Its been quite a busy week. I’m extremely tired this week. So, I’ll just start off from where I left off! Last Monday we went to Teotihuacan and it was really cool there. Our whole District went as a District activity. Elder Williams and his companion, Elder Bolanos slept over the night before and I had to share my twin bed with an Elder who is 6’ 8. And that was an adventure I never want to do again! Then we got up really early like at six in the morning and we left our house about 6:30. We got on a Combes and we went to Teotihuacan, which is not very far from my area. When we got there, we met up with a member who works there as a tour guide and he showed us the significance of Teotihuacan and how it relates to the Book of Mormon. It was really cool because Elder Bednar talked to us in the CCM and afterwards, he went up here to visit Teotihuacan. So, if that’s not something that shows you it’s a historical church site, then I don’t know what is! Out of all of ruins in Mexico and he went to Teotihuacan!
So, while walking around, our guide explained a lot of stuff to us. First off, he explained the significance of numbers and everything else that were on the pyramids. On the temple of the stars, which is the smallest pyramid, there is a snake looking thing with feathers. Our guide told us that is supposed to represent Jesus Christ. It is kind of hard to understand but I guess people talk about seeing the “Good Snake” because if you remember Moses putting up his staff with a snake on it, it was a “Good Snake” because if they had faith and just looked at the snake they would be healed. Most people think that snakes in the Bible only represent bad things like Satan but actually there are both good and bad snakes! I don’t really know why they referrer to him as a snake but, Jesus in this case is the representation of the snake that was on Moses’ staff.
Now the other image that you see is a crocodile and that is weird, but let me explain that to you. Now a crocodile does two things when it leaves the water. It goes out to eat or find food, a.k.a find the promised land and also have its seed or have its babies. The Crocodiles on the pyramids represent Lehi. Lehi left his home and went looking for the promised land or food like a crocodile and then he also had his seed with him and had more on the way to the promised land. So yeah, that’s how the Native Americans distinguish him. It’s actually in the Book of Mormon multiple times if you pay attention. If you look at the picture of when Christ came to the America’s, there’s a temple on the left side of the picture and you’ll see the crocodile symbol. It’s the same symbol that are on the temples. That is Lehi and then again it is found in the picture of Samuel the Laminate on the wall. It’s the same symbols that are on the temples/pyramids that I took pictures of. So that’s cool. The other thing the tour guide showed us is how acoustic it was there. You can clap your hands and hear it echo off the walls and if someone stood in the middle and talked, everyone around could hear them. The last thing about Teotihuacan is the Sun Temple which was the biggest pyramid. Notice the stairs. The first set of stairs on both sides are across from each other, this represents premortal life. Then the next set of stairs are parallel and combine which represents mortal life. These stairs then split off into two separate stair cases which represents paradise and prison. Then the stairs combine into one stair case, which represents the straight and narrow path to exaltation. So that was cool and makes a lot of sense. That’s why I think Teotihuacan could be where Jesus Christ went when he visited the America’s or at least one of the places. There are a lot of carvings that I think can be found in the Book of Mormon and the 3 temples (Sun, Moon and Stars), sounds a lot like the Celestial, Terrestrial and Telestial kingdoms. Finally, if you look at satellite pictures of Teotihuacan and the constellation Orion’s Belt, they are in the same shape as Orion’s Belt. The three stars. So yeah, that was Teotihuacan.
I don’t have a lot to report on our investigators this week because I was on exchanges almost everyday this week. I went on exchanges with Elder Bolanos, Elder William's companion. I don’t know how they work exchanges everywhere else, but here you swap companions with another set of Elders, you work all day in that area and then sleep in the missionary’s bed you swapped with and they sleep in yours! The next morning you wake up and go back to your own companion. I did that Tuesday with Elder Bolanos and we went and taught Gloria. I didn’t know that much about Gloria, but she was really interested in the Church. She had her YouTube pulled up so we showed her some Church videos on YouTube. And we did Hola with her. Hola is just basically pray, read and come to church. Basically, its kind of a transition lesson to the next lesson. We searched some scriptures and that was fun. But I guess Elder Williams and Elder Bolanos got a call later saying that Gloria’s husband no longer wants her taking the lessons which is really sad because I believe she was really ready for the Gospel.
On Wednesday, I went on exchanges with our Zone leader, Elder Alasko. So, the same thing all over again. I went over to their house; his companion came here. I slept in his bed he slept in mine. When I was with him, we did a lot of contacting on the streets and we had a lot of people that were interested in what we had to say. My contacting is getting better, that’s for sure. We taught Lesson 2, which was really good and I actually was able to chime in with a few points which is sometimes really frustrating because I’m still learning Spanish and I don’t know what to say. But I did really good this time. So that was nice! Then we had an appointment with a member. Our days are really kinda fast because we are so busy.
On Saturday, we had a few appointments but I spent a little bit of time practicing teaching the discussions to another Elder in our District. Now I know that sounds kind of boring but for the last few days, we have not been allowed to do a lot of street contacting! For the past few days, there has been a problem going on with a couple that I guess are ex-military and they have been around our streets, like actually our streets and they have been taking people and cutting their limbs off, killing them and putting them in trash bags and throwing them on the street. Yep its creepy, but President Kimball has told us we are no longer able to contact houses during anytime of the day and we have to be off the streets by six o’clock until they are caught!
As an update to our rat situation, we set aside all morning to clean our house. Its finally clean and we are going to keep it clean but if we keep getting rats, we are moving. We don’t want to do that because then we would have to pack everything up just to go somewhere else!
Well, that was this week pretty much. We do have a baptism this week that I’m excited for with Manuel. It should go well. We’re excited to keep teaching and watch people prepare for baptism. We keep getting lots of references. We are working hard and its nice because when I got here we didn’t have any investigators but now things are starting to go pretty well. Thanks for all your prayers and support. I love being a missionary!
Love you all,
Elder Fawcett
|
|
|
Teotihuacan
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
