Well there´s lots to tell.

Lots and lots.

Gabriel is coming along just fine. He should have his new job soon and also be able to find a better and safer apartment as well. His baptism should be this Saturday. Too bad I won´t get to see it though.

I was transfered, and am finally outside of Guadalajara. I´m also officially retired from the leadership of the mission. Missionaries don´t finish as leaders here, but rather finish training or helping other young Elders. Since no new missionaries arrived this transfer, I am doing the latter. My companion is Elder Escamilla, from Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo. Yes, that´s where Elder Cruz is from. They never met before the mission though, because my companion was baptized in February of 2010. Yes, that´s right. I have a companion who wasn´t a member when I started the mission. He´s 25. Pretty cool guy. We´re working hard here.

I´m in Tepic, which is the capital of the state of Nayarit. Here there are still native communities of Coras and Huicholes, although I haven´t run into any so far here in the city. The area is Fresnos 3, which makes us the third companionship in a rather large ward. We´re on the far edge of the city, where there are seven or eight new developments of cheap houses that have been built. It´s growing like crazy out here. It turns out that there are a lot of members, and every day it seems we find another member who just moved here and doesn´t know where the church is. It´s a challenge because the chapel is rather far away, and really expensive to go by bus (which is how most Mexicans get around), so those who don´t have a car have to really sacrifice in order to get to church with their families. The Elders had been organizing trucks to come around and help pick up the members, but there were so many this time that we needed a second truck. That second truck driver fell through Saturday in the afternoon, leaving us with nothing. We didn´t have any phone credit either to call people, so we were running around on foot all day (and later that night we got a member to help drive us around) searching for someone with a truck that could help us out. Nothing. We were fasting as well for a miracle and for the area. We got to the house really late Saturdy night and we had nothing and nobody to help, and hadn´t a clue how we were going to pick up all those people and drive them so far away. We went to bed basically leaving it in God´s hands. We had done everything we could think of.

But Sunday morning a member arrived who is almost never in town (they live in the woods, I think) and her husband has a truck. We ran out to see them and they were more than willing to help out. I lead one truck that picked up 24 people, and my companion lead another that picked up 22, and we got them all to church on time. That was just among investigators and less actives without the resources to travel to church every week. Aside from that the active members went and we ended up being about 70 people from our part of the ward. There had been hopes for a house of prayer out here for some time now, but the Stake President wanted to see if there were really enough members to justify it. He was certainly surprised to see so many people just from our area in church, and agreed to give it the green light. Tomorrow he will be asking the Area President (who is already informed about the situation) for a unit number, and Wednesday we have a meeting with him about it. It´s very possible that we could have our own branch by the end of the month. Another gigantic miracle after a difficult trial of faith. We owe God so much for providing transportation and preparing the way. We´re also working with two families that are very excited about the gospel and are working out the details with their marriages.

In other news, the President tells me that the extention has been approved, and I have permission to do whatever is necessary to take care of finances, housing, and classes for school. So I´ll be writing you about that soon. Gotta run for now. Take care and make sure to say hi to all my RHS friends and especially Joe´s family for me. I miss you and love you all, but I know that will just make it all the more worth it to work hard now and really enjoy my time with you when I get home.

Love you,
Elder Lund