Elder Jorge Velazquez: Letter 46: Borregito

Quibole familia,

Every time I go to the Border to the Immigration Office, I always turn my paperwork in to the same 3 people; Vero, Andres, and Trillo. As you can probably imagine, these people are pretty monotonous and bland, and sometimes, a little heartless (or so I thought). Well, over the last few months I've been working as secretary I've become pretty good friends with all of them. In fact, this last time I went to turn in some papers, one of them (Trillo), gave me a glass of Orange Juice and a couple brownies while we worked on the paperwork. But the coolest part came when he told me that he had finally had the missionaries over at his house a few weeks before! For the last 8 months, I've been telling him about our Church and he's finally started to investigate.

This week, we had our monthly Mission Leader Council. The meeting started on Thursday, and continued on to Friday. Well, we got a very special treat this meeting, we got to eat some very delicious barbacoa. Barbacoa is meat traditionally made out of borrego or sheep. A sheep in its first year is called a lamb; and its meat is also called lamb. Here in Juarez, people eat barbacoa made out of Cow, but President Derbez went all out and got a whole lamb. We ordered it a few weeks ago, and Elder Webster and I were in charge of picking it up and having everything ready for our luncheon. We picked up the lamb way across in the outskirts of town, and then booked it back to the meeting to have everything prepped and ready. In the end, we all enjoyed some pretty good barbacoa, and Elder Webster and I got to keep the leftovers. Sister Derbez gave us a pretty good idea of using the meat to make little taquitos and then putting them in the freezer and storing them for later, that way we would have frozen taquitos whenever we got hungry..so we made like 50 taquitos and we still have meat left!

We have been really trying hard to keep all of our recent converts active in the ward. So far, they are all active, except for 1 who moved to Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara a few months ago. Our President has really emphasised on this point of the Work Of Salvation. He says that the fruits of our labor aren't when an investigator gets baptised, but when an investigator progresses in the gospel and endures. We went and visited Connie and Dasha whom we baptised 2 weeks ago. We had made a few appointments throughout the past 2 weeks with her, but they always fell through. We would stop by her house, and she would be at work. Well, we finally got a hold of her on Thursday and paid her a visit to see how she was doing as a new member of the Church. Connie expressed to us that these past few weeks had been really really tough. She no longer faced problems with her family criticizing her for becoming a member, but she was now going through very hard economic problems. She told us that she had been struggling at work, a lot of things had gone south with her personal finances, and she was now facing challenges scraping enough money to bring food to the table. Then she told us something amazing. She said that just as she was loosing all hope, she remembered to pray. After fervent prayer God heard and answered her prayers. She was able to find some extra money in an old photo album she found around her house, a fellow co-worker showed up to her house out of the blue and paid off some old debts, and a fellow friend visited her and helped her pay some bills. Small tears came to her eyes as she expressed to us how she was able to finally find peace and comfort, because she knew that The Lord really heard her pleas.

It's these types of experiences that show to me that the Gospel is so much more than just nice words about Jesus. The Gospel brings peace to the heart and comfort to the soul. It reminds us that there is a God in the heavens who actually hears us, and loves us enough to build us up through challenges and trials.

I love you familia,

Elder Velazquez