March 28, 2016 - Tortillas and a Testimony...

Baptism

David and Elder Loftus making tortillas

Elders with a model investigator (literally)!

Espero que tuvieron un bueno Pascua!!!!

This last week was a great week of learning, and helping people come unto Christ through his everlasting Gospel here on earth.  I've been learning and growing so much in the knowledge that Christ is our Savior, and only through his the doctrine of his Gospel, which is faith in Him, Repenting of your sins, Baptism by those who hold the Priesthood keys to authorize it, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. I know without a doubt that only by living this doctrine that he gave us can we be saved throughout all eternity with those that we love by our side.  I wish to give my personal testimony that only by living this gospel and Doctrine of Christ can we truly find happiness in this life, and even better yet, in the eternities.  This doctrine isn't just for those who haven´t been baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ, its the same for all saints of His church.  If you are not living this doctrine, I invite you to study this doctrine, to live this doctrine, and as a representative of Jesus Christ, I promise you that you will find the blessing of heaven open ever wider unto you, and you will find true happiness.  I promise you, it is possible to begin a New Life, in Jesus Christ, no matter where you are, or how far off the path you feel you are, it is possible.  I testify of these things to you, in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.  

So I started off this week with getting a district activity started to help us feel more united in our district!  Guess what we did? We made Tortillas and Burritos!!!!!!!  The Hermanas had a great time, and I can officially say I know how to make tortillas now, which has always eluded me.... (I also learned how to make crepes, YUM!!!) 

 

Life is a whole lot more busy now, but also a whole lot more spiritual!  We're running around, giving interviews for people who wish to be baptized, helping people to really understand what baptism is, and we're seeing a lot of fruits coming out of all of this! We had a total of 3 baptisms this past week, and well, we'll see how many this next week, but everything is going awesome! We're always finding new people, always teaching the Gospel of Repentance, and I can really see peoples lives going for the better!  

A lot of people were gone this past week in vacations, and so we're going to have a lot more lessons this week than the last one, (there's nothing better than teaching with the Spirit!)  Everything's going great with the comp, haven't had any run ins with dogs for a bit!  Love you guys a lot!

 

Elder Pettingill

March 21st, 2016 - New Companion Elder Loftus!

David and new companion, Elder Loftus

Hola mi familia y amigos!!!!  First week as a district leader has been going pretty great!!!  My comps name is Elder Loftus, we're co leaders de Districto, and we're getting started pretty well here.  Elder Loftus is a missionary from Ogden, Utah, 19 years old, and pretty awesome!  He just recently completed his training, and already a DL! Crazy awesome right?!

This last week was a big week of running around from one area to the other getting interviews done for the investigators of the Hermanas, and trying to get stuff done here in my area.  This last week was more a week of us trying to get our feet planted firmly, and now we're going to start off sprinting this week!  We have a whole lot better idea of what we need to do, and we're going to be on top of things this week!

Guess what??? For the past 3 months, me and the missionaries here in Cuauhtemoc have been helping out in the making of a stake of Zion here!!!! We've made all the requisites, and now we've got one more Sunday and a lot of people to bring into church, and then we'll be a Stake!!!!!!!  This is the last push this Sunday, but its going to be great!  (We have to have all the requisites by the end of this month or its going to be another year and half (mas o menos) till we finalize the Stake!  So we're super hyped here, and the work of God is booming here!!!!!

The baptism this last week in my area, her name is Noely Garcia! She's an awesome person, and everything went great!  Except for some reason our taxi driver who was our buddy left us in the middle of the street on our way to the baptism.....  I have no idea why, no one did anything to him, he just pulled over and didn't say anything (so we kinda got the point and got out, and no, I didn't pay him after that).... So we showed up to the baptism a little late cause we ended up having to take the bus. 

  

Have a great week my friends!!!! Love you all so much!!!!!

Elder Pettingill

March 14, 2016 - Riding in the trunk of a taxi?

Baptism of a whole family

Riding in the trunk of a TAXI??

Building a Temple at Zone training

Standard of Moroni at Zone training

Sisterly love?? :)

So much has happened in this past week!  We've had a lot of missionary training this past week, and we had 5 baptisms!!!  One family of four, and another guy who has a great spirit!!!

Learning a ton out here in the mission, and there's so little time to get hardly anything done!  But, good news!!!! I've been made DISTRICT LEADER!!!!!!!!!!!  I've got a new companion. He's on his way up from Chihuahua right now, but we're going to be co District leaders and its going to be awesome!!!!!!

Here's the baptism pic, and a pic of me riding in the trunk of a taxi!!!!

Siempre Fuerte,

Elder Pettingill

March 7, 2016 - finding the Escogidos

David, comp, and family in front of the 'Marriage house'

Couple David helped get married

Applebees after the Wedding!

Baptism of 2 boys

Another great week in Paradise!!! Figurativly speaking.

This week was another week of helping people find their salvation in Jesus the Christ! We've walked our feet off, taught with the Spirit, and baptized at the end of the week!  Two kids who really wanted to baptize, the parents want to baptize as well, we just need to take them to get married this week, and then it will be their turn this Saturday!  We're working a lot to find a lot of Escogidos or in other words Chosen.  It doesn't sound as cool in English, but what we're really trying to focus on is following the Spirit to find those people who really would listen to the message that would change their lives for eternity, and we're finding a lot.

Out of the bunch, there's this really cool couple, one of them is a gringo, and he has a Mexican wife.  (He doesn't speak English). However, they both really want to do what's right, and get closer to God, and so we've been working with them a lot this past week.  This guy is hilarious, always cracking jokes and finding the good things in life.  Apparently he thinks my comp has the face of a liar (He said jokingly).

Everything with the recent converts are going great!  Jorge and his son received the Holy Priesthood this past Sunday, and they are progressing a lot!  The other converts are steadily progressing, just need to keep on visiting them!

So, I have a challenge for all of you!!!!  What is the most important thing that we can learn here in this life?  I'm going to say, that this question cant be answered just by searching Google, and there are no Spark Notes answers for this either.  This is an answer that your going to have to diligently search for, but I promise you, its worth it.

I know this email is super short, and there are no pictures..... One of the Hermanas in my district has it, I forgot to get it back after the baptism yesterday.  But next week will be a whole lot bigger, exciting, and with a lot more pictures!

Keep having a great time, and until nos vemos next week!

Elder Pettingill

February 29, 2016 - attack of the very scary 'gooses'

Teaching a family of Menonites!

We made our own tortillas!

Baptism of Alejandra

Eiffel tower that Alejandra made

So another week has come and gone, and this week flew by yet again!!!

This week was really just another week of prepping a lot of people for baptisms again!  We had to go help the Hermanas in the district a lot to make sure that everything was going to happen according to plan, and the best part is that everything went according to plan!  There were a bunch of baptisms in the district, and there was also 1 baptism from my area!  Her name is Alejandra Orduño, and she was super excited for the baptism!  Her family came and everything, and we're hoping her family will hop into the water this next month as well! 

So bad news.....  I've been reporting to my Presidente de Misión about the progress about the Menonites, basically that I dont have much time to go over there, and that not much is really happening cause weve been pretty busy with everything happening in our área. I told him that if we could have a companionship over there, focusing on them, then we could have some really good succes.  However he said that a while back they had tried that, had even had the missionaries start to learn Lower German, and still didnt have succes. He told me better to focus on where your doing a lot of good right now.

So no more Menonites, for the time being.  I'm going to let the fields ripen a bit longer, and when the next misión president comes I'm going to go for it again!  Still going to prep for it, and the time will come!

In better news we have a lot of people interested in the Gospel, and who are wanting to get closer to God! This next month will be a good month, and I'm especially excited for Easter!!! Also, funny story of this week....

We had just eaten lunch, and were on our way to our next appointment in a bus! However we were both super exhausted and fell asleep on the bus..... We ended up waking up and saw that no one was on the bus, and that we were in a part of our área we had never been!  It was crazy being lost again, but we kinda knew where to go, so we started walking.  Yes, there was a big scary dog on that Street that almost ate us. It saw us and started coming at us,but there was nowhere to run! So we started throwing rocks at it, trying to scare it away, and right as we ran out of good rocks to throw (the dog was just getting madder and madder) the owner came outside!  She actually started laughing at us, (imagine 2 gringos throwing rocks at a dog thats trying to kill them) and sent her dog to the back, and sent us away.

In the Next Street we got to, there were two big gooses in the streets!!!!  We both have heard how gooses are crazier than dogs, and so we were pretty cautious approaching it.  My comp dared me to go touch it, and me being me of course I went to go do it!  It was lame though, the gooses ran away and went under a fence..... 

Hope you guys have a great week! 

Elder Pettingill

February 22, 2016 - Very special baptism and a wedding!

Venegas family baptism!

David with Zone leader on Zone leader's bday at Applebee's

Jorge and Yadira Venegas at Applebee's right after their wedding :)

Service project - they moved a pile of rocks from one side to the other so that a house could be built there.

Giant hole in the ground on the way to the Menonites

David and Octavio Marqez

Marquez family

Jorge Venegas at work

This week literally flew by!!!!!!    A lot of this week was just getting everything ready for baptisms again on Saturday, and most everything went great!

This week, we only went to the Menonites once.  Only had time for that.  On our way there though (we have to walk for an hour to get there) we found a GIANT HOLE in the ground!!!!   I'm not talking about a ten foot hole, but like a giant mine!!!! It was probably at least 75 feet deep, and about 100 feet wide!  All man made, with a lot of water at the bottom.  I wouldn't have been surprised if I had gone down there and swam another fifteen feet to the bottom of that pool!  It was awesome, and we still don't know why it was there, or what they used it for.

The German is coming along too! I'm learning it, slowly but surely!  It'll be a while until I can teach in German too, especially since I found out I'm learning higher German, and the Menonites speak lower German (I'm told there's only slight differences).

Everything else is going great!  The investigators are learning, most of them excited about what they're learning, and we`re not having too many problems!  One really cool experience is that I gave a Book of Mormon to an investigator, and found out two days later that she was already in 2 Nephi 14!  She and her family are really coming far!

We got the Mom and Dad married in the family Venegas!  Everything went smoothly and then I took them to Applebees after!!!  I was with the Zone Leader, and it was his birthday too, so it kinda worked out perfectly.  The menus here in Mexico are different! I had a burger that was put between 2 tortillas! It was soooo good!  Jorge and Yadira loved the restaurant too, they had never been there before, and love it now!

The whole family got baptized this week!  This family is incredibly special, and are basically my family too now!  They asked me to baptize all of them, and the Mom also wanted me to confirm her.   They told me later after the baptism, that it was the way that I taught and the way that I approached them that really got them interested in the gospel, and how they came to know it was true.  That definitely didn't help out with my humility, but this family is always going to have a special place in my heart!

This next week we have one baptism lined up for Wednesday!  A fifteen year old girl, named Alejandra! Shes super excited, and the rest of her family are coming along in the teaching!

Oh! Forgot to tell you guys that there is not a single vaccination of Tetanus here in Cuauhtehmoc!  It didn't bother me to much (I was told that it was going to be a really long needle, and a LOT of medication), until I asked the lady what tetanus did to you. I didn't understand her at first, but I understood what she was doing. She was saying that tetanus slowly constricts your nerves until you die.  What more scared me was how she showed me, and the sounds she was making.  It wasn`t pretty.  BUT good news is, is that I'm not dead!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Haha so that's it for this week! No new injuries!  Feeling great and happy! Love working in the vineyard of our Lord!

Oh, I also need to give a special shout out to my cousin Clifford Pettingill! He finished his misison, and now is off to other things.... Can't say bigger and better, cause there's nothing better than being on a mission!!!!! :D

Siempre Fuerte,

Elder Pettingill

February 15, 2016 - It's only Tetanus... no big deal...

Baptism of Jesus Gil and his son

Valentines treats sent by Mom... what's left of them anyway!

Feliz dia de Amistad y Amor!!!!

This week has been another crazy week of Misionarying!!!  So, first off, as a zone we all played Ultimate Frisbee, which was great! I've missed being able to run around and get super tired and sore, (usually I just walk around and get tired and sore).  That was this last Monday, and that basically started off a week of getting everything ready for a ton of baptism on Saturday.  This whole week was basically going from one place to another, marrying people who needed to get married (they only need to get married if they are living together and aren't already married to their spouse) and fixing problems here and there that came up.

The baptisms were great. The family that was from my and my comps area was a dad and his son, who wanted to get baptized.  The dad is Jesus Gil, and he's had nervous system problems since he was about 26.  It was difficult to get him baptized. I ended up carrying him (really heavy) in and out of the baptismal font to get baptized. We had a teeny tiny chair in the font to get him baptized, and it took two of us to baptize him without drowning him.  The baptism of the son went great, and the rest of the zone was baptizing the rest of the day! I also baptized two of the people in one of the hermanas areas.  It was a perfect day. Everything went great!  Its days like those when you know that the next day is going to be a super difficult day. Which it turned out to be.

On Sunday when we went around in the morning to wake everyone up and make sure they were going to church, I really had to go to the bathroom.  The nice thing about my area, is that there are a lot of abandoned homes, and so when you really got to go, you can just go!  Well, so I went into an abandoned house, and on the way out, I didn't see the nail that was sticking straight up out of the ground, and it kinda went through my shoe and my foot.....  Not all the way through!  It wasn't too bad, but had to go get stuff done so I just kinda forgot about it and kept on working. 

Well after we got most of the people sent off to church, we went to the people who had to go get the Holy Ghost confirmed onto them, and they weren't even ready...  Then their land lord showed up, and blocked us from leaving their apartment with his truck.  I had already been having kinda a bad day, and well to put it lightly, I don't think this man ever expected to see an angry gringo speak Spanish before.  I wasn't too mad, I was just speaking really fast (we were really late) and was annoyed at all the little things that Satan was throwing in our path.

After we finally were on our way to the church, I didn't think anything else could go wrong at this point!  I was so wrong, there was soo much traffic, and then the car broke down in the middle of the street. My comp and I pushed the car about a block, then we all hopped into a taxi, and finally got there! The day was just beginning. 

Everything at this point had calmed down a bit, so I went to call my Mission President for permission to go get a tetanus shot, but he didn't answer so I just left a message. By then word had gotten to the other missionaries that a nail went through my foot, and the hermanas started going on about how I was going to die the next day if I didn't get that shot (not dramatic at all). So we went to all the hospitals looking for a tetanus shot, most of them weren't open, the others didn't have it.  I was told to come back on Monday, and that I had three days until anything bad happened. 

Then I went today!  And, apparently the tetanus shot isn't something that's been distributed here in Cuauhtemoc in a while!!  I seriously doubt it though so I'm going to try a couple other hospitals today to see.  

Ive got three days left to live!!! WOOO!  Haha na, jk guys, don't worry!  They said that if I couldn't find it, I should be fine with washing it with soap and water.

So I know this was a rather long story.....  But the moral is that there are good days, and there are bad days.  There's opposition to all things, how could we learn to enjoy the good, if we never knew what the bad was? 

Love you guys!!!

Siempre Fuerte,

Elder Pettingill

February 8, 2016 - An awesome family and 4 evil dogs

David, Elder Hansen, and the Veniges family

Beware of Dog!

Mi familia y amigos!  Buenas tardes! Espero que todos están bien con ustedes!!!!

 

This week has been another crazy awesome week here in Chihuahua Mexico! A lot is the same as always, but there's always exciting stuff going on down here!

 

So this week we had a LOT of meetings and I got sick.....  So we didn't get to work as much as we wanted too, but, we still got a lot of people progressing so its all good!  Today we also changed our house to a new one because we were getting a lot of mold in the last one... Our old house always had a TON of humidity in it, and was always freezing cold!  No me gusto!

 

So the family Veniges are really progressing a lot!  Always excited to learn more, and always excited to see us!  We're basically part of their family, which is awesome!  We just need to find more families like them now!  We'll see what happens this week!

 

Visited the Menonites again this week.... Not going well, but keep the prayers coming!  Always an adventure going over there though....  This time I was surrounded by 4 evil dogs!  I was pounding on the door to get the old Menonite lady to open it and let us in.  It was a close call.  I'm officially convinced that I have a curse, and my curse is that all dogs wish to eat me.  Though its all good!  I've become an expert in using my bag as a shield, and a club!  Ive had to sew it back together twice now though, so we'll see how much longer it lasts....

 

Also I'm learning a whole lot more about repentance, and baptism, and right now am trying to change up my teaching routine.  We'll see how that goes, but I can tell you that its pretty difficult to get out of a rut when your in it!

 

Keep being awesome my friends!!!!

Elder Pettingill

February 1, 2016 - A truck full of investigators!

Die hard Broncos fan!

A new bike??

Hey guys another week in the mission has passed!!!!!   This past week has been an incredible week of good lessons, of learning and of finding people!

So this past week during my study session in the morning, I came to the conclusion that there are way to many things that I want to study, and not enough time....  So I'm dedicating myself to finishing Jesus the Christ before I start any other book, and also doing my typical studying in the morning to improve my teaching habits!

Other than that, I had no time to go and visit the Menonites this week.  We`re meeting a whole lot of people who are ready and elected to listen to the gospel!  We`re going from lesson to lesson, teaching in the bus, teaching in the streets, and helping people come unto Christ in every moment and in every place!  Its great!

Honestly there's nothing better than a mission!  In contrast to the important things you can do in life, nothing is more important than serving and helping other Children of our Father come unto Christ.  Having a job, winning the lottery, or coming up with the best chili at the local fair has no importance.  The only thing that matters is if we are prepared for the eternities after this life, because this time has been given to us to prepare and show to our Father that we are ready to do all that he has commanded.

In other news, me and my comp have a lot more work than we can handle alone!  We're working really hard with the members here, and we brought a whole crowd of investigators to church in the back of one truck this week!   My comp has the pics, and I'll get it from him for you guys, but it was pretty awesome!  Though we were 30 minutes late to church and kinda of made an entrance with all of these people.........

  

Keep strong!  I hope you all are doing great and working to become a Disciple of Christ in every moment!  

Also hope you all enjoy the SUPER BOWL this next week!  I won't..... But I'll eat a plate of wings that night in memoria!!!!  Also hope you guys like my new bike!

Siempre Fuerte,
Elder Pettingill

January 25, 2016 - Hangin' in there!

Hey guys, its your favorite Mexican Missionary otra vec!!!!!!!

Hmmmm, what happened this week........  This week we actually didn't have much time to work in our own area.  Since my comp is district leader, we had to go around and help the other people in our district with some of their investigators since they were going to get baptized this week.  I had the opportunity to baptize one of them, so that was great!  

 

On Friday we called a bunch of members and found one who wanted to spend the day with us, so we did divisions and I went off with him in my area, while my comp stayed with the Zone Leaders. He was looking for more members to split off with, but couldn´t find any.  Anyway, this day we were meeting with the Menonites, so that was great.  We got two families over there who are actually pretty interested, which is more than we thought we would have!

 

Jorge and his family are doing awesome!  My comp and I are basically part of their family now, and they cook super awesome!  Every time we go they offer us food, or fresh baked cookies, stuff like that! They're progressing a lot, and enjoy learning from us!  The ward here is going to the temple this next week, and this family was asking us about the temple and stuff and so it was a wonderful discussion about the temple, authority, and the Doctrine of Christ.

 

We also received training from the Missionary Department back in Utah.  This training was for all the missionaries in the whole world!  It was super awesome, and I learned a lot.  Basically the main focus is teach repentance and baptize converts, and they taught us how to be better missionaries. I learned a lot, and and am applying what  I learned, and can really see the difference!  Sorry this letter is so short!!!!  Hope you guys like the picture of me almost falling off the bridge!!!