Wow!!! What a WEEK!!! What a DAY!!! Elder Warnick and I along with some other friends might have just invented a new olympic sport... Volcanic Rock Surfing. So today we left at about 6:00 to hike up a volcano in our mission. Elder Boynton, Craner, Lopez, and Warren came with us as we began our early morning hike (and let me say, it felt like I was getting ready to go snowboarding with my Dad on those early mornings, it was super easy to get up and I was sooo excited). It honestly wasn´t too long of a hike, about 1 hour up, and once at the top, we could see almost ALL of Mexico City!! It was soooo cool and pretty! We took a lot of fun pictures and videos and was definitely the best hike I´ve ever seen out here in Mexico. But the intense and fun part hadn´t even began... Going down. Usually going down from the hike is one of the most dull, slow, most tiring parts- but not this hike! Maybe for that reason it is one of the top 10 hikes I´ve ever been on! (Maybe... I have been on a lot of sweet hikes before). Anyways, since it is a volcano, the way down is just 4 feet deep of pure, loose, volcanic rock. So literally you can run down as FAST as you want, and it is nearly impossible to fall. With dust flying up into the air and our legs just chugging down that mountain super fast, we realized we may have just invented a new sport. Plus it only took us about 15-20 minutes to get down the mountain, making it only about a 2 or 3 hour trip in total. I had never really experienced anything quite like it before and if anyone is down here in Mexico City ever, I DEFINITELY reccomend. Heck, I am definitely going back 2 or 3 times before my mission is over! It was an awesome memory, and I am so grateful for P-Days like these to help me relax from the heaping mountain of work we have to do during the week and have a chance to enjoy some of God´s amazing, wonderful, breathtaking creatings. Speaking of amazing, wonderful, and breathtaking creations, we also got to play lots of basketball afterwards with some of my best friends, and got AL PASTOR tacos. I am pretty sure basketball and street tacos definitely make it in some of the top creations of God. And for that reason that I got to have so much fun in one day, it may even be the BEST P-DAY of all time. Again, just maybe because I have had some other pretty awesome P-Days in the past. I am just grateful we all made it home safe and alive :)
As the last few weeks though, Warnick and I have still been ON FIRE!!! We have got 17 more progressing investigators since the beginning of the cycle and now have 8 people with a baptismal date and goal so that would be awesome to see all of those guys go through!! It is kind of sad to think that I could be leaving this awesome ward, area, and companion this week since changes are next week but I am so grateful for all of the time that I did have to work here and for so many blessings of success, and great companions. We were able to find TWO new families this week that really love us and what we do and have the potential to be baptized. We were also were able to use the movie "Coco" that we saw a few weeks ago in the movie theatres to help teach someone about family history and temple work, and EVER came up with a new song! (Definitely not as cool as the 12 planchas of Christmas) but we sang the compromisos of the week in our district meeting, so we might just go down being known as the singing zone leaders. Of course not for how well we can sing because we both have pretty bad voices, but our songs are pretty hilarious and help get our point across so much better haha. Lastly, we had a really cool experience in a lesson this week. We have been teaching a mom and daughter (Macrina and Alexa) for a while now who have gone to church and have a baptismal date. Since the beginning though they have always been worried about Macrina´s husband (Arcelio) who isn´t really into religion, and doesn´t want them to get baptized. We´ve had two lessons with him the past few weeks and even though he has been pretty shut and not super accepting of us, he has been listening to us. Well this week, we were teaching the Plan of Salvation and had a BOMB lesson. We used lots of examples that made them laugh and understand, and the spirit was definitely super strong there. At the end we bore our powerful testimonies about the Plan of Salvation, the importance of families in this life, and then sang "Families can be together forever" I don´t know if I ever felt the Spirit more powerfully while singing this hymn and it seemed to turn out so good I leaned over and whispered to Warnick "Hey, I think we should invite the husband to be baptized" He didn´t really respond to me and I could tell he wasn´t so sure about it, but I followed the prompting and extended the bold invitation after the closing hymn. And to our surprise and excitement he boldy said, Yes! I want to get baptized! We put a baptismal date with him after that and left the lesson feeling humbled, excited, and so grateful. Warnick even admitted to me afterwards that he wasn´t so sure about inviting him to baptism yet, but afterwards knew it was the perfect thing and was definitely a prompting of the Holy Ghost. I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost to lead and direct our lives and to also help us fufill our callings. I know personal revelation from God is real, that families can be together forever, and am so happy and feel so blessed to have the Gospel in my life and have the chance to be a missionary and servant for the Lord!! Nothing better than this, and definitely have had so many experiences (fun, sad, spiritual...) that I will remember for the rest of my life. And definitely have met people, both missionaries and converts, who I will have a strong friendship and love for all of eternity.
Well, among some other highlights this week, is that we made a bedtime story! Warnick and I compiled details of our whole entire mission up to this point, when we first met, and of course added a few tweaks to make it more interesting and funny and then turned it into a pretty ghetto story book type thing filled with pictures. We may be a little weird sometimes, but I think things like these moments, the cactus garden, the 12 planchas of Christmas, our flying boat, inventing new olympic sports, and just having tons and tons of success in the missionary work define our legendary companionship and why we are so happy all of the time. We also had a really REALLY awkward, kind of funny lunch with some members this week. Just imagine that we sit down at the table with the mom, and then the dad walks in (actually a really cool and strong family of the ward) but he also invited his really drunk brother who just talked and spit on us the whole time, his really country, rancher dad, with his cowboy hat, his dad´s pastor friend who was really prideful and funny about his church and his bible, and then the angry aunt who randomly walked out of the house in the middle of lunch, yelled at everyone, and slammed the door. Then multiply the awkwardness you imagine by 10. Yeah, pretty awkward. Of course we tried our best to meet these new people and try to share the gospel with them, but none of them were having any of it lol. You could definitely tell the dad and mom were a little embarassed at the end, but we made them sure that we were grateful for the food and their example to their family. Plus, makes for funny missionary stories to the fam! Anyways, we should hopefully (VERY HOPEFULLY) be closing this week and this cycle (Wow, I can´t believe this cycle went by SO FAST!) with 3 baptisms. We find out about changes next week but I can only hope for and pray for another cycle in this area and with Elder Warnick. Anyways, thanks so much for all of the emails, love, and support, and I will catch ya´ll next week! Have a good one!!
By the way, here are some pictures and I will get some more coming.
Yours Truly,
Elder Tyler Clark
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