"Mawage is Wot Bwings Us Togeder Tooday"

On our way to the "Mawage"!!

Waiting for the judge.

Thumb print proven.

Mawage is between husband and wife!

This week was AWESOME!!!!!  We totally went “wedding-ing” with Tamara and Gabriel!!!  Wednesday we took a little field trip over yonder outside to the state of Mexico where we have a good ol’ judge friend who hooked us up with a cheap (but legal) marriage!!!!   WOOOOOO!   I can’t remember now, but I believe Gabriel and Tamara have been together for just about 20 years and are now beautifully husband and wife!  It was SO fun and ex-Elders Stout and Crandall Skyped in for the big day!

Besides this we had a wonderfully boring zone training where we announced new rules to the missionaries and we did lots of work in our area and in the area of Estrella where Elder Bolingbroke is working. Being in a trio is hard.  We lose a lot of time traveling.  Oh, and money too.  Let’s just say I’m broker than broke and today I got a little talking to from President because he found out we haven’t been eating breakfast …but it’s not our fault!  We just don’t have money for fancy things like that!  Hahaha.

We found some new people to teach and are hoping to find more soon.  We have 2 cute little girls named Valeria and Fernanda that we hope can be baptized next week.  They are super cute and I absolutely LOVE teaching little kids.  It’s so much more fun than teaching adults.

I can’t tell y’all how ready and excited I am for General Conference this weekend!  It’s hard to believe it’s already been 6 months since the last conference, but at the same time … it’s felt like forever.  My soul is in need of hearing the teachings of living prophets.  I teach and testify CONSTANTLY and oh, how wonderful it is to receive instruction from my Mission President and now from the General Authorities of the Church.  Oh, what a beautiful weekend it will be! 

One of the millions of blessings I have received as a representative of Christ is the strengthening of my testimony about latter-day, living prophets and apostles!  I know their words are the words of God.  I know that if we heed their words and teachings, we will be forever blessed and prepared for what will come in the future and I know with certainty that President Monson is the Prophet of God on the earth today.  His signature is on my mission call.  Through him I was assigned by God to serve here in the Mexico City South Mission where I have been an instrument in His hands and a witness of many great and mighty miracles.  How blessed we are to have living prophets.  I invite ALL to listen and pay close attention this weekend to their teachings so that this world might be a better place.  God loves us and is certainly worried about us.  His message is very clear.  Let us give ear to what he has to say.  I love this gospel.

All be well.  Know that miracles are about in Churubusco.  I see them every day.

Love you all,

Elder McClure

Nightly planning.

Yup, those are pomegranates on top!

Gotta Love Me the Mission!!

The Trio

Hey Guys!

What a fun and wonderful week.  We were VERY busy helping the zone all week long.  We had a fun area attack, a girl fight to break up, and early morning check-ups to make sure elders were up and studying on time!   WOO

With the 15th of September Celebration (Independence Day) it was pretty crazy! There were lots of fireworks and drunks roaming the streets.  I even saw kids throw legit TNT under a car as it went by -- not sure how no one died, but ya it was pretty intense.  With less hours of work, we didn’t get to teach as much, but it was really nice to have a few more hours in-house as my companion was very sick.  We finished off the week with 4 investigators at church on Sunday and 3 people with baptismal dates.

Yesterday was pretty crazy.  Before having our council with President Mecham, we got called into his office and were informed that we would be receiving a new elder who is in our zone as our companion--so now we are a trio.  His name is Elder Bolingbroke and he’s got only 3 weeks in the mission.  We are also now in charge of the area he was in, Estrella, which is right next to ours, but still a little far away.  So now my companion, Elder Herrera, and I are District leaders and training!  Woooo!  (My 4th time training!)  It is stressful, but it’s not bad knowing I have a companion that I share these responsibilities with.   But for the rest of this change we will be like this – a trio!  I’m pretty excited.  We are SO busy and I love being busy!!

For this upcoming week we should be having a really fun surprise happening tomorrow that I’ll write more about next week, a short zone training on Thursday, and a few baptismal interviews this Saturday. I’ve been a little sick lately.  I think my comp got me sick.  It could be a throat infection or just a cold.  I’m not sure, but it’s slowing me down and wearing me out.  I hope I’m over it soon.  Really I’m SUPER excited for all that’s going on!  I love having a wonderful companion who helps and works and now having another new companion who also does the same.  Our zone is starting to take off with success. We have lots of potential and so much work.

All be well here in Churubusco.  

Gotta love me the mission,

Elder McClure

Eyeball and Tongue Tacos . . . Yum!!!!!

Eating cow eyeball and tongue tacos!!!!

Elder McClure and his companion, Elder Herrera

Churro - filled with cream and berry jam.

Hmmm, what might I say about this week?  It’s been a great week and the best part is it went by really quick!  We didn’t have no dragging along like last week!  My companion and I are killin’ it in our area and are also having a ton of fun going and working with the elders in the zone!  We had a wonderful zone training last Friday that went really smoothly and turned out to be a success!  I’m hoping Mom already saw the pics up on FB from Sister Mecham.  We also taught 38 lessons and found 4 new people to teach. After our zone training on Friday, the assistants went with us back to our area to work for the day.  We went on splits and taught a ton of lessons and I had a grand ol’ time with one of my great friends from the mission, Elder Erickson.  He goes home in 4 weeks so I gotta get my share of him before he goes!

On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity to do another baptismal interview and it was my first time failing someone.  It was a real stressor.   But the most wonderful part was feeling the Spirit helping me to ask specific questions and learn what I needed to learn.  What a wonderful experience.  I have another interview set up with this person for the 24th and I’m very excited to see his progress. 

At church on Sunday we met a young, less active mom that brought her 2 daughters to church and they are like 9 and 10 years old and we are super jacked for teaching them.  I love teaching part-member families and helping them work together towards temple covenants!

Really, this whole week was very enjoyable and full of hard work.  We are seeing some very nice progress in our area and zone and very excited to see what we will be able to do in this change.  We are already on week 3!!!  ahhhhhh

This week is the big September 15th Independence Day celebration and we will be in our houses early each night so we can stay safe.  I plan on getting caught up on my Book of Mormon study--so much to do and so little time to do it.

Life is good.

Loves,

Elder McClure

Zone Training Meeting

Part of what we gave everyone at the Zone Training Meeting.  "Behold, I am the light which ye shall hold up-"  3 Nephi 18:24

Torta

"Well, they repaved the street in front of our stake center and Mexican streets are usually really, really dirty ...  So I took the liberty of kissing it before it got dirty."

"I'm Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed"

Elder Tams, the only other white zone leader in the mission. 

Well, well, well ... a longggg week it has been.  I’m honestly exhausted.  With it being the 1st week of this change we didn’t really have to do anything with the zone which means we had ALL week long to be in our area working … and it felt like eternity.  It was good to be in our area for once working, but man the days just get long when you’re doing just one thing all day long.  We looked for new investigators and less actives and taught a little bit, but not much.  We are looking at dropping a few people that really aren’t progressing how we’d like and we are very hopeful we can swap them out with people we can find that really progress well.  The problem is that we have the bestest investigator ever named Gabriel, and so when we have other people that don’t progress like him, it’s hard to keep teaching them.  But we are seeing what we are going to do.

We have some awesome things coming up, but I can’t talk about them right now because some are surprises and I can’t tell them secrets yet in case someone sees this blog that shouldn’t.  But I’m excited.

I’ll have exciting news in just a few weeks.  For now, we are planning for our zone training that’ll be this Friday.  I’m a little stressed.  We don’t know what we are going to train on yet, but we know we gotta make it good and do something fun that the missionaries will be able to remember super good.  So we have a training and also baptism interviews to do.

Yesterday we had a really cool council with President and he taught us some really cool stuff about leadership and being the example.  Oh man, I forgot to talk about my new comp and that’s like all you guys wanna hear.  Well he’s pretty awesome!  Elder Herrera is really quiet and just does his work and ya … end of story.  I love it.  He’s ready and willing to work and is helpful and that’s the end of it!  Oh, and he knows the doctrine really well, which I love because I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed and he really helps out on some of them hard questions.  So really it’s all going well.  I’m pretty healthy besides a migraine … and working good-- just plugging along for now.  Not much new or cool, just work.

No complaints.  That’s it for now.

Loves,

Elder McClure

My new companion, is  Elder Herrera, the shortest elder in this group.