This work is not for WHIMPS!

Hello family!

I never know how to start writing this letters, and I usually end up sounding kinda weird. So I'll just get to the good stuff.

This week has been pretty sweet for my Companion and I; our Zone Leaders gave us some new goals for the past week and things have worked out pretty well for us! We started doing 100 daily street contacts, and started having shorter, shorter visits with investigators, members, inactives, etc. We're starting to see things turn around so we're pretty pumped for the last two weeks of this cycle. This area is going to explode!

So we had a few cool events this past week-- on Thursday we had our interviews with President Bulloch, and of course, they were awesome. We had a really good interview about facing challenges and trials in the Mission. I always have to remind myself of what he said in a Zone Conference and repeated in our interview: This work is not for WHIMPS! And it's so true. We work really really hard, and sometimes see so little fruit; that's when we have to keep the chin up and trust in that the Lord is preparing a lot of blessings for us!

On Saturday we had an awesome devotional in the MTC here in Mexico with Elder Tenorio and President Ochoa (of the Young Men's General Presidency). I especially liked President Ochoa's words: "God loves His children so much that He's not going to give them to just any pair of missionaries," and "No one here has been called to fail." He spoke to us a lot about the things that usually stand in the way having the success and we and the Lord desire, and I was able to figure out some of the things I need to change in order to see even more MIRACLES here in Xochitenco. Elder Tenorio shared a story that I really really liked, about how the Lord keeps his treasures hidden from those who aren't really sincere. He told us that a reporter came to the Mexico City Temple a few days after it had been re-dedicated, and wanted to enter into the temple to 'check it out'. The people at the front desk told him he couldn't enter, but the reporter was very insistent. So Elder Tenorio came down to talk the reporter, and he told the reporter, "Of course you can enter! Let me teach you how!" He told the reporter about Faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and if he would wait a until a year later, he would be able to enter. The reporter looked at him weird and told him he didn't want to do all that, he just wanted to go in. Elder Tenorio asked him, "Well, here in the Temple, sacred ordinances are done. Which one did you want to do?" The reporter told him he didn't want to do any, he just wanted to satisfy his curiousity. Obviously, the reporter didn't get to do even that.

If we're sincere in our desire to seek the treasures the Lord has hidden from the insincere, and we do everything that the Lord wants us to do, we'll be granted those great blessings that God has ready for us.

Yesterday was a pretty good Sunday; Sofia, who has been coming to Church for about 5 weeks or so, told us that she wants to be baptized this week. We had to stop teaching her because she had told us that she no longer had the desire to be baptized, but after our Gospel Principles class about baptism, she told us that she knew she needed to be baptized. AWESOME. So we'll be setting things up for her baptismal service this week, and we're praying that her parents soften their hearts and give her permission to be baptized.

That's about all I've got to report. Have a good week!

Elder Budge

I'm attaching a couple of pictures I took on the way to the Devotional on Saturday. The first one is of me and one of our Zone Leaders, Elder Tanner, and the other is of (from left to right) Elder Guzman (our other ZL), Elder Perez (my DL) and yours truly.