1 month till Christmas!

This week went well. We had our zone conference with the
President. Every time we have our conference we have an exam about the
doctrine of some principle. This time we had to have all the lesson of
The Restoration, The Plan of Salvation and The Gospel of Jesus Christ
memorized (where it says 30-45 mins in PMG of each lesson, found in
the back of each lesson) along with the scriptures that went with each
point. If someone got less than 90% they cant be a zone leader, or
train new missionaries... and if a missionary got less that 90% they
have to retake the exam next month at our interviews! But I passed its
all good, but there were a good amount of people that didn’t.

This week I learned a good amount of doctrines. One of the things I
learned from my comp, who learned from our president is about
forgiveness. Like how do we really know if we have forgiven someone??
Well the other person involved has to know that you forgive them. Also,
just because we forgive someone doesn’t mean we have to be around these
people. For example with Nephi with his brothers, even though he loved
his brothers and forgave them for all they did to him, he separated
himself from them. Something so simple, but gave me a greater
understanding of forgiveness.

With Christmas coming up, I will have you know that we will be putting
up a mini white Christmas tree in our apartment today :) And just 1
more month to go before I can call home!! AHHHH! I’m just a little bit
scared to speak in English.. I guess I keep speaking in Spanish to all
the Americans that come here for vacations. I may not be perfect at
speaking Spanish, but it is so much easier at this time to just speak
it because it is how I function and think. So we will see how it goes.
:)

Sad news: We didn’t have any investigators at church yesterday.. that hurt :(

Pero, todavía les amo mucho!
Hna Tagg

Baptism of Adrianna

Sweating like there is no tomorrow. Luckily the heat has gone down a little bit this past week

Like all my socks right now

Pan de muerto-halloween

Real flowers as earrings...through my ear hole and everything!

Random butterfly

Baptism of Mariel, with some of her family

6 months in the mish with tacos, I know, bien dispenada

This picture doesnt even do justice for how steep this road is!

I’m not super great at thinking of subtitles.. hope the date is fine
for everyone... ESPECIALLY MI HERMNAITO!! (since its his GOLDEN
birthday!!-17!!!)
 
Okay well the work is great! I love reading everyone’s letters each
week! Thank you to everyone to writes me each week!
 
This week he planchado un miembro about the Sabbath day for working
every week when he doesn’t need to! He usually talks for hours when we
visit him, but he was pretty quiet. I just hate to see his wife take
her two little kids to church each week solo! Feel so bad, especially
since they have only been baptized for 7 months, and if they want to
be sealed in the temple, he might break that for them. He is less
active in our books, but in the ward, still is active for right now.
 
My comp and I are enjoying our language study. We made up lyrics,
(super not professional) to the song in Enchanted that goes like ´´how
does she know that you love her.. how do you show that you love
her.´´ Something along those lines. It was a good time. We also
rapped. (okay not really but made a beat) to one of the hymns. Its
brutal how badly we sound, but to us, super funny!
 
I found out today that all my pictures have been lost from my USB
stick from my whole mission and MTC experience :( I think the guy who
work in this Internet cafe didn’t eject my USB when I went to print a
document, so everything got wiped clean! I never did like USB sticks.
Super sad, and depressing.
 
Well next baptism hopefully will be in like 3 weeks. A mom, and her
son. Lilian and Dilan. Her other 2 sons are members somehow. The
situation is crazy, at first we thought she was less active, but
yah.... anyways, hopefully she can do her part to prepare herself for
this covenant. She is attending church but not reading the BOM, so we
can’t share the lessons with her! BOM 1st.. its a rule. And like we
know, you can’t gain a testimony of the BOM without reading it.
 
The family we met with last week didn’t come to church this week :( But
Hna Vergara and I had a little activity today with some of the youth,
we played basketball, and they came to the church and played.. well
the parents and their youngest daughter. The older 2 are pretty
rebellious and weren’t home when we passed by their house.
 
Little by little. Patience. I just don’t understand why people say
they will do things.. so simple, and don’t do it.. like coming to
church, after 5x of saying they´ll come, or multiple times.. I will
read the BOM.. and no. Frustrating! But hey, as long ad I do my part,
the Lord has his time for everyone :)))
 
SONRIA!
 
Hna Tagg

This week was incredible!
 
Okay, so there was one day this week where we only had 2 lessons.
Everything just fell right through, and one of the lessons well, wasn’t
really a lesson, it was a break up. She broke up with us :( Also tried
hard to give us back the BOM that we gave her days before. Pretty much
she read Moroni 8 which talks about baptizing babies and that being an
abomination before God. She is preparing her baby for her baptism
right now. Yah... Second lesson, was simply a random contact in the
street! It didn’t help that this day was Thursday, weekly planning,
and weekly meeting with our ward mission leader that we don’t actually
have.
 
But Friday, my oh my! I got to work with our capacitadora, and that
was like the best time of my life! Her name is Hna Ford. She is from
Utah. She is such a great missionary! And such a great example of a
consecrated missionary! I learned like a billion things from her, how
to better improve my studies, and our planning each night, how we can
do things more effectively! And on top of that, how to really do the
work of the Lord more effectively! It was wonderful! Super positive
missionary, super diligent and happy! :)) We even received 50 names! We
are suppose to receive at least the same amount of names as lessons,
so if we have 6 lessons, well 6 names.. so 50!!! Honestly I think that
was a record, and we have planned to receive 45 names for the week!
Everything just went splendid!
We also taught our recent convert Adriana, and her mom even accepted
to listen to us this day! MIRACLE! Anyways, we had 6 new investigators
this day and 6 fetchas metas for baptism... now they just all need to
follow through by coming to church and such!
 
We had 9 less actives at church today!! MIRACLE! Usually its like
between 2 and 4. People the Lord is hastening his work and bringing his
sheep unto him! Goodness it was so great! One young mom Karim who
hasn’t come to church in 10 years.. like since she was in young women’s!
Good day!:) Happy soul!
 
Yesterday our member cancelled on us, so we couldn’t go to our appts for
the day and teach, so we cancelled who we were going to visit and
looked at our list of references and remembered one that we had about
a couple weeks ago. 2 young girls 14 and 16 told us the names of their
moms about 2 weeks ago and where they lived.. So we looked for them
yesterday and it was great!
 
One of them is a family of 5! And they are golden!!! (The Gomez family)
The mom started crying after we opened with a hymn and prayer. They
are having financial problems, and problems with their two older
daughters who have started to drink, 13 and 16! So young, anyways, the
spirit was so strong in the lesson, and the were super accepting and
want to listen to us as a family, and without having yet committed them
to reading the BOM the mom Janet said that they were going to read as
a family 15 minutes each day! AHH! We were short on time, already
9:25pm so we forgot to set a baptismal date, being in a rush, but
they will accept :)
 
The other is great too, divorced, but the mom told us that she has
been looking to baptize her 14 year old daughter for a couple weeks!
Her daughter also is rebellious. Always that age right? Anyways, they
both accepted a baptismal date, and her daughter wasn’t quite so hard
by the end of the lesson :)
 
OBEDIENCE: Don’t be disobedient just to satisfy the demands of men,
always haz lo justo! CTR :)
 
tata for now,
Hna Tagg <3

Happy Halloween and 6 months!

MUY BIEN!
 
 Well this week was super exhausting for some reason. Yesterday my comp
 and I were like zombies walking in the street! Also there was some
 random ring around the moon last night, not sure if anyone saw it. I
 asked a couple boys last night. They said it was all the sicknesses on
 the Earth! Not sure if that means that we are all going to get sick or
 what. I wish I could look it up, so if anyone has time.. I want to
 know :)
 
 In our companion inventory this week, my comp and I were open with our
 feelings... She confessed that she didn't want to train anyone her last
 2 transfers of her mission because the new missionaries always come
 excited to work, and she is exhausted, but she said, that if she did
 train it would be good because they she would have to work hard. Then
 she said she ended up with me, and I have the characteristics of a new
 missionary, just wanting to work, so it is just as good as training a
 new missionary, lol. Chafa. We are all good :)
 
 We found a bunch of new investigators this week which is just what we
 needed. :)
 
 So we are teaching this one lady named Carla. She isn't married, but
 lives with a less active member. She came to church today, and is
 preparing to be baptized, however the married thing is a big brick to
 her progress. She is really great though, she stayed all 3 hours, and
 asked us if we could download music on a USB of the church for her!
 She is also interested in the 10 tribes of Isreal stuff that we talked
 about in Gospel Principles yesterday! She has a great desire to learn!
 
 We are also teaching Alondra,another young girl..13. She is a friend
 of Mariel, (our baptism 2 weeks ago) Her mom is never home, and her
 parents are divorced, so she pretty much lives solo. She is
 progressing lots, and we are planning for her baptism the 19th of this
 month! YAY! She has come to church the last 2 weeks. Like since we
 started teaching her. She is really quick to learn and really
 respectful :) Awe I'm so excited for her. Just hope that one of her
 parents are willing to sign for her baptism!
 
 For my 6 months in the mission, we celebrated with tacos just across
 the street from where we live! Love these tacos! I asked my comp why
 people don't sell bean tacos since I love beans. She laughed. She said
 that everyone eats bean tacos in their house, so to buy a meat taco,
 its a treat. Merr, for this reason I always thought I belonged here. I
 love Spanish, and love the food!
 
 The next day.. Halloween. We had a couple little kids come knock on
 our door for candy. It isn't as big here as it is in Canada or the US,
 honestly close to nothing really (from what I could see) It was really
 cute though. We bought pan de muerto to celebrate.. I remember making
 un pan de muerto for my Spanish class in high school... didn't like it
 then, and didn't like it here. Lol
 
 Anyways, all is going well here in Vallarta, just need to pray hard
 for a few more people. :)
 
 Hna Tagg