Lockdown

 First things first i am doing okay and the recent things that have been going on in mexico havent affected the city that im in too bad, we were in lockdown for 2 days but now just have to come home before 6 and stay in the house so it isnt too bad and we still get to work most of the day! (Also made friends with a guy who knows everything about the bad guys here so hes keeping us in the loop!)

Crazy story time:

This week might rival craziest weeks in the mission and i genuinely dont know how this keeps happening but i guess heavenly father wants me to have the craziest mission stories ever, when transfers came (addidng a second set of elders in san felipe) president told us that all 4 of us couldnt live together and we needed to find our own house to stay in, while we have been searching for a house president told us it was okay to stay with a member who has a little room outside of her house for guests. So we moved in there and on our second night someone broke into the main part of the house to rob the little old grandma that stays there alone, she yelled for us to come and help her in the middle of the night and so we stormed into the place wondering what was up. We found the guy and got him to leave (my comp and i have come to the conclusion that he probably thinks that we're either magicians or angels) and we were able to notify the poliece and they caught him. But i do have to testify in court this week and i cant really share too many details about what happened, but thank you all so so much for the prayers they have helped so much and i am safe and my comp and i have moved back in with the other elders with permission from president because i couldnt sleep there anymore and it wasnt the best for my mental health to stay there in the house after that. But i have had a flash back of when i first got to this area because we are sleeping on the floor again haha! Good thing we kept the dog food bags handy!

Work:

We won our basketball game on tuesday and it was way fun lol! I miss playing basketball with all of my friends back home but soon we will be able to play again! Elder Elledge and I werent able to work as much as we'd have liked to because of the whole break in and such because we still are having to deal with legal people right now so prayers would be appreciated! We were able to find one new person to teach this week which isnt too good but we also checked on 20+ different apartments and none of them had space for us. This week was slow and long but thats okay because ive got faith this next week will be amazing! 

Stats:🏋‍♂️

Workouts done: 2😭

Apartments weve been rejected from: 20+🏠

Nights i fell asleep before 12: 2😅

Texas roadhouse trips: 0😭🫠 

New people found: 1🫡

Cold showers taken: 4🥶

Basketball points scored: 25? 😁🏀

Hours in lockdown: too many to count☠️😭

Spiritual thought:

My mission has taught me that no matter what you have set in front of you, god will provide a way for you to overcome it. (Also don't ever repeat the words "it can't get harder than this" because it can, and it will😂) but from armed roberies to dog food bag mattresses and house break ins with many more inbetween, i can say for certainty that god is real and protects his followers. I should not be as healthy as i am if not alive without the support and protection of my heavenly father and my savior jesus christ. They are there, and they are real. And i testify that through the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, they are always there for us and are never changing. My mission has also shown me that angels are real, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only church with the restored gospel and priesthood power of jesus christ. I know this church is true, and i know god is watching over all of us, always. 

I love you all and hope you all have an amazing week! Send me an update on your lives? I miss you all so much!

-Elder Ericson

Transfers!

 Hola mis amigos como estan?? Another week in the paradise that is San Felipe Guanajuato! There were a ton of crazy things that happened this week so we seriously had zero time to work, but there is a pretty interesting story that took place this week haha! 

Transfers! 

First off we got transfer calls and. . . Im staying in san felipe again for a 4th transfer😭 which is fine but id be lying if i said i wasnt bored of this little pueblito yet. Its alright though because the lord has great plans for me and my new comp Elder Elledge! Hes from Santa Fe New Mexico and is the first american comp ive had in the mission! Hes awesome and i cant wait to work with him! A little curveball was thrown at us for this transfer because we are opening a 2nd area in San Felipe. And president told us that we need to move houses because he doesnt want quads in the mission anymore (quads are houses with 4 missionaries living in them) so im curently writing this email from my new ish house, which is a members extra spare bedroom with not too much space for two elders to move in😅 all for the mission lore!!

Story time:

This week was crazy, we have two recent converts who were rehabilitating alcoholics and wre progressing like crazy! But, they both started drinking again this last week, the first one, jose, started drinking and when the cops showed up to arrest him he tried to fight them and now hes annexed himself from the church and doesnt want to come anymore, and hes now living with his girlfriend. The second is where the story gets insane. Cesar, our other recent convert had a crush on one of the members and he confessed his love for her, she did not like him back and he got mad so he said either be my girlfriend or im going to start drinking again. She told him thats not her fault if he starts drinking again and he got mad and left. The next day we went over to her house to have member meal with her and cesar showed up really drunk thinking she was alone. He said hi asked for some food and left, and the hermana told us that this was what he said hed do if she didnt be his girlfriend. So we talked it over with the member for a few hours to see what we could do and how we could help. Then he came back after he thought we left (we hadn't) and talked to her and was mad at her for not loving him, then he came to the conclusion that she didnt love him because she had a crush on my companion Elder Valencia. So he now wants to fight my companion as some sort of macho showing i guess. But this is only half of the story, that same night he broke into a different members house and stole her bike and some money and left and we couldn't find him for 2 days, then we came across him with the help of one of our investigators hugo. So we went and talked to him and he had no idea that we heard everything he said about me and my comp and the member. And he played the victim and told us he only drank a little bit, the members were being mean to him, and that the bike was given to him by another member. We then told him we are here to help him but he has to give the bike back to the member and a few other things, and he was all okay. The next day he returned to the members house and gave the bike back and she told him he better not come back to her house or she will call the cops. He then left and took everything he had and disappeared, we havent seen or heard from him in about a week now. So that wraps up story time in the weirdest area on earth🫠 im just so excited to pick up this mess and figure it all out😅 please send your prayers haha they are needed!

Stats of the week!

Eggs eaten: 24🐣

Texas roadhouse trips: 2🤠

Basketball games won: 1🔥

Nights at a members house: 1😴

Workouts: 3🫠

Naps taken: 5😅 (send help im exhausted)

Days studied: 6📖

Prayer list:

Me

Jose

Cesar

Sister samantha

Sister mauri

Elder orullian

Spiritual thought:

The spiritual thought today is really simple, be kind. Please look out for everyone you can this week and be kind to them, you have no idea how much of a difference kindness makes in peoples lives. It helps them do another day and push through another trial. This week i challenge you all to be kind and reachout to someone who could need your kindness this week.

Christlike atribute: Kindness

I love you all have such a great week! If you have time to shoot me an email id love it!

-Elder Ericson 

Zone Conference

 Hey everyone whats up? I hope you guys are all doing well! This week in San Felipe we found 6 new people and had some awesome lessons! This will be pretty short because not much happened this week, we werent in our area too much😅

We had zone conference this week and it complicated our week a ton, we only actually worked in our area for 3 days last week but still saw some miracles! We had an amazing lesson with the basketball coach of the team and they want to keep learning more! They also connected to our zoom sacrament meeting! (We had a few complications with where we were having church so our meeting was on zoom this week) we also were able to go knock doors in a really far out place in our area. We found 3 people that were interested and have meetings with them this next week!

Highlights:

Workouts done: 4🫠

Member meals eaten: 1😭

Times almost thrown up: 2🤮

Haircuts recieved: 1✂️

Times i cleaned the house:2 🧹

Days studied: 6📖

Spiritual thought!

This week i read in 3 nephi and something that stook out to me was how much faith nephi had despite all of the peer pressure. Too often we are like Lemuel, and follow the example of other people even though we know its not the best choice. If we can change the narritive of being followers of christ like nephi instead of followers of man, brothers, friends, social media, etc. We will see that our lives get filled with more joy and we are able to overcome our short comings.

I invite you all to be followers of christ this week and become better desciples of jesus christ!

Christlike attribute: obedience

Sorry this email is pretty short, next week i should have more to talk about!

Love you all! 

-Elder Ericson

A Little Late...Again

 Hey everyone hows it going! Sorry i didnt email last week but pretty much nothing happened, we werent in our area very much but we were blessed to have two of our friends baptized on the 18 of january! They are two amazing people names Martina and Cesar. Martina is the grandma of the kids we baptized on the 11th! Cesar is a recovering adict with an amazing story. Hes completely changed his life around and turned to his savior jesus christ. What a blessing it was to have the opportunity to see them enter into the waters of baptism! Other than that the weeks have been a little slow here work wise in san felipe but im hoping to have a little more time to work in our area this week but we will see! 

Entrevistas!

This last week we had interviews with president castro and his wife, they were awesome and very helpful! My relationship has definitely grown with both and im so greatful for that, theyre such awesome people and they have two kids out on missions right now! President castro has been like a dad for me and such an amazing person! Hermana castro has such a powerful testimony and i love the spiritual thoughts she shares. Anyways theyre the best!

La obra misional!

The missionary work has slowed down a little bit in San Felipe which has its pros and cons but its been hard to pick it back up because we havent had much time in our area the last two weeks and we probably wont have too much happen before this next transfer but we will see! We have a ton of people on date right now but theyre all going to fall through and not be able to happen, mostly because they havent been coming to church which is sad but we are going to try our best to get them there this next week! Theres been a lot of weird experiences this past week in San Felipe haha, for example we were asked on friday last week if we were gay and if this person could come back to our house with us. We were also aproached by multiple people that were high and drunk and they all want to come to church so thats good i guess haha.(side note none of them came) 

This last week i had the opportunity to go on an intercambio with elder trejo, my zone leader. We were in his area and we only had a couple of hours to work but we wanted to get after it! We went working together and prayed to god to help us find people and experience a miracle, we started walking to a few people in their area to see if they were home and we just started contacting everyone. The little miracle that we experienced was that we both felt that we needed to turn down a random street that took us further away from the house we wanted to contact. We went down that street and started knocking doors with no success, we were about to turn around and head back the way we came when i asked elder trejo if we could hit one more door. We went to the last door on the street and knocked it and a guy answered and came to greet us, he greeted us in english and we talked with him a little bit, he told us that he used to talk to the missionaries back in texas and he was interested in having another lesson with us so that was awesome! We ended that day with 7 new people in teaching, which is one of the highest amounts of new people in a day that ive found with my comp and we did it in my zone leaders area, which is known by almost the whole mission as one of the hardest areas to find new people in, and we found 7 in just 4-5 hours! 

Stats for the week!

Workouts done: 6🏋‍♂️

Times i woke up and went to bed on time: 5 😴

Eggs eaten this week: 21? 🤷‍♂️🐣

Perople who came to church: 0🫠

Times i was burned alive and froze to death in the same day from the weather in 

San Felipe: 3🔥🥶

Backflips done: 4🤸‍♂️

Coke bottles i drank: 5? 🥤

Basketball games won: 1🏀

Random fires seen: way too many (apparently its normal here?) 🔥

Pizzas eaten: 4🍕

Pensamiento espiritual!

The spiritual thought today is about giving evrything and trusting the lord. I recieved some amazing advice recently that has helped me a lot, we need to do everything in our power to come closer to our savior jesus christ. He is waiting with open arms and all we have to do is give him our all and follow his teachings and we will be blessed in more ways than we can imagine. Ive got an invitation for you guys this week. Sacrifice something for the lord that sacrificed everything for you! Maybe thats giving up social media time to study, moving work so that you can go to church and participate in the saving ordinance of the sacrament, listen to a conference talk while driving instead of music, give more effort and thought into our prayers. Theyre are so many things we could sacrifice to give more time to our savior jesus christ. And i encourage you to find something you can sacrifice for him this week! 

Christlike attribute: sacrifice

Prayer list:

The arechar ramierez family

The perez lopez family

Hugo

Elder powell

Elder allen

Thank you all for all of the support! Send me an email and update me on life! I miss you guys have an amazing week!

-Elder Ericson