Elder Hirsch Mission Emails

   The most significant progress made this week was that we got an awesome facebook reference of a family who is very open to the gospel! Let's hope they read the Book of Mormon before our next visit! We also visited some less active members and found a woman with an 11 year-old son who is not baptized, so we're going to start teaching him.    I am loving my mission, and we have been very busy, but not too much happened this week, so I'm keeping it short. Please go read any past emails you may have missed!  We had a very spiritually powerful Zone conference. I love my mission president, he has taught me that I have much more to learn about prayer. For example, you can talk to God about anything, and you can use the spirit to know what to pray for.   These scriptures greatly strengthened my desire to be exactly obedient: Alma 26:22, D&C 4   Love ya'll! Facebook page! MisionMexicoPueblaNorte Google Photos (scroll to the bottom or hit the ch...

Adam Hirsch   < adam.hirsch@missionary.org >   The truth is that the last two weeks have been relatively slow, but for Apizaco slow is actually very eventful. The people who are making the most progress towards baptism are Sophia/Monserat, and Alberto. Sophia and Monserat are sisters, and the only thing holding them back from baptism is that they don't quite feel ready, so we'll keep teaching them and hopefully they'll get baptized soon. Alberto is the man who randomly stopped us outside of his work while he was on a smoke break. We've visited with him a few times since and he's making great progress. He already has a good understanding of the doctrine, and he always comes to church! We will teach him the Word of Wisdom the next time we visit so he can begin preparing for baptism!   Yesterday (Sunday), I gave a talk. I think they just asked us to talk after someone canceled, because they only let us know a few days before, but I managed to scramble to...

  January 9th   Boy, do I wish that I knew how to introduce the Book of Mormon to people before my mission. Right now I have the advantage that many people in Apizaco are looking for the truth, but still, it's rather simple. You just explain that, like the bible, it's a record of the teachings and stories of ancient prophets, but it's about prophets in the Americas. We love reading the bible, but unlike the bible, the Book of Mormon is completely unccorrupted and contains the compiled Doctrine of Christ. Then you explain that the book contains the history of when Jesus Christ visited the Americas, after his resurrection, and invite the person to read a few pages (3 Nephi 11) and find a way to get back in contact with them.   a newfound curiosity about the Book of Mormon was one of the things that grew my testimony the most during MTC. I have had a testimony of the Book of Mormon for a while because I prayed to know if it is true, and you can always pray for the witne...

One of my concerns about going to Mexico was that everyone would be Catholic here. And it certainly is a problem that there are many people here stuck in their traditions, of worshiping Saints and images of virgins. If you don't think worshiping idols and images is a problem in the modern world, you should see all the versions of Mary and idolatrous images of Christ they have. They somehow made worshiping Christ into worshiping an image.    Additionally, almost no one here actually knows how to pray, only how to recite prayers. One of the most often repeated is The Lord's Prayer, which is quite ironic because in the verses right before the lord's prayer, it says, "use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do... after this manner therefore pray ye:" The lord's prayer is an amazing example of how to pray, but it totally defeats the purpose to recite it. For this reason we teach almost every new person how to pray: 1.) Address your Heavenly Father  2.) Ask for ...