I hope you are all happy and healthy! We are excited for Isaac's baptism this week!

Hello Everyone, Well I just want you all to know that I love you and think of you all often. I hope that you are all well and that this message finds you happy and healthy! I am doing pretty well. My pinkie is still quite swollen, crooked, and has a large bump. I visited the doctor last week and he has me doing exercises daily to recuperate the movement but it is painful. Hopefully with time my finger will regain form and strength. As for the work it moves steadily forward here in Rio Verde. This week we have an exciting event. On Saturday will be the baptism for our little investigator Isaac! He has attended every single Sunday since they told us that he wanted to get baptized like we told him he must in order to be baptized on the scheduled date and that day is the Fourth of June! Well it came quickly and now we just have to finish teaching him one more lesson this week and have the interview so that on Saturday he can be baptized. Our recent convert Pedro Silvestre, who was baptized in February, will be the one to baptize Isaac. I am very excited for him. All of our other investigators seem to be kind of in Limbo land. None of them are really progressing because none of them are completing all of their commitments. Sergio is the only one who seems to really have a sincere interest at this point, but he didn't come to church yesterday because he was with his cousins. Hopefully we can continue to find people with a sincere interest in learning of the Gospel and a desire to live the things we invite them to do. That being said we found three new people this week, but they all require further follow up in order to see if they are really going to progress towards baptism or not. I want to share my testimony of the love of our Heavenly Father with each of you. I know that God has a sincere and true love and interest in every single living being as a very beloved son or daughter of God. I know that as we turn to Him in every moment of our lives, both of happiness and sadness, He listens and He responds. He acts for the benefit of every single one of us. I know it because I have seen it in my life. I can daily recognize His divine intervention in my life. He knows how to help us and when to help us. He knows what we need and when we need it. Trust in Him and He will never fail you. Of that I testify in the name of the Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. I love all of you and I hope you all have a great week! Take care. Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

We taught a lot of lessons this week and found more investigators!

Hello Everyone, I hope you are all doing well. This week was a great week for us. We taught a lot of lessons to investigators as well as many other lessons to converts and to less active members. We had a fun time working together and I enjoyed the week. My companion, Elder Hernandez, and I are doing well and we are excited to continue to teach and help others to learn more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Possibly the best part of this past week was our visit with our new investigator from last week, Sergio Lamas. We visited with him on Saturday night. He had given my companion the task of reading a packet of Questions and Answers given to him by Catholics (he is "Catholic") and tell him what was true and what was false, after we had given him the task of starting to read the Book of Mormon. Well we got there on Saturday night and told him he could ask any question he liked and he asked a few. He finally asked the question, "Why are there so many different churches?" Which led perfectly to us teaching him the majority of the Message of the Restoration of the Gospel. We mainly focused on the fact that he needs not trust in what anyone tells him to be true, but that he himself can ask God in prayer what is the truth and in that way he can receive the truth of all things. He seemed to realize that we were not there to convince him of our religion or to make him believe us, but to invite him to ask of God, and in that way receive his own answer. It was an amazing lesson, full of the Spirit. Then yesterday in church he was there with his whole family which I have only ever seen once before. I was super excited about that. All of our other investigators are doing alright, but only Isaac and Sergio are showing much progress. Isaac is still scheduled to be baptized on June Fourth, so we are still trying to finish the teachings with him for his date! I think all is going okay with him. We found five other new investigators this week and hopefully with time they can progress. I am enjoying the mission and our work together. We are seeing miracles everyday! I just want you all to know that I have a testimony of the power of prayer. I know that God hears and answers all of our prayers. He is always listening. It does not matter where we are, when we ask, or for what we are praying, He is listening. He answers our prayers. He may not always answer in the way we expect or hope for or want, but he never leaves us alone or abandoned. Trust in Him. Have faith that He will answer every one of your individual petitions and I testify to you that He will. For He is our Father and He loves us. I love each one of you and I hope you all have a great week! Take care! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

We had a lot of Adventures which included an Earthquake!!

Hey everyone, I hope that all of you are doing well. I am doing pretty well all things considered. We had a very busy week this week and quite a lot of adventures. First of all I am going to tell you about a fun and exciting thing that happened to us on Wednesday. We had to go to the hospital for my follow up appoinment for my fractured right pinkie. We arrived at the hospital and went to the specialty tower where I was to meet with the doctor. The hospital (Centro Medico Puetra de Hierro Sur) is one of the nicest and largest hospitals I have ever been in. It has a total of 18 floors (fifteen above ground and three below) we were on the fifth floor for my appointment. We had just arrived at the appointment and sat down to wait for the doctor to arrive and five minutes had not passed when an Earthquake hit Guadalajara. It honestly was super cool. It probably lasted for three to five minutes and my companion and I were completely calm and enjoyed the earthquake quite a lot as we waited for it to pass. We were trying to decide if we should go downstairs and outside, but decided that it was all okay. The secretary was kind of freaking out but we helped her to calm down. Afterwards we found out that it was a 4.9 on the scale, but that no one was killed and very little damage occured. It was kind of a cool experience. It really didn't shake the hospital as hard as in other areas because it is built to withstand those types of natural occurances better than other buildings. Other than that everything else that happened this week went fairly well and calmly. We only found one new investigator this week who is the son of recent converts. His name is Sergio. He has listened to the missionaries before but he says he is catholic. We believe that we can help him to come to a knowledge of the gospel and really to discover its truthfulness for himself. He gave us a few pages filled with catholic questions that he wants us to answer for him. They are quite interesting. I just hope that we can help him to really ask the Lord in prayer really believing that he will receive an answer so that he can gain a testimony for himself. Our only investigator that has been attending and progressing is Isaac, the nine-year-old who will be baptized on June fourth. He is doing pretty well and I think he is learning slowyly but surely. I hope we can help him to gain a greater understanding of the Gospel before his baptism. With all of the others we are still struggling with getting them to come to church. That always has been the biggest struggle here in the mission. I just want to share my testimony on the power of prayer. I know that as we confide in the Lord and turn to Him in humble prayer He listens to our greatest desires and needs. If we trust in Him and turn to Him in faith He can guide and bless us in every single aspect of our lives. I have never seen before in such greatness the effect prayer can have in the lives of the Children of God until I came on my mission. I have seen the way the Lord can work in the lives of all men as they exercise their faith in Him through simple and sincere prayer. I know He listens to you and me. I know that He cares about everyone of us and our specific needs. Let us pray to Him often that He may bless our lives. I love all of you and I hope that you have a great week! Take care!~ Love, Elder Mitchell J Condi

We found several new investigators!

Hey everyone, How have you all been doing? I hope that all of you were able to have a good week! Our week went pretty well overall. This last week we were able to find lots of new people to teach and we had a lot of lessons. Yesterday night we found six new investigators all because a random guy in the street talked to us on Thursday. He actually started talking to me in English and so I talked to him for a minute and it turns out that he lived in Las Vegas for awhile and that he still has family there. His name is Enrique and we were able to visit with him and his sisters and their families. We are going to visit them again on Thursday so we will see how it goes from there. Our other investigators seem to be doing pretty well. Manuel we only got to see once this week but he has been reading in The Book of Mormon. We finished teaching him the Plan of Salvation so the next lesson will be on faith baptism and all that stuff. He still hasn't come to church because yesterday he had a family commitment. Hopefully we can stress it a lot this week and get him there. We found another investigator last Monday named Christian. I don't know if I talked about him yet or not, but here it goes anyway. He is a security guard in the gated community where we live. We have taught him two times and he is really excited to learn about the Gospel. He has accepted really well everything that we have taught him thus far so I am excited to keep teaching him. He was going to come to church yesterday but couldn't because he had to go pick up his mom from the airport. He won't be able to come to church next week either because he works every other Sunday. Hopefully though he will come in two weeks though. It was cool because last week we were able to visit with Carla again and we talked to her about the Temple a little bit and how we can have eternal marriage and family. Her eyes lit all up when we told her about that and she opened up a lot asking us questions. The hardest part is that she told us that she isn't married to her 'husband' and can't be married for at least a year after her divorce goes through on her first marriage. She is just about done with the divorce but she won't be able to be baptized until she gets married or they separate, and I don't think they are going to want to separate. It was kind of cool to see her reaction, but I am sad to think that she has to wait a year to be baptized. Really everything seems to be going good. I had my follow up appointment with the doctor last week for my fractured left pinkie and he said that it has healed well and that I am good to go. Now I just have to try to keep taking good care of my fractured right pinkie too! I will be going back to the doctor this week for that, so we will see what he tells me I need to do! Well I just want to share my testimony on the importance of the Book of Mormon in this work. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It is holy, sacred scripture that testifies of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the World. I know that as we read and ponder the Book of Mormon that we can come closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I know that this book changes lives. My life has changed because of the Book of Mormon. I love reading in it because I can feel the Lord speak to me through its pages. I know that this book is true because I have prayed and asked God if it is true and the Spirit has confirmed its truthfulness and divinity unto me. I know that all of you can pray to know and receive an answer from God that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that as you do you can all become stronger and draw nearer unto Him. I know that it was translated by Joseph Smith who was a Prophet of God and I am so thankful that because of him we have such a powerful source of knowledge to learn from and study. I love all of you and I hope that you all have a really great week this week! Take care! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

I hope you are all healthy and happy!

Hey Everyone, How have you all been? I hope that you are all doing well and that you are all healthy and happy! I hope that this coming week for all of you goes well. Our week this last week was full of adventures and lots of lessons. Overall it was a great week. Well we found one new investigator this week. His name is Isaac. He is nine years old. His Grandma is a less active member of the ward and he and his little brother live with her. His Mom and Dad are members but the kids don't live with them all of the time (not sure why). They came on Tuesday night to the church while we were there for a meeting and asked if we could prepare the kids to be baptized. Isaac because he is nine is our responsiblilty as missionaries and his little brother is just going to turn eight so he is the wards responsibility. Hopefully they can be baptized together soon. They came to church yesterday so that is a good sign. They don't know hardly anything about the church so hopefully we can teach them well and simply enough that they can be baptized on their date. Isaac was our only investigator at church yesterday unfortunately. That means that Javier and Manuel will not be able to be baptized on the 4th of June like we were hoping. I think they still can progress, but now it is unsure if me and my companion will still be together for the baptisms if they do. I guess that doesn't matter as much as their progress I was just hoping that we could baptize them in this transfer. Other than that we did finally have another lesson with Carla. On Saturday we went to visit her with our ward mission leader after having gone to visit nine other people where absolutely no one was home. It was a good surprise to be able to find her and at first she didn't want to receive our visit because she was working. We finally got her to let us in and her mom was there with her. We taught the lesson of the Plan of Salvation and it turned into a super powerful lesson because Carla's brother died not long ago unexpectedly from cancer they didn't know he had. Her mom has still had a hard time dealing with his death and we were able to help comfort her with the scriptures and words of love. We really hope that that helps both Carla and her Mom to progress. Unfortunately her Mom isn't in our area so we sent the referral and really hope that the other missionaries can help her. Really it just showed me that it is totally worth being persistent as missionaries because we never really know the situation beforehand. Really I have a testimony of the Plan of Salvation. I am so thankful to know that through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, we all can have an eternal family. I am thankful to know that the bands of death do not last forever if we accept His plan, live the commandments, make and keep sacred covenants, and rely wholy upon the Lord. I am thankful to know that through temple work we can do the work for those who did not have the opportunity to receive these sacred ordinances here on Earth that they too might have an opportunity at Eternal Life. I know that Jesus Christ is the center of this perfect plan because without Him it would be impossible to return to the presence of God. I love each one of you and I hope that you all have a great week! Take care! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

We finally got to focus on our own area!

Hello Everyone, How have you all been doing? I hope that you are all doing well and are feeling good and are happy. I am doing really pretty good! This week was a pretty great week for us. Finally we weren't nearly as busy and we actually got an opportunity to focus on our own area for a little while which was a huge blessing. This week we found three new investigators. One of them is Javier Arcila. He is an older man that I found with Elder Muñoa in exchanges on Wednesday. He cannot read so that is going to be a challenge in helping him to gain a testimony of The Book of Mormon but we are going to do the best we can with him on that! We ended up having three lessons with him this week. He came to see the chapel on Saturday as part of one of our lessons, but he was unable to attend church because he had to go sign some important documents having to do with his retirement. Another Carlos is an old investigator that we have searched for several times and finally found him. He is young and married to an inactive sister. When we taught him he seemed somewhat indifferent as to the church and seemed disinterested so we will see what comes of teaching him. The other is Manuel. He is a young 23 year old. We found him last night. We taught him the Restoration of the Gospel and he seemed very open and excited about the lesson. He even asked the question of what of all the ideas in the world was the truth which allowed us to perfectly teach him the importance of reading the Book of Mormon, praying about our message, and attending church. He is planning on coming to church on Sunday with us. We invited him to be baptized on June 4th and he accepted. Now he just has to attend church and receive all of the missionary lessons. Really I have a very good feeling about him and I hope he can really be baptized that day, as it is the last Saturday before the next transfer and it is possible that one of us (I) will be transferred. Unfortunately we have not been able to see our other new investigator Carla. She works a lot everyday during the week and on Saturdays. She makes shoes in her house. That makes it difficult to see her. She cancelled our appointment on Saturday because her husband wasn't going to be able to be home. It sounded like he had read a little of the Book of Mormon though when we talked to her on the phone, so hopefully that is a good sign. We are hoping to find them sometime this week! Other than that everything is good in the neighborhood! Haha. I get to take off my splint from my fractured pinkie tomorrow so hopefully it doesn't hurt too much starting to use it once again. In a week's time I have to have some more x-rays and another check up appointment so I guess we will see what happens! My headaches are still the same pretty much I am just hoping that the new medicine I am on starts to actually help me! I am once again here with Elder Hernandez in Rio Verde for another transfer so that should be fun to see what we can accomplish together in the next month and a half. Hopefully at least one baptism! Pray for us! I just want you all to know that I have a testimony of the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that it is through His great atoning sacrifice that we all may overcome whatever ill we face, whether it be sin, error, sickness, afflictions, depression, family challenges, or any other difficulty. He understands us perfectly. He has felt our pains and experienced our afflictions. He knows us all, individually. He wants to help us. He loves us all. He is our great Redeemer and Savior! I am so thankful to know that He lives. That because He lives we can conquer anything and everything and become better day by day, little by little. We must rely on Him and as we do so He lifts us up. He has lifted me up and carries me when I cannot do it alone, and He guides me by the hand when I am walking by my own strength. He is the greatest of all the gifts of our Heavenly Father and for that I am eternally and incredibly grateful. I love each one of you and I pray for you! I hope you all know that this gospel is true! I hope you have a great day and an amazing week! Take care! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie