Week 82 - Food!

 Dinner

 Goofin' off at dinner

 Party crashing the 87 year old Birthday Party!

Hey family and friends!

This was a really great week! I have never had a week on my mission with such great food! We ate with a family from Peru, a Venezuelan family, Little Caesars pizza, an all you can eat pizza buffet, and delicious Mexican food from two old ladies in our ward. This week even topped the week of Christmas 2015 when I ate Papa Johns Pizza 4 days in a row with Elder Holmes who by the way is going home on Wednesday. I hit 19 months this past week! Time is flying by!

This past week was filled with exciting events! We had a blast with my son Elder Smith and Elder Crow because they slept over this past weekend for their visas and we stayed up until 1:30 am playing one of the most intense games of Monopoly of my life!

On Monday, a member wanted us to meet a family that he knows so he picked us up and dropped us off at their house on his way to work. Little did we know that he introduced us to them during the middle of the great grandma’s 87^th birthday party! We totally crashed her birthday party without trying! We had a blast getting to know them and eating their cake and are now teaching them. 

On Wednesday, we listened to the worldwide missionary training and were very surprised to hear about the new changes in the schedule of missionaries. The General Authorities made our schedule much more flexible. We can now leave our house earlier and study later in the day if we want to. We can also go to bed earlier because we don’t have to plan in the evening amongst other changes. It won’t end up affecting me that much since I work in the office every morning until 2pm, but it’s cool to see that revelation is constant and thus, things that used to be very rigid in the church, like the daily schedule of a missionary, can evolve to better fit the needs of unique cultures around the world. 

We also really enjoyed another leadership council yesterday. We took the zone leaders to eat breakfast with our convert Mara and it was so fun! Several years ago, Mara’s mom used to sell Gorditas to the missionaries here in Saltillo. Her mom also listened to the missionaries and went to church but never got baptized. On Thursday morning, she was super excited to feed 16 hungry missionaries just like her mom used to. We are ecstatic right now because we are going to the church in a few hours to see the baptism of Mara’s son Ricardo! We spent most of the week getting him ready to be baptized!

Thanks for the support! 

Elder Shipley