up to feed us this week. 2 weeks ago we went on P-Day to Block Island with the Narragansett Elders, we had to take a ferry, it was fun and we had a good time. Rode a bike for 10 miles up and down and up and down hills, my thighs were crying in agony, but it was good exercise though. Today I am on exchanges with Elder Munson, so that's why I didn't e-mail earlier. Well gotta go...

With much love,

Elder Everett Alan Escobar