Well, things are going great here in Pantla. I'm sorry my last letter was kind of negative. My first week was kind of rough, but the second went much better. We are working hard and we are seeing results. We have one investigator named Tomas that we visit almost daily. He has come to church 3 consecutive Sundays and we have himn scheduled for baptism this Saturday. He's still a little unsure, but this week we hope to get him excited. This week we also decided to check out a pueblo called Buena Vista that is like 10 minutes up the road from Pantla. In the first house we knocked, we found a way cool family. We taught them the restoration and left them with a Book of Mormon. They had a lot of questions, but we scheduled a visit for 2 days later. When20we came back on Saturday, nobody was home. We were kind of bummed. We then visited our other appointments and did some contacting, but it went pretty unsuccessfully. Then we knocked the door of this Jehovah's Witness. She was nice at first, but then started tearing us apart. My comp tried to fight back using the Bible, but the JW knew a lot more than him. After a long discussion, I finally got us to leave. We were pretty desanimado (depressed), but before leaving we decided to visit the first family again. They were there, but were working. The hermano told us he had already read through all of 3 Nephi and Mormon, he then invited us to eat with his family on Wednesday and have a discussion about the book. So we have a lot of cool investigators right now, and we are busy searching for more.
So, before I met my comp, a lot of people had told me some bad things about him, and I believed them. For the first week, I kind of judged him and I let his stupid stuff bother me. But this week I realized that as long as we are working I'm happy. I think he has changed a lot recently, and I need to be supportive and help him. He had a companion named Elder Snyder that really helped him a lot. When Snyder arrived, Macias was pretty dead and didn't want to do anything, But by the end of 6 weeks Snyder got him to work hard and have comp study every day, and they had success that change.& nbsp; How he did it was by becoming best friends with him. Macias told me that everyday at 9:00 Snyder would sit in his chair next to the bed of Macias and he would wake him up for comp study. Macias said would lay there, but Snyder would begin to read out loud from the Book of Mormon. Macias said he would pretend to be asleep, but he actually paid attention to what Snyder was reading. By the end of the change, they were having study time each change. The habits he formed with Snyder stuck with him, and now he wakes up at nine and we have comp study and we plan every night. It makes me wonder if I could have done the same thing with my first companion.
So, I will tell you a little more about the area and membership here. We have a ward here in Pantla. It was just made a ward about 2 months ago, and is pretty small. We have about 40 people on a typical Sunday. We don't have a chapel. We have a casa de oracion, which is a house turned into a church. I think we have to first fill this little house before they will consider giving us a chapel. What I like about the church here is that the members are much unified. It seems like almost every day there is some church activity. Last week, we had a Mexican Independence Day party in the church. The members drove around and picked up all the inactive members, and the church was full. We had over 80 people there. I20mentioned a little about the area last week. As I mentioned it is really hot, and unlike Houston air conditioning doesn't exist. It is a very coastal environment. There are palm trees everywhere. There are big hills that are full of dense, green forest. There are 2 big rivers that run through our area. We eat a lot of fish and seafood. Who would have thought that after 14 years in Texas I would eat my first crawfish in Mexico? The beach is apparently really close to Pantla, but I still haven't seen it. Oh well, maybe it's better that I don't. On Mondays we go to Zihuatanejo to use the internet, go shopping, and to have our district meetings. I occasionally see Americans here, which is kind of weird. Today I saw my first Asian person in six months. I have only driven through Ixtapa, but it seems pretty fancy. Right now it's pretty empty.
Alright well, this is getting long, so until next week.
Love,
Elder Hansen
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