Elder Ty Koontz: Mexico Xalapa Mission : So many cool stories!

Hi Family,

Cool story: There was a sister missionary from another zone who had heard about me who asked me, "Are you Elder Koontz from the Martinez Zone?" I said yes, then she told me that after our Christmas conference in December, Presidente told all the rest of the zones in their Christmas conferences, that I was a good example to all missionaries, shared parts of my talk, and how well I was progressing in the language.

Another cool story is when my companion and I offered service in the middle of the road. We chopped down a big tree on a hill and then afterwards carried it across the street.

Another cool story is when an investigator said a prayer to know if the church was true, started reading in the plan of salvation pamphlet (her husband passed away 8 months ago) but she had questions, and we had shown up during the time she was reading and answered her questions. I had been studying that morning, and I said a prayer to be specifically guided during my studies to be able to help someone during a lesson. I found two scriptures, one about eternal families, and another about temple work. I knew that both of these were meant for her and I shared them with her.

Saturday night we were pretty bummed. We had only taught 1 lesson and all of our plans were falling through. We contacted a lot of references but they didn’t want anything. In this area we have almost no help from the members so it makes it more difficult. So it was about 7 o´clock and we were in the area around our house. I decided that I wanted to start tracting. My companion hates tracting, especially at night but, I told him that we had no other plans, there weren’t any people in the street, it wasn’t time to go home yet, and I was going to knock on this door whether he liked it or not. So we went up to the house, and the next house, and the next house, and the next house, and the next house.... and so on and so forth. Then we started walking more in the direction of our house because we figured we could just knock a couple more and be done for the night. Something I didn’t know, was my companion was thinking to himself "porque no tengo las ganas para contactar?" (Why don’t I have the desire to contact people) then he saw a man selling tacos in the street and he contacted him. I didn’t know he had stopped to talk, so I kept walking forward, I turned around to talk to him and I saw that he was a little ways away still talking to the guy. I did a funny little waddle-jog with my bag to hurry and get into their conversation, but they were done talking and he wanted nothing to do with us. When I turned around, I saw another huge street that I didn’t see before. We started heading that way, when my companion asked where I was going I said "no he visto este calle antes" (I haven’t seen this street before) We were walking down, and I saw a house with a light on. We walked up, knocked on the door, and a woman with her 10 year old son opened the door. Her son was adorable and his face lit up when he saw us. He had a big grin on his face and when we shared our little introduction and purpose for being at their door, she looked at her son and he nodded with his smile, then she invited us in. We shared with them the first lesson and it was really cool and really fun. We asked if she would like to come to church with us the next day and she said, "le gustaría mucho" (I would like that very much) we gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her and her son to be baptized. They accepted and she flipped through the pages of the book of Mormon with a smile on her face. She gave the closing prayer, and thanked our Heavenly Father for guiding us to her house that night. As my companion and I were walking home, we realized that when we both acted on our promptings we received what I call "duel-revelation" I started tracting, my companion talked to the man with the cart, which made me notice the street, which made both of us see her house and decide to knock on the door.

(I asked him what his plans were for the day) Our plans for the day..... well, we woke up, cleaned the house a bit, got dressed, took our clothes to a members house to do laundry... She is awesome, she does our laundry, and then she gives us 200 pesos to get something to eat. Every day we eat with members except for Mondays. We take this money happily as our food money. Then we went to the chapel with some of the other elders of the zone and we had breakfast. The zone leaders left for Xalapa this morning so If you sent me any packages I should get them Wednesday. (YAY) After that, we went and got our money for the month and went to Centro (town) and bought some cheap souvenirs. I needed a new wallet so I got one. And a pretty cool Mexican backpack. Oh, I cut my hair today too. While we were walking through Centro a couple Mexican piñas (cuties) kept following us around. (we are in a group of 6 missionaries for pday today) when I was looking at some street watches, they asked one of the other elders what my name was. They giggled, followed me around for a bit more and then I evaded them. After we are done emailing, were gonna TRY to save money and go get something to eat. I say try, because there’s this place called Peterdogs that sells huge burgers. They give you 2 burgers, a drink, and you have to eat everything in under 20 minutes and then it’s free. This is our way of trying to save money. Then we are probably going to visit some members to try and get some help from them with investigators. But yupp! Plans for the day :)

Ohhhh and yesterday we didn’t eat at all. We were so hungry. When we went to go eat with the members, they said they hadn’t prepared anything, so they just gave us money. When they gave us the money we said to ourselves "welp, looks like we´re eating tomorrow!" because we don’t buy anything on Sundays, you know, Sabbath day and all. We basically had an involuntary fast because we had no food in the house either. So breakfast this morning was like.... FOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I bought a cool watch on the street that ended up not working... go figure. It was cheap so I didn’t care. I took it apart and the insides were fake, but still I didnt care because I got a free battery and a cool case for a picture. I put a picture of Jesus as a reminder that when I get tired, or down, or don’t want to work. It doesn’t matter what I want because that’s not what I´m here for. This time is “the time of the Lord" :)

Love, Ty