Answer to Mom's ?'s ❤️❤️💓

Celebrating Happy New Year with David and Alma Cardenas Sanchez Family 1.1.19

Elder Raven!

I have a couple of ?'s  I LOVE YOU! ❤️❤️💓

Love, Mom

1. We love to read that you are finding less active families. Who are some of them? 

We have been working with the families Pucheta Jara, Hoyos Hernandez, Cruz Cruz, everyone is really amazing, and we´ve been seen an increase in attendance, so I am really excited to see how the rest of January goes!  I pray that we can have a full chapel on the 27th as a kind of birthday present for me, jaja!

2. How is it going being district leader?

It´s tough to take the time out of the day to check how the other Elders are doing, and see if there is anything I can do to help them. Then have their numbers not be very good and getting chewed out a bit by Elder Powers for not producing better numbers every week ... but the upsides are truly awesome because I get to prepare capacitation that literally is just sharing gospel principles, inviting the spirit, asking for the patience of the other Elders to bear with my Spanish, and so many wonderful spiritual experiences there!  In fact, Elder Powers and Elder Santos are going to do intercambios with us tomorrow and they are going to drop on in on our district meeting, but I hope it's going to be great and I am hoping that they are impressed!

 3. What are some of your responsibilities?

 I really love Elder Santiago, Elder Basurto, y Elder Aguilar, and Elder Aguilar received his Dear John letter this past week so he´s really hurting, but we are hoping to animate him and get him functioning fully!  The funny thing is that he has more experience in the mission that the other three of us combined but sometimes we have to direct him to be more focused or more hardworking, haha!!

4. How is Elder Santiago doing? 

Yes we have been able to connect a lot better these past few days, he is feeling better, but like my mass email shared, he´s knee has been really hurting so we´re struggling with that but we will be up and running soon!

5.Did you figure out your code for your luggage locks? 

YES I FIGURED OUT THE CODES; THANK YOU SO MUCH; jaja!

6,  Is there any other books or supplies you would like? I will send miracles of forgiveness...Weight doesn’t matter when we mail you packages.

I would also like Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage if you have that one, or Saints if you have a spare copy!

7. Was Jose Luiz confirmed? 

Yes, Jose Luiz was confirmed the last Sunday, and he is doing really well, we are just battling with his work schedule to get him to come to church!

8. Do you still have your towels that say Raven on them? 

Yes I have been using my Raven towels, they are AWESOME!

9. Did you open some of your birthday gifts that were in the package or are you waiting for your birthday? 

I did open my presents just because I wanted to see if there was anything useful, but thank you so much, and I really loved all the presents they have helped make missionary life a lot easier and more exciting!  Specifically, the hymnal arrangements!

I love you guys so much! Thanks for the encouragement, love, prayers, and all the spiritual thoughts that you guys share to strengthen my testimony and encouragement to do my best here in the mission!

Love you to the moon and back, then multiplied by a googleplex! 💙

Love,

Elder Raven

4 mil pesos (A Christmas Story, kind of, haha!)

Feliz Ano Nuevo (Mas o Menos)!

How´s things for you guys back home? I hope you all have been able to enjoy this festive season with many wonderful miracles that we are witnessing every single day!

So this past week has been one of the strangest and most miraculous weeks of my life, and I don´t have a ton of time to explain everything, but I am going to give it a shot!

So we have been teaching Jose Luiz for a while now, and he got baptized two Saturdays back, but immediately after his baptism he had an incredible amount of opposition with a lot of stress on his marriage, finances, and general family relations as well, and he literally felt like his life was never going to be able to recover, and we were totally unaware of this because we had tried to get into contact with him numerous times but it could never work out until this last Wednesday we decided to just pass by his house and see if he was home, and miraculously he was and we were able to resolve a lot of his concerns, testify of the truthfulness of the gospel, and we gave him the promise that if he stepped forward with faith that all of his problems would become manageable even if they didn´t fully go away!  But then the following day he went to check his account which with his work and everything remained should have only had 600 pesos but he went and checked and had an additional 4,000 pesos which was the exact amount need to pay the rent for the next month, to keep his family intact, and to eliminate the stress in his life!  Although it might seem like a coincidence, I believe it truly was a miracle of God that permitted him to be confirmed this week and received countless blessings!

Jose Luiz was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Dec. 30, 2018

We really have been blessed this week in finding families that disappeared off the face of the earth, receiving many member references, and overall being blessed, and I would like to declare to each and every one of you that there truly is a principle that when thing are going incredibly wrong that it is just exactly when our loving Heavenly Father can reach down and bless us in a way that we recognize and appreciate beyond anything else, and that we will be more inclined to depend upon him more fully to receive the blessings we so desperately need! 

I love you guys so much! Thanks for the support and all the encouragement you have given and are giving me!  You are truly a secondary source of motivation after the primary goal of serving my Savior through bringing his brothers and sisters unto Him and our Heavenly Father!

Thanks for your kind thoughts with the Cardenas Cano family, they really are the greatest, and I hope that I can find families like them to teach and have this gospel change their lives! I wish I had more time to write, but hopefully this will suffice for this week! 

I love you all so much, and I promise to send more next week, but for now ...

Cuidense mucho!  Echa la ganas!

Love,

Elder Raven