Week 32 Snow!

 Jeff's "I am cold!" look!  He said he had on all the clothes he had!

 Okay...this isn't too bad!

 The condition of the shower when they moved in!  They spent some time on their hands and knees so it would be clean!

 The boarder of Jeff's new area.

Having fun?

 The four missionaries in Jeff's ward. 

 What?? Snow in Mexico!?

And back to 80 degrees!

Dear Family and Friends, 

I want to start off this email with a big shout out to my FAVORITE DAD in the whole world, ERIC SHIPLEY and wish him a very happy birthday tomorrow!  (Eric wanted me to edit this out.) :)

This week was perhaps the fastest I have ever had on the mission, I seriously can't believe how fast time passes here on the mission. This week was of course highlighted with the weather here in Saltillo. On Wednesday it got really cold and started to snow! Snow makes missionary work really hard because you are outside all day long.... except when people let you in to teach them! But here in Mexico the houses are often colder inside than it is outside because they often don't have insulation but hey that's alright, we are having a good time! 

A few updates for you all, I am currently in the Corona Ward, here in the Stake, Repulica. This ward is super great, they are always asking when they can accompany us on appointments and we have some really great investigators right now! I want to give another shout out to Hermana Teri in our ward because she is the owner of our house and is always willing to help us! Her children also live in Seattle so that is pretty sweet that we can talk about Seattle and what her kids are up to back home. 

This past week, we have been cleaning the house here in Corona. The last group of missionaries left the house nice and dirty so we have been cleaning a lot! I think it is a good learning experience to clean a house your first change. It is exactly what I did with my trainer on the mission when I arrived in Piedras Negras in August! The saying, like father like son, could not be more true. I have had some moments during the last week where my companion will ask me a question about why I do something a certain way or where I learned it, and my answer is almost always, "well that is what my dad/trainer taught me so that's what I do". It is very funny and a little strange to look back on my training and now have a trainee of my own. More often than not, I find myself telling my son what my dad's, Elder Suarez/Elder Alcala told me. 

A friend of mine asked me to share a miracle that I had this week and it was a really great question so I am going to share it with you all as well. 

My miracle of the week was yesterday, or Sunday! Almost always we have like 5 or 6 teaching appointments to make sure that we are always teaching and always inviting others to come unto Christ. Yesterday however, we only had one teaching appointment and so we put down a lot of plans with names and address of old/new investigators and set out to find them, with the hope that we could find some new investigators and have some great lessons. 

Wow, what happened for the next few hours was so rough, people weren't home, rejected us pretty bad, lied to us about who actually lived where and if they still lived there, and it was a really tough 3 or 4 hours. We were walking the whole time and nobody let us in. Around 8 pm, we came back to a house we had already knocked at, and met a family of 4 and we taught them and they want to get baptized and come to church with us and I was super happy. Literally, I was filled with joy and wanted to cry when we left the house. There is nothing better than having one great lesson at the end of the day, even though you spent 4 hours walking around with nothing. 

I was filled with so much faith and honestly super pumped, that we went to find one last investigator. We have been trying to find him for a week! He is super awesome but almost impossible to find.  We set out to find him at 8:30 instead of just heading home to enjoy our Sunday night. We found him at 8:50, and had a short little chat with him and were able to finally figure out his work schedule, get his phone number, and invite him to church. 

I learned a lot last night about never giving up. Even when you have 4 hours of rejection and walking, the last hour makes all the difference. It doesn't matter how you start, what matters is how you finish. 

Much love and have a great week!!! 

Elder Shipley