Elder Tucker In Mexico

Hola Familia!

First of all, Happy late Birthday to my awesome sister Abby!!!!!

Hello again from Portland, OR. The weather has been so great lately, I don't think it's rained all week! Still a little chilly for this Arizona boy but not bad at all.

Anyway, on Tuesday, Elder Valentine and I had dinner with a part-member family. This was an inspired appointment that Elder Broadbent and I were able to set up last week. The mother of this family is actually the daughter of the second counselor in our bishopric and she's been less-active for a while. She's currently separated from her Methodist husband and their 4 sons, 14 years-old, 13, 10, and 7 are not members. At the beginning of the visit, the mother was polite, but kind of skeptical with having missionaries in her home. We asked if we would be able to continue coming back and teach her sons the lessons, but she just maybe and that she would have to reach out to us another time before we came back. Well, after reading a little in the Book of Mormon and talking about prophets with them, we totally gained their interest and by time we were about to leave, the mother was scheduling our next appointment! And on top of that, she said she would try to make it to church on Sunday. She didn't end up coming this time, but it was another witness nonetheless of the Spirit that is felt through reading in the Book of Mormon. They completely changed in a matter of minutes and were willimg to hear more. We'll be seeing them tomorrow night.

Wednesday I had my last exchange with Elder Vance in Cherry Park. We visited Sister Bacso, a less-active, with Brother Claycomb again and gave her a blessing. Immediately after, Sister Bacso informed us that she had been shaking all day and that the blessing made her stop shaking entirely. Such a powerful experience. After that, we got to hear a little bit more of Sister Bacso's conversion story and how even before becoming a member, she had seen pictures of LDS temples and had a desire to go inside. We set up going to the temple visitor's center tomorrow with her so I'm really excited for that.

Thursday, we visited another less-active, part-member family, the Knights. They have this huge organ set up in their house with a bunch of other instruments and gadgets just like Organ Stop Pizza. It's crazy, I've never seen anything like it in someone's home. And Brother Knight is amazing at playing it. He played us the Star Wars and Star Trek themes with this light show and it felt like we were actually in a movie theater hahaha. Definitely the most unique moment of my time in Portland so far and that's saying something. We listened to him again on Sunday.

Friday was Elder Valentine's 20th birthday! Unfortunately, Michelle failed her baptismal interview with President McAteer and said she doesn't know about us visiting her anymore, so that was a bummer, but at least we had a good Tongan dinner that night and the members gave Elder Valentine a birthday cake. Also, we taught Juston the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson in five minutes because he had to leave, but he was loving it.

But the best part of the week happened a few minutes ago when I got a call from the mission office telling me that my Visa is ready and I'll most likely be returning to Cuernavaca at the end of this transfer which is next Wednesday!!!!!!!!!!! Wow! What amazing news! I couldn't be more excited! It happened even faster than I thought it would and I just feel so blessed to get this opportunity to return to my Mexican mission.

So I'm pumped. Ready to keep working hard. More adult things I've been doing lately, I've been cooking like crazy and I'm actually pretty good. I got hard boiled eggs right the first time ;) hahaha lol. Also, I'm becoming a pro at public transportation here in Portland. We got these sweet hop passes which allow us to get on all buses and street cars.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Tucker