Playing Ball

 This week was pretty good but the work is still progressing pretty slowly haha! Itll start picking up soon though. We had our first person come to church in person which was sweet! His name is isidro and hes awesome and he wants to come to church this coming week too!

Highlights!

Played basketball for the first time in 2 months!🏀🏀

Played a bunch of skull king☠️👑

Taught a few elders how to play the card game trump♠️

Had a watch party with 2 whole zones for cambios(im in the same area with the same comp) 📺

Ate way too many eggs🐣🍳

Played some air hockey, ping pong, and crud with a bunch of people🎱

Learned stick season by noah kahan on the guitar!🎸

Had my birthday(lowk really mid but its all good haha)🎂

Finally got my halloween package(thanks mom)🎃

Cambios didnt change hardly anything for me which im a little sad about but its okay haha we will keep pushing through and this transfer will be better than the last! It was really fun hanging out with a bunch of missionaries from the zone and getting to have a lot of fun with them was so awesome! 

Spiritual thought:

Scripture study has become one of my favorite things to do out here on the mission, especially atudying the book of mormon. One of my favorite scriptures that i recently read is alma 37:6-7 "Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

 And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls."

Im not sure if ive shared this before but i invite all of you to think on the little things that you can add into your life to come closer to god because the little things will stack up over time and you will start to see major blessings and strides in your faith by doing the small and simple things. 

Lastly thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday and has written to me this past week it seriously helps so much and i promise i read them all even if i dont have time to respond to all of them! Love you all and hope you guys have a great week!

-Elder Ericson

Texas Roadhouse

They have a texas roadhouse in san luis, which is where we go for p day every week! Safe to say ive eaten texas roadhouse for like 5 weeks straight haha!(they may or may not have country music and football 🤷‍♂️ i can neither confirm or deny this statement haha) p days here are awesome and im starting to learn magic tricks! Watch out grandpa brewer you might have a competitor in the next few years haha! Also ive been learning the guitar and sorry to say mom but it is way more fun than the piano ever was haha (dont worry i practice the piano every week still😅)

The work: we had zone conference today and as we were on the 3 hour bus ride back we met a man named adrian and talked to him for 2 hours! Hes amazing and is really interested about learning more about the gospel! We had a fair amount of lessons this week but not very many people are progressing to the waters of baptism just yet but they will be in no time! The work here is very slow and many people just blow us off but thats okay the right people are out there and theyll be found in due time!

Thank you all for the prayers they help so much and it really makes the mission better knowing there's so many people praying for me and all of the other missionaries.

Spiritual thought:

I recently found a poem that ive read in the past and it meant a lot to me and reading it these past few weeks has been so awesome! 

Many of you probably know this poem but its called footprints in the sand. It talks about walking with the savior. I attached a pic of the poem.

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you guys for the prayers theyre truly felt amd appreciated!

"I Am God"

 Ok this week took forever but at least its p day now so that's good. This week we had a zone wide blitz in san felipe (my area) with 20 missionaries down here all just contacting and teaching the whole day. It was so awesome! Towards the end of the day we were knocking a few doors of people in teaching and somehow there was a mix up and 5 elders ended up in this one guys house.(i have no idea how 5 of us ended up there) we started teaching about baptism and this man started asking questions about the plan of salvation so we changed topics and started talking about the plan of salvation and the importance of agency, the spirit was strong and it was a really good lesson and as we finished and started to leave the man turns to us and said "i am god" we started laughing a little bit but this man was completely serious. We asked him if he was joking but he said no i am god again and we asked him why do you think that and he said because i am all powerful and a perfect person and created the world. We left and wondered what on earth this guy was on because i need what he's taking haha. Anyways theres 2 hours of my life im never going to get back😂

This week was pretty boring other thank the blitz, just same old contacting getting rejected and having no one show up to church. My spanish still has a long way to go but its coming along 😅(kinda) i ate way too many eggs and chicken this week so hopefully when i get back home i wont look like a stick(probably wont happen haha) ive been learning the guitar and im horrendous at it haha but we will get there eventually! If you have any tips or things that could help me learn spanish or the guitar haha those would be appreciated! 

Spiritual thought:

"The other prodigal" president holland,

This talk is amazing and you guys should all give it a read! This talks about the parable of the prodigal son, only from the perspective of the brother! This talk is an amazing reminder about how blessed we are by being in the church and just because someone else is blessed, doesn't mean that our blessings are any less significant! This gospel is amazing and i invite you all to not take it for granted because the suffering that comes from not feeling gods love is worse that you can ever imagine!

Love you all hope you guys have a great week! If you guys have time an email would make my day! Even if i cant respond to all of them i read them all and they're amazing!

Elder Ericson

Robbed at Gunpoint?

 Hello everyone hope you are all doing well! From the title you are probably all wondering what the heck happened and dont worry me and my comp are all good and thankfully noone was injured! 

Storytime:

We travel up to the main city for p day every week and we had a meeting sunday night so we traveled up to the big city a little early for the meeting. We got to the city at 430 and walked to the church to see if someone could let us in early. We arrived to the church and my comp started calling people in the area to see if anyone had keys to let us in. After calling 2-3 companionships in the area 3 guys pulled up on a bike with a gun and walked over to us and started yelling in spanish (i had no idea what they were saying) they ended up taking both of our phones, my comps wallet, and that was it. They left and waved at us for making their work day easy I guess🤷‍♂️ come to find out the last companionship we were about to call when that went down was actually inside the church the whole time so thats great. 

Other than that the week was really good but ending it off on that just kinda sucked haha so now im writing an email on a guy in my zones phone so you all know im not dead haha. We found a decent amount of new people which was awesome and I learned that this is the worst baptizing mission in mexico so let's hope we can change that here in a little bit haha!

Halloween here in San felipe is awesome the whole city was in 2 of the parks walking back and forth it was so cool and all of the kids costumes were awesome!! My comp and I went and bought 3 bags of candy and walked around until we saw a costume we liked and then we dumped a whole bag of candy into their buckets haha it was awesome!! (The costumes that won a bag of candy were Spiderman, Captain America, and Luigi!)

Highlights:

Didn't die in front of the church!😁

Found a family who was all interested in hearing the white guy talk about the book of mormon!📖

Halloween was awesome!👻

Dia de muertos is kinda mid☠️

Cinnamon rolls!!(would add a photo but uh yeah kinda lost everything on my phone) 😢

Ate way too many eggs🐣

Pet a bunch of street dogs!(dont worry I haven't kept any... yet) 🐶

Spiritual thought

Everything happens for a reason. We never know why but we constantly have to face trials and go through things that makes it feel like God's just hitting you down as soon as you start getting better. Just like president eyring's talk from this past conference God is constantly building us up and giving us experiences to prepare us for the future and to become the people God needs us to be!!

Love you guys if you guys want to send me an email this week id love it! Have a great week!