This week was pretty cool. I don't know how to transmit to you all of the cool stuff that happened but I'm going to give it a shot.
First of all there were five baptisms in the zone this week!
That doesn't sound like much but that puts us at 12 as a zone for the month of January!
That doesn't sound like much either for a whole zone but just to put that in perspective the next highest baptizing zone in the city baptized 7 and has way more missionaries. 24 to be exact.
We are the smallest zone in the city being 12 missionaries in total and serving in the richest areas of the entire city. The next smallest zone is Mitla which has 18. In fact we were the 4th highest baptizing zone in the entire mission!
Of course this success is not all my doing but it sure makes me proud as their leader! It means that all the training, counciling, motivating, etc. we've done worked! So that makes me happy :)
On a more personal note I am doing really well. I can smell the end drawing near but it is all excitement because it drives me to work harder to make good use of the time I have left, but also I have something super awesome to look forward to in just 7 short weeks!
Me and my companion get along really well and work well together. Changes are coming up next week and i'm not sure what I want to do. The president in our last council we had with him on tuesday basically told me to let him know what I wanted my change to be so I've been thinking a lot about it this week. What I told him in the weekly letter today is that things are going really well here in Dainzú and that if I finished here leading the zone with Elder Mota that would be fine with me, but if he has other ideas that I would be fine with that too. It would be nice to stay though. The ward is kinda lame and the area is pretty difficult but I'm used to that by now. I feel that way mostly for the zone to be able to help it continue to progress. It's hard to find a companion in whom you can trust completely and who helps out and pulls his share of the weight so thats another reason.
anyways
We were able to baptize this week! haha! It was a 9 year old kid but hey it counts :) we also have been contacting with the new method we came up with and it's been working really well.
This week we found and have taught twice already a Christian youth named Mauricio and his brother José. He seems halfway promising haha. He's got a lot of strange ideas about the interpretation of the bible but we're working on that. Also we were able to teach Neftalí!! He's the husband of a less active recent convert and the father of Thalía who we have been teaching this change. So far every time we have gone over to teach he disappears almost instantly, but he came into contact with an old friend of his (Brother Sanchez who is super pilas) who planched him up and down and explained some stuff to him that he'd never heard before. He actually got interested! On Saturday night after a long wet day and having almost made it home we remembered that we still needed to go to visit him and invite him to church before Sunday. When the idea came to my head I groaned inside just wanting so badly to be able to rest. My companion left the decision in my hands and I decided to obey the impression and go. We took a bus to go back to where he lives and after talking with his wife a bit about what happened with Brother Sanchez he came out to talk to us! This was a big deal. A first time. We asked him about what went down with Sanchez and as soon as he cracked the door between him and teaching I jammed my foot in it and just dove in with scriptures and teachings. Long story short my companion and I were able to teach a super powerful lesson to a very difficult man thanks to the participation of a member, the spirit, and the decision we made to obey the impression. I really hope to be able to continue teaching him. He would be a powerful convert. So ya, always follow promptings from the spirit because miracles can happen!
alright, time to go. I love you all! Thank you for sticking with me to the end! I owe you all cookies.
haha.
-Elder Spencer Henze
oh, PS:
The pres let my companion and I go to Monte Albán today!!! woohoo! we also played basketball (my team owned. YESSssss) as a zone and took this pic.
