Carmen!

I have SEVEN months now!!!
 I cant believe how fast the time is going!! I am having the greatest time ever! I am so grateful that I am here! And i know i am supposed to be here with all of my heart.
 Sometimes I am teaching and I say something, a personal experience or something, and the investigator has a change of heart, its times like that really remind me that there are certain prepared people that I am supposed to find.
 You may be wondering why the title of this post is Carmen, ha? well its because we baptized Carmen!!!!!!

Carmen is soo awesome! Heres the story: A few weeks ago we were contacting and found this person in a house by the Villa, really positive guy, and so we taught him and all, really cool dude. When we went back a couple days later for a cita we had, he wasnt there...but someone else was! So we teach her! Also really positive. Next time we went for the cita, looking for two investigators there, guess what? Exactly... couldnt find them! But someone elssssse answered the door, she was really quiet and shy, but she let us in because she wanted to be nice. A 25 year college student. Her name was Carmen! The first cita was alright, didnt show tooo much interest but she let us come back. When we went back (mostly looking for the first two investigators) they werent there, but Carmen was, so we taught her again... this time she saw some interest! She even went to church! And from there.... Wow! She progressed soo much! Shes been to church a bunch and she loves it! And now, on May 28th (My 7th month mark) She got baptized!! It was a really good service! Everything worked out! I learned alot from this experience, mostly that you never know which people are prepared, you just need to be willing to talk to everyone. Theres a line that my Mission President said that I loved: There are Prepared People for Prepared Missionaries.

This week was an interesting week for soccer! It was the Champions League championship and the championships for the Mexican league! Walking through the streets and all you see are green screens from all the soccer!haha which make it really hard to contact lol But here is an example. This is the 28 de Marzo (name of the colony), they have a TV screen outside for the public! Arent these people nice? Like this huge colony is really united, but also the most dangerous area we have. It was kind of sketchy taking this picture lol I wanted to take it without anyone noticing... but that awkward moment whent he flash is on and EVERYBODY notices! hahaha

Noche De Hogar

Well hoenstly there is not much to write about this week! 
The same stuff is going on. Working hard! But the cool thing is probably the awesome Family Home Evening we had! 
Im going to try to catch up on some emails this week. 

Party!!

Well this was a pretty great week! 

The highlight of the week was probably David Turner´s party! Who David Turner? Ok. David is our gringo in the ward (theres always at least one lol) And he is awesome! He is from Utah and lives hear with his family because he works for the Embassy. He gives us dinner every sunday night. (Actually, one fast sundays... for dinner he gives us breakfast... get it? Break-fassst!lol) anyway... he is awesome! He helps us sooo much with our gospel principles class because he does a greaaattt job at hermanando all of our investigaros and recent converts! But now he is leaving back to the states :(

 and he knows that everyone is going to miss him and so he had a party for the gospel principles class! Like a farewell. 

We showed up for dinner and we saw what a success it was!! It made me soo baggy because it reminded me of the parties that we used to have back in AZ.

As far as the work goes, its going! We are working hard and finding new people everyday. We have about 10 investigators progressing now! Theyre so awesome! I think our next fijo baptism will be next week! How exciting. Its wierd because after teaching people for so long, and opening up to them, and them to us, you cant help but get attached. Such as, it is honestly heartbreaking when they dont go to church, or dont read, stuff like that. But I know we just have to do our best and keep praying for them. 

Oh!! So this was awesome! So my area is the Villa Olimpica right? Its a very popular place in Teguz. And so anyway, one day we were walking through (because its a shortcut) and out of nowhere I see someone familiar, I see Jose Luis´s girlfriend! (Miraflores mission leader) And all I say is ´Where is he?!´ She laughs and says the In the Gym! And so we run there and we see him there! Not only was he there, but also Chad Hansen (the gringo in Miraflores, see, theres at least a gringo in every ward!lol) But it was honestly soooo nice to see them again! It was funny because Chad is HUGE! But I know that he used to go to a different gym, and so I asked him why he switched gym. He stared at his hands and said ´ohh its because they ran out of, out of...´    He forgot what he was going to say, he meant to say chalk... but i say ´Weights?´ hahah! that was really funny, because he is huge i figured he lifted all of the weights in the whole gym already lol had to go to a different one! haha sorry, that is my julian humor! xD 

The other day after contacting a bunch we took a little break and we bought ChocoBananos, like a frozen banana dipped in chocolate on a stick. But on accident, my stick broke and the banana fell... I was really, really sad because it was so good. And so I go back to the lady and told her, HOPEFULLY she would be nice enough to give me another one right? So she came out and I told her but I dont know if she misunderstood me or what but she came back out with a NAPKIN! Like what?! I didnt say anything, I just said gracias. My comp says it was her way of saying ´Awww thats too bad, heres a napkin to wipe away your tears!´hahaha it was sad lol

Well today we went to Picacho.... AGAIN! It was fun! We have a bunch of new people in our zone and it is alot more united! Including an elder from Peoria! He is awesome! we are always talking about how great Arizona is!! haha
 We played soccer after and it was awesome because two other zones were there (which wasnt supposed to happen lol) but we all showed up on accident. 
Ill attach some photos. 

   

Skype!!

What a great day it was yesterday! It was so nice talking to my family again! 
Now i have to focus back to working! ;)
 Oh and by the way, we found out about changes and I am staying here in Villa Olimpica with Elder Agren for another 6 weeks.
 No changes!

6 Months / Zone Conference / Valle De Angeles

   Well as you can see from the title, alot has happened this week, and i will try my best to summarize.
Well I finally have 6 months!! I cant believe it! Time has literally flew by, I never thought Id say that because in the beginning of my mission, I thought the mission would never end lol
 I love the mission! I love my area, I love my companions, I love the work, I love everything!
I am so happy I am here.
If anyone ever asks, Hows is Julian doing? All you need to say is, Happy.
I have learned so much already and I owe it all to my companions, my mission president, and most of all, my Heavenly Father. Im grateful for all that He has done for me. I love helping people come unto Him, as well as serving others.
There is tradition for when you reach 6 months, you burn a tie. (you burn a shirt when you have a year) And so of course I was super excited to burn a tie! haha and you can also see in the photo what my area is like, as well as some part of the actual villa olimpica.

This week we had Zone Conference!! Each change we either have Interviews with President or we have a conference where all of the zones gather around and we learn a bunch of stuff lol.

 And it was so awesome!! Usually at these conferences it is a time where some missionaries, like the Presidents Assistant´s and some other chosen missionaries, teach us about a certain topic. And I learned alot! But first, heres my favorite part. Ok wait, first I need to give a background story kind of Before I came out on the mission I was of course curious on how the mission is so I started reading different blogs from missionaries that are this mission. And most of them didnt write much, but there was this one blog that I followed every week, And i started from the beginning of his mission and im pretty sure i read all of it. lol this guy was my hero becasue you can tell he was a great missionary! Well at this particular conference, he played a major role! He gave us an amazing class, sang a song with my dad, Elder Westberg, and helped the President sometimes. He is Elder Huff. And the crazy part is that we were instantly great friends! I never thought, before the mission, that we would ever be as good as friends as we are now, its just so wierd. lol God works in mysterious ways. Also at this conference I got to see my other comps, Elder Westberg and Elder Marin. I wanted to take pictures with them because i didnt really take many pictures with them before.

Elder Huff

Elder Westberg

Elder Marin

The funnest thing about Zone Conference is that as soon as it was over, it started raining... HARD! And so it was so much running in rain that was so falling extremely hard! We were literally soaked in 5 seconds. But we had to. You know how they say you shouldn't  run in a lightning storm? well yeah...it was fun! We were completely soaked by the time we ran all the way down the mountain and into the bus. :)

For P-day today we went to Valle de Angeles! Its like going to Picacho, but better. Its like an hour away from the cuidad and its like a forest. We had to walk alot and it was fun, the final destination was a pretty cool waterfall! We took alottt of pictures here! Its always alot of fun hanging out with the zone.