Week #50: Guadalupe (La Oficina) - 6

This past week has been pretty good for me. As far as working in our area, we had some good moments, but the week overall was lower than we´ve been doing lately. But, we were pretty busy with other stuff, so that´s what can happen sometimes. We went and did a service activity for our investigator Julio. He is an older man whose house was very dirty. We spent basically the entire afternoon (from like 5:00 to 8:00). We cleaned out his kitchen, his bathroom (yours truly helped with that one) and the main room, the front entrance too. It was pretty good. A bit gross at moments, but definitely great to do, and it helped him. Elder Quevedo gave him a haircut and a shave (I kind of helped a bit with the shave) and we found his glasses and I fixed them, so he can read now! It was good stuff. Later in the week... Well, on Friday the 27th, my birthday package got here! I was so happy that it made in one time. It only took three weeks to make it here, so that was pretty great. I opened it the next morning, on my 20th birthday, and it was great to receive a package. Thank you family for the letters, treats, and music to listen to!

I spent the rest of the day at the offices helping to prepare for some stuff for the transfers and the new houses we´re opening up. We opened 7 more houses this transfer. We just keep on growing.

So, now that I´m 20 I´m not a teenage anymore. It´s been good being a missionary. Sister Skinner called to my attention the fact that I gave my "farewell" talk a year ago on Monday. A year went away. It´s been a good year. Pretty soon though, I´ll have a year in the mission field. That will be cool.

On Monday it was super chill, since it wasn´t our P-day. In the past, I was always scrambling to write while I could, but this week not so much with that problem. Also, Elder Quevedo took over almost all of the responsibility of being the Executive Secretary, so I was chilling and not stressing much at all.

Tuesday, however, was different. I had people asking me for stuff, materials; I helped out with moving things for new houses, and other stuff like that. It was pretty good, but a bit crazy. It was nice when everyone left and it was just us here at the offices. We spent the rest of the day here. We could have probably left and worked well, but we stayed here. I got to see Rocío and Charlie again, since they had an appointment with Elder Mills and Elder Miller. It was pretty nice. We ate afterwards, and Rocío had a laugh attack when she saw an old school I.D. of Elder Miller. It was pretty cool and fun. She´s on track for her baptism on October 13th, 2013.

This week coming up is conference, so that´ll be good stuff. I plan on listening to the Relief Society Broadcast before then. This week we´ve got the Leadership Council tomorrow, then Friday I think Immigration for the new missionaries, so that´s good stuff. I guess I´ll kind of wrap up this email. I´ll attach some photos.

OH! So, on Saturday before my birthday everyone in the offices surprised me with cakes and they sang to me. It was nice of them, and I didn´t expect it. Later, we went out to eat at Chili´s. It was fun and nice of them. We ate some tasty carrot cake, and I took the traditional Mexican "Bite" out of the cake, and Elder Quevedo pushed my head into the cake. I didn´t really get dirty, but there was a funny result. But yeah, it was a pretty good week overall. Not perfect, but pretty good.

Well, I love you! Take care all!

Love, Elder Izak Thomas Erekson

P.S. Wow, as I looked for pictures to attach, I realized that I forgot to talk about going bowling on Monday. It was a ton of fun. I almost won the second game, almost. It was a pretty fun day. I enjoyed it. I´ll attach some photos.

P.P.S. As the Materials Secretary, I work with the mail of the mission, and the materials of the missionaries. So yeah, good stuff.