Mexico

mi familia :) hello everyone!! how is it going :) sounds like a lots been going on :) thats super cool about the ward that we are getting all new presidencies, and in the stake also!!! im sure all the new leaders are going to do awesome!! sounds like schools going good for the kids :) Payt and Syd :) haha man Payt has got to cool it down in the welding and body shop sounds like hes tearing it up out there he keeps doing that he will be working for pimp my ride in a year ;) and syds still cheering sounds like things are getting a lil more intense as it gets closer to the tornemnents haha i dont know how cheer works but do some awesome flips syd!!! :) sounds like work is going good, hope dad and wes are staying busy!! i know they dont hope for that sometimes haha but work is a whole lot better than no work ;) thats how it is in the mission field and im pretty sure it applies to life too ;) sounds like jordan and krystle are doing just dandy in there new house, they outta just hop the boarder and send me some cafe rio ;) haha so this week was good :) lil bit slower but still got the jobs done :) we found some new investigators they are 12 and 10 year old lil girls haha there parents are members but they are inactive and so a famliy in a ward said we should teach them and so we are doing that and we got a baptism date for the 14 of feburary :) also this week was kinda fun because we had intercambios (exchanges) haha so we have exchanges with our distirct leader and his comp, and the distirct leader is Elder Smith and his comp is super green he just came to the mission and he is from Canada so he is learning spanish and doesnt speak a whole lot, but hes learning :), so i thought that i would be going with elder smith becuase he has a lot of time in the mission and he knows more spanish than me, but elder smith said that i would be having elder robbins (canada) as my comp :) i was like whhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt so we met up wedensday and changed comps elder robbins stayed with me in our area and elder hernandez went with elder smith in his area, and im not going to lie and im not trying to be cocky i promise, but it was the best day we had in the week when i was with elder robbins, and im going to sound super cocky right here but its for a good cause, its that i taught every lesson and had to contact every person in the street cuz elder robbins doesnt speak spanish and that day i prayed super hard for the gift of tounges so that i could teach and talk with clarity for elder robbins, and it happened it was awesome we got a lot of new investigators this day and was super cool, prayer and gift of tounges is real and this church is true!! haha, lunch yesterday was kinda funny after church we went to the exbishops houses and his wife was cooking outside (thats where they cook and eat) and shes like elders you know how to make gorditos haha and were like umm no.... we know how to make cereal haha and shes like its easy and explained and she had all the stuff out and shes like i have to go right now becuase my brother needs me and shes like can you guys make your food and we were just like sure, haha turned out to be good!! haha but we just sat there at her house no one home it was super werid but kinda funny making the gorditos haha Something really cool this week is that we have been working with a famliy that is less active and they have a son who is like 45 years old and his been a drunk for a long time like literally he is always drinking when his thirsty he drinks beer and whisky he doesnt know what water is, but weve been teaching im and trying to get him to stop and the other day we stoped by the house and he was up walking around normal and talking normal and had stopped drinking we shared a message and said that he would go to church and this sunday he went!!! he said the closing prayer of our lesson we kneeled down and gave thanks to our heavenly father for the help he has recieved fetch!!! I was whipping my eyes by the end trying not to let them see the tears in my eyes it wasnt a baptism but we chagned the life of this man and i was telling my comp that i think that is something better than 20 baptisms it was so beautiful to see the joy and peace in his eyes saying that he is stopping drinking and going to church :) This church changes people its always here to help people, and we just need to share it, never lose hope and never stop praying!!! also we visited another less active yesterday and we she opened the door she just started crying she said that this had been the hardest week of her life, she doesnt have any money, she lost her job, and she is super sick, we went into her house and trying to help her, and we shared a really beautiful message and a scripture came into my mind and i thought i should share it and in the middle of her teary eyes i said hermana i just wnat to share this scripture with you its in Mosiah 24: 13-14 and i told her that this life is full of struggles but just because we have them doesnt mean God is leaving us hes always with us and will always help us :) well i dont have a lot more time to write but just know that i love you guys and that this church is perfect and this church is true and our savior Jesus Christ lives and our Father in Heaven also :) I love you guys have a great week and keep smiling :) Love Elder Tanner

Swag on bikes

Hey fam... What what what what is up?? que PASO hope you guys are doing awesome sounds like you are :) crazy that we will be getting a new stake presidente, Pres. christensen has done really well :) i really enjoyed having him as a stake pres., but he has definatly done his time haha, and it will be cool to see who is able to take his spot :) whoooo party week haha that will be awesome to celebrate the birthdays of weston and grandpa :) this week be sure to sing feliz cumpleaños for me haha ;) thats cool you got to listen to the speaker talk about dengue haha sounds like a cool dude :) they say that the people who get the dengue are the best looking becuase the mosquitos want there blood.... ;) haha but really... ;)

so this week was super good and fun and spirtiual and tiring and every other emotion you can think of becuase thats the life of a missionary but the feeling you have more than any other is happy so no worries haha :) so our bikes are holding up just dandy :) im loving it we arent arriving to our appointments 45 mins late so its a lot better we had a lot of lessons with new investigators this week not as many with less acitves but still had some :) so saturday we got to go to a baptism of the missionaries in a branch next to our ward super cool to see them get that goal :) theyve been working hard with a young kid his name is Johan :) theres a new elder in our disitrict hes from canada haha super cool dude :) haha so funny story sunday... me and my comp got to the church early so we could walk to get javier in his wheel chair at his house so we started walking to his house and along the way we passed these kids who literally are like 5 years old and they were chilling on there bikes we passed them no problem but than they started yelling at me like hey guerro (white guy) i just started laughing and waved at them haha but they kept saying stuff and started to say swear words and a bunch of dirty stuff they called me and my comp gay haha and than they started to chase us on our bikes haha we didnt run or anything they just started circling us on their bikes as we walked haha was the weirdest thing and i couldnt stop laughing there these lil kids on there bikes just got done using traingwheels and there circling us saying swear words and than one kids throws his bike down and is like "LETS PEG THEM" and starts to pick up rocks to throw at us haha thats when i lost it i was laughing so hard i was almost rolling on the ground laughing and his friends are like throw it yeah throw it and my comp started to pretend like he was going to run at the kid with the rock and he freaked out and ran away, haha and then he just came right back with his rocks and his friends behind him and by this time i had taken my camera out and started taking a video haha but i couldnt hold the camera still becuase i was laughing so hard, so the kid chased us down and started throwing these lil rocks at us haha he never hit us, becuase missionaries are protected ;) haha i think he was just a bad throw finally he left still swearing but super funny :) haha and than we had to run javier in his wheel chair to the church we ran like 8 blocks with a old guy who doesnt have a leg in a wheel chair i said to my comp as we were running "elder i hope people dont think we are kidnapping him from the rest home" haha but we got to church on time and all was well :)

but as for the investigators this week :)

Javier attended this week in church again he has like 6 times atttending church and the goal is to get his baptism for the 31 of january the problem is that he loves to talk and doesnt listen a whole lot so we cant really teach him the doctrine haha but we are going to keep working with him

Sergio ahhh i want sergio to attend church so bad hes such a good guy with so much potential and he has learned so much i really hope he will start to go to church we are going to have a lesson with him tonight :) and we are going to try and keep the date of 14 of feb.

Carlos is a guy that we contacted the other day and taught him about the preisthood and the prophets and he realizes no that there is only one true church and we gave him the invataion to be baptized 14 of feb. he said hes going to learn more from us he wasnt able to go to church becuase of work but hopefully he can go this sunday :) hes a really good guy and really receptive hopefully he continues to accept us and learn more so he can recieve an answer that this church is true :)

Here are some pictures of us visiting a rest home.

We also made some tortillas...

Well family thats all for this week really sorry for the shortness of the letter but i hope you guys have an amazing week with lots of success in work, school, church, or any other activity you guys are doing :) you guys are awesome and i love you guys so much thanks for always being my stronggest support and helping me I love you guys!! Love Elder Tanner :) Look for the light of christ in every one :) cuz everyone has some :)

Big News

got some big awesome news!! WE GOT BIKES!!! one of the members bought them for us!!! i love this ward the members are so flipping nice there not the most golden pieces of work but they are bikes and the members are flipping awesome!!! its so cool and there is so much love for the missionary work here in this ward ahhhh its awesome!!! but how are things going back hoome in the good ole spanish fork, sold the nissan huh haha every good lil truck has to go eventually... :/ but believe me theres plenty more in the world especially here in mexico haha and if you ever need some chrome just send me a message and i can get ya a good portion of chrome haha, thats cool that jord and krystle got to talk to CJ sounds like hes doing good and mooks sounds like hes doing good haha we are takling a lil bit in our emails and we are already planning a trip to disneyland haha. thats too bad about austin seamons hes a tough kid and will get right back on the horse and finish his mission :) haha thats tight that hunter nilson is coming to the mission ill back talking to him a lil bit by email. haha so saturday our zone leaders called us and there like elderes we need you guys to go to mochis for us we have appointments and cant go to get the materials for our zone today can you go and we are like yeah sure why not so we take a hour long bus ride to a church in mochis where there is the materials walk in a presidente is having a meeting with all the zone leaders and distirct leaders in the mission haha and we are like.... ummm okay... haha so we just sit there haha and we arent supposed to be there becuase.. well we arent leaders but then pres. was like we going to do a practice of contacting people in the street so is there a companionship that would like to practice in front of us and my comp hurry stands up and is like yeah we will do it haha i was like ELDER!! haha so we got do the practice in front of all the big kids lots of fun.... but this week was good we didnt have a ton of lessons with investigators but we had a lot with less actives and we had quite a few attend church so thta was cool, but we had 3 family nights this week and that was a lot of fun :) and we are going to have another wedensday with like 4 familys :) haha the members love to have family nights with us :) its super fun to hang out with them for a lil bit, but we also had good lessons with investigators this week :) we went with the sister missionaries in our ward to give one of their invesigators a blessing and it was super cool, because hes been struggling with bipolarismm, and skitsophrania and now he says he is feeling a lot lot better he invited us to have dinner with him and the sister misisonaries this week so we are going to do that :) and he will be getting baptized in 2 weeks!!! super cool he is a really good guy as for our investigators Sergio, javier, and Paulino, José

Javier attended church this week and we taught him a lesson he has a baptism date for 14 of feburary, we just have to get him to listen because he likes to talk haha but no worries

Paulino well we had to kinda chew him out for thinking the catholic church is true we gave him like 6 examples as to why the catholics arent true, preisthood, the virgin, the pope and other stuff he knows the book of mormon is true but thinks the catholic is the most true church and were just like broooo,.... if the book of mormon is true joseph smith was a profet if joseph smith was a prophet than we have the pristhood and the mormons is the only true church and hes just like... ummm well.... and says something super random haha hes a lil hard headed, but we are going to keep working with him

Sergio is a really cool dude we have taught him quite a bit and had been reading a lil in the book of mormon so we set up a baptism date for 14 of feburary :) and hes going to conntinue to pray and read for the truth :)

José is a lil harder to teach because his wife doesnt want us to teach him but we are going to try to have lessons in the church instead of his house, and feels like our church is true so we just got to follow through with him :) and also we made a baptism date with him 14 of feburary :) hopefully he continues to listen to us his wife will allow us to teach him and he can attend church :)

haha so we had a "noche de hogar" :) haha (family night) with like 2 families in the ward one is less active so that was cool to hang out with them we played a game becuase their was a ton of kids me and my comp shared a message about the importances of the family in the church and then we ate elotes!!! corn on the cob mayonaise chile peper lime and hot sauce!!! so goood haha the one with the corn of cob in my eye is a representacion of nacho libre haha also the guy with the cup in his hand green jacket is soooooo funny haha i love the guy

haha these are some of the same photos of the family night so how the people cook soup or boil water here is they got a lil stove thing where they got the fire and a piece of sheet metal or something over the fire and booom cooking in no time haha :) so me and my comp saw this and were like hermana you got marshmellos? haha so we roasted some marshmellos!! this is our investigator Javier haha hes such a cool dude, his story is he got his leg cut of by a train and broke they other one... but hes chill, and the other is us today at a chinese food place eating sushi

Well thats all famliy sounds like you guys are doing most excellent and i hope you guys all have an amazing week and let me know if you need anything love you guys so much and thanks for prayers, emails, and letters, i love you guys Love Elder Tanner

The week of transfers

another transfer down.... pretty crazy right haha there are definatly times when the time is like usain bolt and others when its like a snail but no matter how the time is moving im loving it here :) so we had transfers this week and me or elder hernandez didnt get transfered we still got work to do here in guasave :) but my good friend elder mendoza left :( he was such a good dude still is but im going to definatly miss him, he was always watching out for me super cool dude i really hope i get to be in another area with him :) anyways still here this week was good happy NEW YEAR by the way haha holy smokes 2015 thats crazy !!! am i right? where did 2014 go haha but yeah new years was fun because we got to go and hang out with the bishop and his family :) they gave us the thick hotchoclate and rice stuff with a delicous dinner :) super nice :) haha also before we went to the bishops house we went and visted a family that is less active and the mom was like im making tamales right now elders i cant really visit and im like oh hermana please teach me how to make the tamales, and so she let us stay and do all the work haha i still dont have it down but we shucked the corn and cut the corn pieces i dont know what they are called and than we had to leave it wasnt a whole lot but she was glad that we did it haha and we got to talk with her a lil bit while we were making the tamales haha, so we went to the bishops house and than returned to our house and slept till 12 at night and at 12 at night our neighbors who own a mechanic shop had a live band in their shop start playing at 12 and they are literally right next door to us haha like our wall in our room is their wall in their shop haha so we could here the ugly music just fine ... :) i thought they would play for an hour or so nooooopppppppeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! they played till flipping 6 in the morning!!! I was ticked i didnt sleep at all and my comp either and than we got a call in the morning at 7 that we had to go to the bus station and take a 1 hour bus ride to mochis for a capacitacion with our presidente so we got on the bus and half way there the bus broke down... haha so we had like 35 people on this bus cram into a sprinter van bus thing haha im dead serious this sprinter van pulled up and im just like youve gotta be kiddin me haha we cramed 35 people into a 15 passanger sprinter van bus thing haha i hope you get what im sayin we did that for the 30 mins until we got to mochis and we were like an 1 late to the capacitacion and when we got there president had every companinship put there names on a piece of paper and he was going to draw out 2 companinships to do practices in front of everyone there were like 25 companinships and the first names he drew were Elder Tanner and Elder Hernandez haha so we had to practice having a lesson with someone who doesnt wnat to go to church i was super nervous haha because the assistants and all the big important people were there and when we finished pres. was like well what did they do good and we got a ton of good comments and one of the asistants said he like the way i taught in such and such a way ahhhh it felt so good haha so that was an awesome way to start the year not sleep, capacitacion, and give a leson in front of a bunch of missionaries whoooo. haha oh also my backs doing alot better haha i changed the way i sleep so no worries ;) haha i got a package the other day from grandma tanner with tie pins tell her thanks so much :) So our investigadors

Javier he attended church again this week we had to walk him and his wheelchair there but we got him there haha this guy im sorry but is such a cholo haha in sacrament i was listening to the talks and i hear clink clink i look over and javier has a 7 inch blade knife that he pulled out of his wheel chair haha and his just playing with it in church... haha hes such a funny dude but its gonna take a lil bit to teach him because he likes to talk... a lot we got a baptism date for 15 of feburary so we will see how it goes

Sergio didnt attend church but we are going to visit him this week and see how he is doing he has been asking a lot of questions which is good, he asked about the polygamy in the church and we explained why that had to happen and it was all well and actually when we were teaching him one of his pastors stopped by to talk to him and he was like sorry i cant talk right now im with the missionaries i was like yesssssssssssssss haha, it was tight, were going to have a lesson with him and the bishop this week so he can get to know some of the members

Paulino didnt attend church but we stopped by last night and he talked aboiut how he is researching the book of mormon and he just has a couple doubts that we have to help clarify hopefully we can put a baptism date and he can follow through :)

Here are some pictures from zone conference.

Hot Dogs and nike or.. mike??? haha

This us on new years with in the bishops house having dinner.

So we went to mcdonalds why we were waiting for the transfers to arrive.

Merry christmas from the elderes haha i hate riding together on the bikes but do what ya gotta do.

The pictures with us drinking hot choclate is christmas when we talked with our families and we found a sparkler haha.

The one with four of us is transfers Left to right elder... castiblanco, mendoza, hernandez (compa) and me haha but mendoza left super sad hes such a cool dude hopefully i see him again later in the mission.

This is my last foto with elder mendoza :( hes such a cool dude he got transfered today to a different part super sad but hes going to do awesome.

Left to right castiblanco, mendoza, hernandez, and me haha

This is me with a chihuahua need i say more...? hahahhahahha

Well family I love you guys so much mom and dad thank you so much for that letter of the year you sent it was beautiful thank you so much and I love you guys so much thank you for always helping me and praying for me have an amazing week and let me know if you need anything all is fine here in Guasave :) :) :) Happy New year I love you guys Love Elder Tanner