Hola Vosotros,

So this week has been pretty good. After the last visitation of our President Camarillo, things have been going better. Yeah at first my companion didn't talk to me at all... for about three days to be exact. But now things are going really well. We are talking and having fun again... but now we are working harder which is pretty awesome.

So this week we had a pretty sweet experience that I would like to share with you all. Hermano Gerardo got baptized! Yeah, yeah! He is so awesome and has grown so much in the gospel and in his life! He said that he has seen and felt so many blessings in his life thanks to the message and the lecciones [lessons] we have been sharing with him these past weeks. It's amazing to see how much he has grown. I love him... I really just feel privileged to have been able to help him make this covenant with God. He was prepared and I know that he will continue to grow and be a strong member in the Church.

Well, we had the baptism on Friday and planned to start the program at 6 o'clock. Here the timing for dinner and everything is a little different so we didn't think that 6 would be such a problem. We invited about every person in the ward to come to the baptism. Well we knew that we had to get there early to set everything up and to fill the font so we planned to be there about 2 hours early to get everything ready. Well the night before we got a call saying that it was our turn to have an interview with President Camarillo and to be there by 3:30. Well we scrambled to find someone to fill up the font for us and then had to get him the keys to the font and show him how fill it up for us. Well we got to the interviews right on time but we had to wait for the president to arrive at 4 to start the interviews. El Presidente me planchó muy duro y mi compañero tambien... pero ya ni modo. [The president grilled me and my companion hard... but it doesn't matter]  We didn't get back to the church until 5. We got there and the Hermano that we asked to fill up the font just barely got there and there was only about 3 inches of water filled up in the font. Oh great! Plus, to have hot water in the church we had to go light the water boilers outside... the first one we lit with out much trouble but the 2nd one wouldn't lite. We were trying to lite this boiler for about 15 minutes and finally got it to lite up. After lighting the water boilers we ran to start filling the font. Well the water would run for about 3-5 minutes in hot water and then would turn cold again. We would wait for about 10-15 minutes for the water to heat up again and then run the hot water again for 3-5 minutes. It was terrible and took forever! By the time 6 o'clock came around we weren't even near to be being ready but the good thing was is that nobody showed up... kind of sad right? Yeah well we kept filling the font up and also noticed that it was super dooper dirty! Nobody had cleaned it from the last baptism... ¿Qué pues? So, I being in my suit and tie, rolled up my pants and jumped in the water and started cleaning all the walls with a mop and cleaner to make it almost presentable. Well once we cleaned up pretty nice we realized that the water looked terrible. The water looked like sewer water, super super green. We decided that we needed to get water dye to make the water look presentable for the Baptism. Hurrying... I didn't have time to put on my socks so I hurried and put on my shoes and Elder Reyes and I ran to tell our investigador and his mother (who showed up at 5:20 to the baptism)  that we would return shortly we just had to go pick something up. We sprinted as fast as we could to the nearest store and asked them if they had this agua dye. The said no so we ran to the next nearest store... no again.... this store told us that a dulceria (candy shop) selled this kind of dye... running as fast as we could we bought the dye and some candy for our Investigador and his mom and ran as fast as we could back to the church. Let's just say we got some super strange looks while 2 missionaries in suits ran down the street at full speed.... one of which being a gringo without socks. Anyways we got back to the church right as people started showing up to the baptism. We gave the candy to our investigador and put the agua dye in the water to make it actually look blue. It worked and covered a lot of the dirt that was in the water. Well at 7 o'clock we only had about 1/4 of the font filled up with warm water... but decided we needed to start. So we put it on full blast and started the meeting. We asked our district leader (Elder Mera) to continue checking on the water to stop it when it was filled up. Well we started the meeting but we were getting close to the time to start the baptism ordanance but the font still wasn't filled up... so let's just say I decided to pull out a musical number and sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" to fill up more time... seemed to be a fitting hymn due to the fact that we needed the help of our Heavenly Father to fill up the font in that same hour. Well I sang it and in the middle of the last verse I heard the water shut off... affirming that the font was ready for the baptism. Whew. We then went in (Hermano Gerardo and I) into the baptismal font. He can't walk very well and uses a wheel chair so it took a little while to get him down into the font. Well we sat him down in a chair in the baptismal font so that I could baptize him without his legs hurting. Well I baptized him twice because the first time his foot came out of the water... the second time was really close but we achieved to keep all of his body under water. We then got out of the font and went to change. While we were in the bathroom I asked Heramno Gerardo this "Cómo se siente?" and he responded "Con mucho frio, esta agua estaba muy frio." This translates over like this... "How do you feel?" and he responded "I'm super cold, that water was freezing." Well that wasn't necesarilly the response that I was looking for but its okay. He then told me that he feels really good and he felt that God was happy for him... there's that answer I was looking for! He then said Elder Summers look at my foot. I saw his foot and he had a cut on part of his foot and his big toe... it wasn't bleeding but just was one of those cuts. He said it didn't hurt and didn't even notice it... we're pretty sure he cut it on the chair. Well we also forgot to bring towels so I gave Hermano Gerardo an extra pair of baptism pants that I brought to dry himself off with and I used good old paper towels. Well during the time we were changing the rest of the people were going to watch a movie that my companion picked out... well this movie turned out to only be 4 minutes long and we were in the bathroom for about 30-40 minutes. So they all sang hymns waiting for us to return. Well we finished up the program with some spiritual thoughts from a member from the Bishopric and ended on a spiritual note in the baptism. Hermano Gerardo came to church and Elder Reyes confermed him in the Sacrament Meeting. Yeah soo this baptism didn't turn out exactly how we planned or how we were hopeing for but it was a baptism and our Hermano Gerardo made a covenant with the Lord. Pretty sure this experience deserves a saying often used by my Dad... "Nailed it".

Love you all,
Elder Summers

Familia,

Okay so this email is going to be a little bit different today. I am going to do something that has never been done before on this blog. I had a pretty interesting experience this week and I think that it will be best shared by reading the personal journal of Elder Summers.

 From the Journal entry of Elder Summers, 16 January 2014:
"Well something crazy  happened today. So you know how we've been having problems (companionship) and how I wrote President... well let's just say something kind of funny happened. First off, I think Elder R did call President Camarillo the other night because I checked the phone and it said that we dialed his number. I have no idea what President said but Elder R wasn't ticked at me after his call. Well today at 8:10 (in the morning) we got a knock at the door and I answered it. Yup, it was President Camarillo. And guess what, my companion was still in the shower... we talked a couple of minutes and then President asked me if we could go upstairs. We started heading upstairs just as Elder R got out of the shower... let's just say awkward moment. Elder R's jaw dropped. I could almost see the blood drain from his face, he looked so scared and nervous. Elder R in his towel, and our president of the mission greeting him asking him to accompany us to personal study. Holy Crap! Well after personal study President asked Elder R what time he usually gets up, my companion said 6:45. President than asked if I could affirm his response... I told the truth and said he gets up at 7:30 every day. President Camarillo than turned to a scripture and asked us about why people lie and who can we lie to and who we can't. Turns out we can lie to everyone but not to God. Anyways, he then talked about how we need to be more in unity if we are going to do the work of the Lord. He also said that we need to be reading the Book of Mormon in every personal study and P.M.G. Chapter 3 every single day. I have read the Book of Mormon but not Preach My Gospel. He also asked us if we could erase all of the Sponge Bob characters off of the white board that we have... Obviously he doesn't have a love for Sponge Bob ;) He pretty much just left us telling us that we need to serve each other and that I need to help my companion get out of bed in the morning. Honestly,  this was a pretty funny experience but I do kind of feel bad for my companion... but only a little bit. Speaking of him, he's super ticked at me and hasn't talked to me all day, but it's whatever. Until Tomorrow, Elder Summers "

Yeah so pretty crazy experience, right? Things have been going pretty well since this experience but Elder R definitely hasn't talked to me very much. We just walk around everywhere without talking. It's whatever. He'll come around. It's not like it was my fault that the president came to our house... haha super funny. Anyways I love you all and I will see you next week.

Also just wanted to let you know... I was super sick last night with an upset stomach. I haven't eaten anything all day and I feel mucho mejor [much better]. I also asked Elder R to give me a blessing and he gave me one. It was pretty neat and I really am feeling much better. I will talk to you later! Love you!

Love,

Elder Summers

Familia,

So things have been going pretty well but we've received some new mission standards that are going to be trying on my faith. I'll just mention 2 of the things that our mission president has told us to do. First off we need to "talk" to ten people everyday. But... one thing that we can't do is "contact" people. In other words we can't go up to people and just preach to them on the street about the gospel. We also can't touch [knock] doors either. But our mission president has told us that we need to "talk" to people. So we have been searching for opportunities to talk to people throughout the day without full out hammering them with the gospel. It's tough. The goal is to receive more investigadors and in turn get more baptisms in the mission, without just getting a baptism to have baptism. We are to talk to people and invite them to recieve our message without necessarily just preaching, preaching, preaching. It's part of the P.M.G. [Preach My Gospel] - Teach people, not lessons. But honestly it's pretty tough to open your mouth to talk to people. But it'll come. The second goal that we have put is that we need to teach more than 8 lessons every day. Usually we teach about 4 lessons every day, this means we are going to have to teach lessons faster, visit more families, and pray for people to open their doors to us. Looks like I'll be studying a lot about faith this week.

So we went to an activity in our ward for Christmas. The missionaries spoke and I spoke about Christ coming to the Americas. It was a message about 3 minutes long but lets just said I said something kind of embarassing. I talked about how Christ came and talked with our ancestors here in the Americas... I then told them that really it was their ancestors and not mine because I'm gringo and they are Lamanites.... Although true, they found it more offensive than anything else... Sometimes it's great to be able to speak Spanish, other times I say dumb things and get super red in front of the whole ward. It's what ev.

Well, Love you. Talk to you next week,

Elder Summers

Familia,

Things have been going really good here in Guadalajara. It was a little colder than usual last week starting the day after Christmas. I had to get out my rain coat and we were cold all day due to the rain. Little different cold than I'm used to back in Utah, but now the sun is out again and I'm back to my short-sleeved shirt. So I made syrup (thanks to the Mapeline) and turns out a lot of Mexicans don't know what syrup is and don't seem to like it too much. But it's all good, more for me. I am storing my syrup in a Coke bottle and I every time I get in the fridge I go to drink from it but then realize that its syrup and not Coke. 

That's so funny about the Polar Plunge King. I've got to say I am pretty proud of my little brother to be able to achieve such an Honor. Legit I started chuckling when I saw the picture of Kaden. Kaden you are awesome, poquito loco en la cabeza, but awesome!

So New Years was pretty lame here. We had to be home at 7 o'clock due to the amount of druggies and drunks in the streets. We got home and planned and then went straight to bed. Nothing really special... and we didn't even get that much sleep due to a drunk David Archuleta singing in the street all night long. New Years honestly wasn't all that great.

So we had changes today in the mission. Elder Reyes and I are still going to be working in Buenos Aires 2 together but 2 missionaries from our ward were changed. One of which is Elder Mills who is from Las Vegas. He's a pretty funny guy and works super hard... going to miss him but life will go on.

Hermano Gerardo (our progressing investigador) is doing really well and is super hilarious. He lived in Utah for a little while and loves talking about Utah with me. I can't remember what he is sick with but he can't walk very well and has a hard time speaking as well. It's hard enough for me to understand what he is saying in Spanish and even harder en English. But he is super awesome and is preparing for his Bautismo. We taught him the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom in the same lesson this week and he was pretty funny about it. He told us he doesn't have problems with the Word of Wisdom but sometimes he likes to drink just a little tequila. We had to make sure that he understood that even a little bit of tequila doesn't belong in his body. He ended up telling us he will keep the Palabra de Sabiduria [Word of Wisdom] but said he still likes tequila... we just sat there staring at him for about a minute and then he said now he doesn't like it and will stop drinking a little bit of tequila as well. He's so funny and I'm excited for him to continue preparing for his baptism.

Love you all,
Elder Summers

I meant to ask you all about Xochitl when we talked on Christmas. How's my sister been doing? She ready to leave the MTC or is she nervous? 

So a new mission rule is that we are to do service every Friday morning. We decided to set up a free shoe shine stand on the side of a busy street. It wasn't very successful but we had a lot of fun. My job was to look pretty to attract the customers.

Hey Dad, I just wanted to inform you that I may have missed tamales on Christmas but the whole next week I enjoyed delicious tamales. Not trying to make you jealous or anything... but if you are jealous I feel like I have achieved my goal.