Another blessed week here in Veracruz, Mexico! To explain my title, I have been moved to the blessed pueblito of San Rafael! Our area actually includes like 7 other towns as well haha. But it is an area filled with fruit trees! Banana, Orange, Mandarina, Leechy, Mango, Guanabana, Maracuya, Aguacate, Torombolo (Star fruit), Guayaba, and Even Noni which is the fruit from Johny Lingo that they smash to make the horrible tasting juice haha! There is a whole bunch of others that I haven´t learned yet as well haha. The thing is that the only reason that I know about these fruits is that the people here give them to us elders all the time in the streets! I have eaten more fruit this week than I have in my entire life jaja!
One of the families that we ran into contacting this week invited us over to eat some tamales for their sons 20th birthday this Sunday! When we showed up, there was 6 other people there besides our investigators! All of whom live on the same street. It was a small family reunion and the Elders haha! They treated us like guests of honor and asked some amazing questions about our missions and our religion. This allowed us to share some key doctrinal points and give them all pamphlets of the restoration! We are visiting the whole family tomorrow night to give a blessing to their sister who has really bad arthritis and to teach the first lesson as well! The best way to be a missionary is to always search for ways to get invited to parties and not be afraid to preach at any time or setting! haha
Another cool experience that we had this week. My comp felt that we should go and try to explore an area where missionaries have never contacted before so off we went! The colonial was about a 40 minute walk from the center of san rafael, and we walked on road lined with a field of bananas on one side and a field of oranges on the other side. It was super beautiful, but rediculously hot at the same time. We finally arrived to a house, and we yelled from the gate (As people do in Mexico). A lady came to the front of the house and lit up with a smile and said "Elders" We were super confused at first but it turns out she was a recently baptized member from puebla. But she moved to San Rafeal about a year ago and had lost all contact from the church at that point. She has 2 super hyperactive boys and is a single mom. We invited her to go the the church and she was so excited to go again! God sent us walking in that direction to bring one of his sheep back into the fold. I love the way God directs his work out here in the mission!
Our branch that I am in has around 10 members that our active, and when we went this Sunday there was around 12 people that showed up to the tiny house where we have our meetings. The awesome thing was that 6 of the people there were investigators, and one of them was the lady who we found way out in the banana fields haha! I am excited to help this small branch out here to grow and become stronger. The members here are so faithful and full of love for the missionaries. One of the members wife was sick so she couldn´t give her talk this past sunday. So he went up there, and gave the talk for her. He then proceded to give his own talk for another 15 minutes. He was up there for 30 minutes haha!!!
The work here is progressing, no unhallowed hand can stop that, and I am so excited to work hard this change with a companion with similar desires as I do to serve our Heavenly Fathers children in this part of the world.
I love you all! Thanks for all the prayers for missionaries all through out the world. We can feel them here out in the field buoying us up when times get hard!
-Trying to be the Missionary my Mom believes me to be!
-Élder Kraus
PS. The usb port on this computer doesn´t work, sorry for the lack of pics this week!