"I Love the Mish" . . . Changes!

Valeria and Fernanda were baptized.

A wonderful day!!

Hello Family!

Oh what a week it has been!   And really I’m not sure where to start.  But now thinking about it, I think I will start with what happened last week because we had a WONDERFUL last week of the change!  The baptismal service of Valeria and Fernanda was absolutely wonderful!  After going through another rough experience trying to get everything ready, people started showing up!  Really from the ward there was only a few that came … like 9.  But more than 40 relatives of the girls showed up and so we had more than 50 people in the service!  What a wonderful time it was!  I’m hoping the pictures I send will help show what I’m saying, but it was absolutely wonderful.

I also got to go to the temple last week!  My companion was invited to go to an endowment of a friend and I was obviously invited because I’m his comp.  Sister Mecham also went because she knows the gal well and was her escort.  So yea, I got to go to the temple on the 7th of October and there in the chapel waiting area I finished the Book of Mormon for the 3rd time in Spanish.  It was a very, very, very sweet experience and I might have cried … might.  While in the changing room of the temple I ran into a bunch of elders from the MTC and I asked if they knew an Elder Thurgood.  One told me he knew him and they were zone leaders together and that he had been in the earlier session.  Sadly, I never saw him, but we were in the temple at the same time.  It would have been wonderful to have gotten to see him!

Well, Saturday night I got a phone call I wasn’t at all expecting.  My idea was to finish my mission in Churubusco with Elder Herrera as zone leaders and baptizing everyone we met.  But, my idea wasn’t at all the Lord’s idea.  So I was informed that I had changes on Monday and that started the process of packing and saying goodbye to all my friends that I had made in the ward.  I love the Churubusco Ward.  I can easily say it’s the best ward I’ve had in my mission (although that’s not to say that I don’t love the other wards) and saying goodbye was really, honestly quite hard.  In fact, I didn’t even tell anyone at church it was my last day because I didn’t want the attention and I didn’t really want people saying goodbye to me because that just makes me sad.  And so it was.  Oh, and I might say that that sacrament service was incredible with Gabriel’s, Fernanda’s and Valeria’s confirmations and then testimony meeting--so sweet--the best going away gift I could have asked for!

Monday was a dreaded day-- so sad.  Paco took me to the church where the changes were.  After waiting a few minutes and talking to tons of missionaries, the assistants came out with the changes and my comp was the first to get the list of the changes for our zone.  He looked down, saw my name and took the surprise out of it by yelling where I was going.  Haha.  Now I’m in the ward right next to Churubusco.  It’s called Taxqueña and my new companion is Elder Avila.  He’s from Chiapas and is one of the funniest 24-year-olds I know.  We get along great and have already had much time in the mission getting to know each other.  I’m excited to end my mission in this area with Elder Avila even though I’m a little sad that I had to leave my beloved Churubusco.  But the Lord knows best.  Now I’m learning a few songs on the ukulele and working hard.  I don’t think I’ll be baptizing again on my mission … but who knows …a miracle could happen.  And even if not … I’ve done all that I can.  I feel good about my work and dedication.

I know my preparation days (P-days) have been a little crazy these last few months with special changes and all, but now they should for the most part be solid and normal ... but on Fridays.  Friday is my new p-day and if we are ever too busy to write on Friday then it’ll most likely be Saturday when I write. Anywho, sorry for all the changes.  I’m incredibly happy and working hard, hard, hard.  It feels good to know that people trust me.  I’m healthy too-- happy days.

Loves to all,

Wish I could be at the temple dedication, but just know that my thoughts are there.  :)   I have permission to watch some of the Cultural Celebration tonight (Sat), but it starts at 8:00 my time, So I won’t have much time to watch.   All is well.    Elder McClure

YUM !!

Good-hye to Elder Erickson

Hello Elder Avila

Saying "hi" in Ajusco.  Wooooooooooooooo, I ove Sebas and Lety.

"Here's Some Fun from Last Week"

We didn't get a letter yet.  But, Elder McClure sent these photos.  It doesn't get much better than this . . . baptisms and the Temple!!

Glory Days!!

Gabriel and Elder McClure

A united, healed family!

Rubi's birthday and baptism celebration.

Oh, how wonderfullllllllll!!!

I sure did love me this past week.  So much good was done.  I love successful weeks!

Thursday was one of the most stressful days of my missionary life!  Honestly just about everything that could go wrong, went wrong.  Well, at least in my perspective it was that way!  Getting the baptismal service ready was a rough experience!  We went about trying to get keys to the boiler for the hot water in the font and after begging and pleading and searching just about every house in the ward we found keys.  Yay.  But, then we opened up the closet where the boiler is and realized there was no gas.  That made me mad.  Maintenance in Mexico is not a forte.  Then, calling our bishop asking for help, he told us it wasn’t his responsibility and that he was going to arrive late to the service, if he was even going to get there.  We went running to the mission offices to ask help of the assistants and they told us “tough luck”.  Then President saw me stressed and I told him why and his only reply was "Well elder, in my mission we baptized in rivers," and ya, that was it.  No help from the mission.  So we decided to just go with ice cold water, but as we started filling the font we realized that the drain was broken and that all the water just left the font.  Ahhh, what do we do?  My companion is brilliant!  We got a black trash bag and used it to cover the drain!  Wooo.  It kinda held!  Cold water and broken font, but fixed, none the less. 

What else could go wrong?  Well, more went wrong, but I’m sure that by this point you all are bored of reading about my stressful day, so let’s just say more stress happened and then ya, it was time for the service!  Oh how sweet it was!  It was Rubi’s birthday and she had no clue that her dad was getting baptized!  She, along with everyone else, was just waiting for the service to start, thinking 2 little girls were going to get baptized, when her dad walked in wearing white.  She, in that moment, was Skyping in with my old comp Elder Stout and Elder Crandall for her birthday and she was taken by surprise seeing her dad in white!  Then it hit her, and she started to cry.  It was the sweetest service ever and you know what?  I couldn’t even feel the cold water.  To me it was warm for the happiness that filled my soul.  And that’s not to mention Gabriel.  He told me the same thing.  He couldn’t even feel the ice cold water.

The baptism was a little rough because that man is like 6 foot 3 and I’m just a little small fella!  But by a miracle I got him up and out of the icy font and oh how sweet it was!  Their testimonies afterward were incredible!  This family was a ruined mess just a few months ago.  In Gabriel’s case he had to hit rock bottom before coming to his senses and learning about the gospel.  But, oh how they have changed!  They have been healed!  A broken apart family is now together.  All are members now and they are working together toward a temple sealing in just a short year from now!  I’m so grateful to have been part of this miracle!  Thanks to Elder Stout being guided to find that family.  He was able to help the mom and daughter and I got here just in time to participate in the miracle that took place in papa Gabriel’s life.  I personally watched a broken-down, mad and sad man make a full 180 with a twist and he is now a holy man.  He went from rock bottom to heavenly high and all in a matter of weeks!!  That, my friends, is a miracle and I’ve been seeing so many miracles and eating so many tacos in these past few weeks that I must say I do believe these are glory days!

Life is good--too good and I love it.  We are so blessed.  We are seeing the hand of the Lord in all we do and it is refreshing and renewing.  It would be impossible to say that God is not involved.  It’s sooo easy to see His love spread upon all who learn His word and obey his commandments.  After all the trials of that cold and rainy Thursday I’m happy to say that we won.  And we will always win, so long as we have the Lord on our side.

How happy I am.  How tired I am.

We are so very blessed.

Loves,

Elder McClure

I want to throw a shout out to Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita.  (See Elder Yamashita on the screen.) As a missionary myself his conference talk went straight to my heart.  I can’t explain how it feels to personally know the person who’s speaking at General Conference.  It helps me be more receptive to his words and just lets me know even more that he’s a chosen servant of the Lord.  I LOVED Elder Yamashita's talk!

Elder Yamashita Meme

"We found a beautiful canal by our house."

Ward party (food) between sessions of General Conference.

Tacos following the General Priesthood Session of conference.

"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.