Feliz Navidad

So this email is gonna be really short because I literally email like
4 days ago but it was a really good 4 days because we had a lot of
lesson that came through, in the past couple of days we went super
hard on lessactives and we were able to meet with so many of them it
was great! I do t think that we had any dead time where we didn't have
anything to do, pretty much almost every hour was filled up with
something really productive to do and one of the days we were super
busy that we ended up being late to pretty much all the appointments
by like 30 minutes, some people got frustrated but it's better then
not having anything to do. Also yesterday I was able to confirm nick a
member so that was also a really good experience. Pretty much it for
this week and also the reason I'm writing today is because the mission
changed the pday to Monday instead of Wednesday's, anyways merry
Christmas and talk to y'all later.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Una semana lenta

Don't have much to say this week expect that it was ok, most of the
lessons that we set up cancelled and almost the whole week we were
just trying to find new people to teach, we were gonna do a apf this
week as well because this week was a little slow but we never got
around to it, hopefully we can do it this next week except it's
getting colder and colder so idk but we were able to find 2 new good
people to teach and we also got in contact with some less actives that
we haven't been able to talk to in a while so that's good. Almendra
and John both got confirmed this week but Nick didn't because he had a
soccer game😒 but that's ok because repentance is real and he will get
confirmed this next Sunday. That's pretty much sums up his week,
looking forward to this next upcoming week because we have some good
stuff set up as well as a Mission Christmas devotional on Friday so
that should be good.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

💦👀

Hey so this past Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and it was
awesome! Also i mentioned before that we would have a baptism and we
did, it was this last Sunday and it went really well, a lot of people
came including a couple of people who were not members, but also a lot
of their family came down form Danbury, Almendra John and Nick have a
lot of cousins that are members and they were all excited that the
cousins were able to make it for their baptism. I baptized nick, elder
Molina baptized John and president Gomez(who is not in the picture
because he took forever to change) baptized Almendra. After the
baptism we eat a whole bunch of food that the members brought and it
was really delicious.

We visited with Almendra John and Nick yesterday and that all said
that they feel closer to God now that they are baptized, we also
talked to the mom about baptism and she wants to get baptized but she
said to us that she still doesn't feel completely ready for it, so
we're not pushing it just letting her take her time, I know that one
day in the future she will be baptized.

3 más bautismos💦

Hello everybody, hope that everybody enjoyed thanksgiving, i know that
I did, for thanksgiving we were invited for 2 dinner appointments and
as usual they just take your plate and load it up and pretty much
expect you to eat it all😒 I was stuffed, but it was great!🙂 and the
food was amazing and I got to meet a lot of new really cool people.

So this week we are having a baptism!!! Actually 3 baptism Almandra,
John and Nick the kids of Victoria are getting baptized this Sunday,
they are super ready and we are super excited for them, Nick who is
the youngest asked me to baptized him si this will be another super
cool experience. Victoria the mom still feels like she's not ready but
she is really close and should be baptized in the next coming weeks.

We found this really cool lady, her name is Margarita and her son
Diego, they are Colombian🇨🇴the first Colombians that I taught but
the are really legit, we had the first lesson with them yesterday on
the plan of salvation and they really liked it and were we're able
leave them with a Book of Mormon and a reading assignment.🙏🏼📖
Pretty much it for this week

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Happy Thanksgiving!!!🦃🦃🦃

Happy thanksgiving everybody, shout out to Elsie for getting
baptized!! That's really awesome.

So this week was good, it has been really cold, in fact there was a
couple of days where we had snow.

We had a couple of really spiritual lessons with a couple of our
investigators, one of them was the Paucar family, we are really
excited for them, they are all progressing really good and are gonna
be ready for December 4th, unfortunately Victoria's sister will not
get baptized because we kinda lost contact with her and she doesn't
answer our phone calls/texts we hope that  everything's ok and we will
get in contact again soon.

So this week we have been looking for service like crazy because the
theme for December is service, serve in 25 ways over 25 days, so we
went to every single church in white plains asking for service, it was
a pretty cool experience to visit some other different churches but
unfortunately we weren't able to find anything in fact on of the
churches that we went to there was a lady who got really mad at us
because she thought we were gonna preach and convert people or
something like that, we tried to explain that we were just looking for
service but she wasn't having any of it, she just yelled at us, so we
left. But we did find a pretty cool service place where they load big
bags of food every Thursday and Friday and we are excited to go over
there to help out.

Had a primary program this Sunday and so we were combined with the
English ward westchester 1 and that was cool as well because the
chapel and the overflow was completely full, there was so many people
that they didn't have enough seats and a lot of people were standing
in the back, me and elder Molina didn't even have space to be in the
chapel so we were outside but it was good to see that a lot of people
came it kinda reminded me of church in Gilbert where there's was a lot
of people every Sunday.

Hope everybody has a really good thanksgiving tomorrow.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

New Cycle and New Companion

Hello everybody,

So yesterday was the start of a new cycle and this week was the last
week of elder Richards' mission, he went home today and it was a
little bit sad for me just because I really loved working with that
man, he is awesome, but I know that this cycle will also be great
because it what you make of it.

My new companion is elder Molina, he is also cool, he is still pretty
new only been out for 5 cycles but he knows a lot and has got the hang
of it already, I'm excited to work with him and to see what this cycle
brings:)

I just wanna let everybody know that I really have been enjoying
serving a mission, I have met many wonderful people that I have been
able to help and that also have helped me in many ways, I love this
area and the people that are here. I just wanna say that I know that
the Book of Mormon is true and I know that Joseph smith was a prophet
of God and that he restored the truth back to the earth. I grateful
for the decision that I made to serve a mission and I know that this
gospel really blesses people.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

3 more

Hello everybody, out week this week has been good, we were busy
everyday for pretty much the whole day, and that's the way I like it!
We were finally able to give out all the thank you cards and cookies
for to all the members who helped with the wedding for Edwin and
Teresa, it took us a while.

We had a branch temple trip and we went with Edwin to do baptism and
that was a super cool experience because me and elder Richards did
conformations and that was my first time doing that, as we were
finishing up they told us that there's one other lady who needs to do
family names so Edwin was able to be baptized and confirmed for this
lady's family names and she was really happy and super grateful that
Edwin did that, it was a really good experience for Edwin because he
now knows for sure the importance of temple work and is in the process
of finding his family names so that we can go tomorrow and do that
along with Teresa.

Had a great lesson with the Paucar family, they have a Bap date for
the 4th and this visit was awesome was because we were able to set Bap
dates with her sister Jackie and her 2 daughters after we taught the
plan of salvation, this family is super legit and already has a lot of
friends in the church and they will get baptized on December 4th for
sure.

Was on a split with elder Hinkley one last time because he is leaving
in a week and that was a lot of fun, it reminded me of our times in
Middletown, elder Hinkley was a lot of fun to serve with I'm gonna
miss him.

Love you guys and I just wanna say that I care about all the emails/
letters that I have gotten before, sorry if it seemed like it was
something different and I didn't reply to some of you but I really did
and do appreciate it.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Hey everybody,

So this week we had a pretty good week, we didn't have a whole lot of
stuff going on this week, we just tried to contact and find people,
mainly less actives.

Set some baptismal dates for December 4th with the Paucar family,
Victoria is the mom and almendra, John and nick are her kinds, they
are all excited to get baptized and to learn more about the gospel,
they came to church this week but since we have the sacrament meeting
the last hour they were not able to stay for it, they only stayed for
the classes. Something cool that we found out is that Victoria has her
own Peruvian restaurant and we are pretty stocked to go one day and
eat some Peruvian food.

Edwin and Teresa got their interviews to go to the temple this
saturaday, were are excited to go with them, Edwin still needs to get
the priesthood so we are gonna do that on Thursday.

This week we went on splits with the Yonkers elder and that was a good
experience as well, while we were walking down to one of the lessons
we passed a street where they were filming a movie, so that was pretty
cool, we didn't find out what movie they were filming but it looked
pretty sweet.

That's all for this week.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

📽📽

So this week was really good, but it's been getting colder and colder.

To start out on Sunday we had a really good day, it was Edwin and
Teresa's conformation, Elder Richards confirmed them, it went well,
right now we are working with them to get them ready to go to the
temple to take some temple names so that they can do some baptisms.

This week we also got a super solid referral from some members more
upstate, well it was actually from Danbury Connecticut. There's a
member up there that has family living down here in white plains and
she referred her sister to us, the sisters name is Victoria, and she
is super legit, we already met with her and her family 2 times and
both of the lessons were really good, we teach the parents in Spanish
but the kids in English so they can understand better, we also teach
Victoria's sister and her sister has kids also, so both of the times
we taught them we had to teach 7 people at one time, at first it was
kinda hard because everybody has all kinds of questions but right now
they are all on the same page and they are all reading and praying,
they also told us that they are planning on coming to church and all
of them accepted to be baptized. The reason Victoria wanted to be
taught by the missionaries is because she saw how good her sister kids
were the ones that are members and so that how she wants her kids to
be also, so be good examples to everybody.

Met with our other Bap date Robert he has also been reading in the
Book of Mormon and is planning on coming to church, next time we are
planning to meet with his parents also.

Today we went to sleepy hollow cemetery and that was pretty cool.

Early baptism👪💦🔥

Hi todos,

Just sending a quick email to you guys because i was not able to email
at all today because we were in the city the entire day.

An update on this week, the wedding for Edwin y Teresa was great, the
branch really stepped up and did a lot to make it a good one, it did
take a lot of planning and calling and other stuff on our part it was
really stressful but it was fun at the same time.

Other thing that happened was that we had an early baptism! That's
right Edwin and Teresa were baptized the next day, this past Sunday
and that was also really good, both of Edwin's parents came to the
baptism (they are not members) hopefully we can teach them.

Yesterday we met with both of them to talk about priesthood so that
both of them can go to do baptism next month with the branch and they
expressed to us how good they feel and that everybody is noticing
something different in them, they are really an amazing family and I
am super happy for them.😊

💍👫

It's been a really exciting but a pretty stressful week. Exciting
because we are having a wedding this Saturday (Edwin and Teresa are
finally getting married) but stressful because we are having a wedding
this Saturday and we only had one week to prepare for it, usually
people plan weddings like months ahead, but I think we got things
under control right now and we have a lot of help from a lot of great
people. Were a super grateful for them!

On Sunday we had the opportunity to give a couple of blessings, so we
got a call from our zone leaders that one of their investigators kids
were in the hospital and they wanted us to go over there, so it turns
out that there was 4 year old girl who had a pretty bad burn on her
leg and she was gonna get surgery so we gave her a blessing and it was
a really cool experience, the parents and her family were really
grateful for that, we haven't heard anything from them since Sunday
but I hope that they are doing good.

The other blessing was right after this other one and it was to a 3
month old baby, and that was an amazing experience also, so the mother
of this baby got ahold of our branch president and so he told us to go
over there, it was really convenient because we were already there and
so after we gave this blessing to this baby the room was just filled
with the spirit.

Some other miracles that we had was that we started to wake up a
little bit early so that we could go workout with one of our less
active members and after we work out with him we read a chapter in the
Book of Mormon and the miracle part of this is that this was actually
his idea and he wanted to do this, so we invite him to the gym in our
apartment complex and then read with him in the lobby, so far it's
been really good.

We also set a baptismal date with one of our investigators his name is
Robert. We set it with him for November 12 so hopefully he will be
ready to get baptized then.

So ya that's pretty much it for this week

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Double Dipping

This week was really good, we had a lot of good stuff happen and we
had some changes in the zone and district because we had transfers but
I'm still staying in the westchester zone tho. Its crazy that I have
been in this area for 3 months already because it still feels like I
just got here.

So elder nutall left, he was really sad about it because he wanted to
be here one more cycle to see Edwin and Teresa get married and
baptized, but the good thing is that President Smith let him come back
to the wedding and to the baptism and the cool thing is that he
actually gets to baptize Teresa because she wanted him to baptize her,
so that will be exciting.

So I got a new companion this cycle and this is crazy because my new
companion is actually one of my old companions, its Elder Richards my
trainer!! When I heard that he was coming down here to serve with me I
got super happy because I loved serving with him down in the Bronx, it
was awesome, he is by far my favorite companion to serve with and I'm
really excited for this cycle!

So this cycle started out on a really good note because we went to the
temple openhouse in Hartford Connecticut this morning with Edwin and
Teresa and it was a blast! The ride was about 1.5 hours and we had
some great conversations, I don't know how many times I will say this
but they are the coolest people EVER! The temple was beautiful and
both of them really enjoyed the tour, the parts that they liked the
most were the celestial room and the baptismal font.

Hope everybody is enjoying their weeks and the good weather.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Este semana fue mejor!

This week was by far a better week then the last, we saw a lot of
miracles with our investigators and members that we work with.

To start out we taught a fair amount of lessons this week although we
were not able to meet our zone goal of 3 member presents a week we
still had some success teaching people.

We found this lady her name is Yajayra, she's a super cool lady from
Peru that we found by looking up her sister that we tracted into a
long time ago, we got a return appointment and then we had a super
good lesson with her Sunday night, it was so cool and the spirit was
super strong, we left her with a Book of Mormon and she told us that
she will start reading it that night, also she doesn't work on
Saturday and Sunday so that a good thing because she can come to
church.

Speaking of church Edwin brought his brother this Sunday with him to
church it was really cool, he wants his brother to learn  about the
gospel so we are gonna start teaching him soon as well.

Went on splits to Yonkers this week with the other elders in my
district and that was cool, we had some cool miracles happen over
there, I really liked going to Yonkers because it reminded me of my
time when I was in the Bronx, I hope I get to serve there some day.

We started English class this week, we are gonna try to do it every
Tuesday and Thursday at like 7:30-9 so we made a whole bunch of fliers
and put them up all over the place, and immediately people started to
ask us about it when they saw the flier, we also had a lot of people
call us in the next few days asking us about it, I was super pumped to
do it because I remember doing it in the Bronx and that was a lot of
fun but ever since I left the Bronx we haven't done anything like
that. Yesterday was the first day that we started teaching
andddddddd..... nobody showed up, hopefully we have better luck with
people coming out tomorrow.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Sorriest email yet!

This week was good, we didn't have a whole lot of set lessons like we usually do so it was kinda slow, but we did see a lot of miracles from the lessons that we did have because basically all of them were member presents and that's way better then just other lessons.

Other then that nothing much happened, this is the most sorriest email ever. 

Love, 

Elder Pugmire 

Gran semana!

We had a really good week, we had a lot of member presents and we
taught a fair amount of other lessons as well.

Had a great lesson with Edwin and Teresa on Thursday and we brought
with us the senior missionaries The Huneycutts they were great, the
lesson was mostly in English so that they can understand what's going
on but they are trying to learn how to speak Spanish, they did great.
At the end of the lesson we found out that Teresa was not feeling well
so we gave her a blessing so that she can feel better, Edwin was
really impressed and he asked a lot of questions about the priesthood,
he really wants to get baptized so he can get it. Also both of them
came to church this week as well.

We found this other family Antonio and Demia that are also super cool,
they are a older couple that we just found tracting that let us in one
day and so we are now teaching them. We had a good lesson with them on
the Book of Mormon and we also had a member with us at that lesson,
that made it a lot better. They are praying to see if it's true.

Also found this other cool lady Jolly she's from Guatemala, when we
found her her husband already met with the missionaries before and so
she already had a Book of Mormon, we talked to her about it and
invited her to read it, we were not able to meet with her husband tho.

Went on a split with elder brown my Mtc comp who is my zone leader
now, that was also pretty cool it was our first time working together
since the Mtc and its cool to see how much we have progressed and how
much we both have learned, we had a great day on his area he's a
really good missionary.

That's about it.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

La Vaina🇩🇴

Hey everyone so this week we didn't have too much going on in fact we
lost a family, they no longer want us to come over, so that's too bad
but over all this week has been good, on Sunday Edwin came to church
again and he was actually chosen to say a prayer to begin sacrament,
he did a great job, Teresa didn't come because she had work. They are
the most solid investigator ever and I forgot to say it before but
they did get the letter.

School started this week over here so everyone is super busy which
makes it kinda hard to find people or to have members come out with
us, but we do have a couple of people who are always down to go to
lessons.

Our mission just stared to do the reading the Book of Mormon in 100
days again and I'm excited to start doing that, this time I'm gonna
read it with just one question in mind that I want an answer to, I
don't know the question yet and we are starting tomorrow so I need to
think of one pronto.

We are also starting to do English class again because we had some
investigators say that they will come so hopefully this gives us an
opportunity to find/teach some more people, help them get closer to
Christ and help them make a little bit more money.

Can't think of anything else  to write but hopefully next weeks email
is better.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

🏜🏙

Good week this week, had interviews with president, I always look
forward to having them just because our president is really awesome
and super smart so it's cool to talk to him one on one.

Had to push back the date for Edwin and Teresa's wedding and marriage
because Edwin's mom doesn't come down from Peru until the 26th and
they want her to be here for it, but recently we have been talking to
them about temples and they really wanna go to the temple open house
down in Hartford Connecticut, they actually wanted to go tomorrow but
it doesn't open until the 29th so they are gonna have to wait until
then and something else I found out is that we can get permission to
go with them to the open house even though it's out of the mission
boundaries, I was really excited when president said that, so we are
for sure going with them if they still wanna go on the 29th.

We had a super solid week of work this week, we taught a lot of people
and we were busy pretty much everyday, we also went on splits with the
APs, I stayed in our area and we had some cool miracles happen, we
were able to contact a family that we have not been able to talk to
for a while, it turns out that they stopped meeting with us because
they heard some stuff from the JWs, they just talk crap about
everybody, but we cleared up the problems and now they are back on
track. Also found a cool family who is really interested in learning,
we are going to teach them again tomorrow.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

🌳🐒👌🏼

This week we worked hard, we tried to do a lot of finding and we tried
a little bit of street contacting but it's just super weird and
everybody was giving us weird looks so we just stuck to knocking doors
and we found some pretty cool people, one of them is this guy named
Robert and he was really interested in what we had to share, he
immediately pulled up 3 chairs and we just sat in his front porch
teaching him, it was cool.

Also ran into some crazy guy who wants to do missionary work with us
because we told him that we are Christians, he thinks everyone is evil
and that the governments is run by the devil and that we shouldn't
trust anyone, we were trying to leave but for a little while he
wouldn't let us go because he said that we needed to listen to him
that's the reason why we knocked on his door. This guy was nuts! I got
scared for a little bit at first.

Gave a talk in sacrament meeting on service it was pretty fun, giving
talks in Spanish is a lot easier then English for me because if I make
a mistake or something the members already know that I'm a gringo so
it's ok, but if it's in English then it's a different story.

Haven't been to the temple for a while now but today we were playing
basketball at the church and president saw us playing because his
house is literally like 10ft away from the church after everybody left
me and elder nutall had a cool chat with him and now he is taking us
out tomorrow morning to the temple and breakfast so that's sweet.

Also tomorrow after the temple we are gonna go get a marriage license
with Edwin at the courthouse, so that hey can get married and then
baptized. We are super excited for them.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Westchester round ✌🏼️

Transfer call were this week I'm still staying with elder nutall. I
have realized that y'all probably don't even know what elder nutall
looks like and that's because I only took like 3 pictures this cycle
but I will send them in this email so y'all know.

This week we had a decent week it wasn't super busy but we made the
best out of it, we did a lot of finding this week mainly because we
can't set return appointments with anyone except like 2 families, and
we found a couple of people that seemed pretty cool. We also went on
splits this week with the district leader, elder nutall went to
Yonkers and I stayed here with elder Olson, we had a great split we
were able to teach a couple of great lessons and found this one guy
named Ramon, we will visit him tomorrow.

Edwin and Teresa are doing great, both of them came to church this
week, it was Teresa's first time, she said that she really liked it.
We also had a super good lesson with them last Thursday on marriage,
we brought the branch president with us to help us and at the end we
set a goal with them to get married by September 10, so if everything
goes according to plan they could get baptized this cycle, right now
we are working with them to get their marriage license.

Some pictures here

🇲🇽🇵🇪

Don't have too much time to write but also don't have too much to write about.

Here's a quick report on our most progressing investigators Edwin and
Teresa, we had a super good FHE lesson with them on Thursday and we
talked about families, Carolina the member who had us over for the FHE
helped us out a lot, she had some really good input along with her
returned missionary son, Edwin and Teresa really liked doing FHE.

On Sunday Edwin was able to make it to church with his son Aaron, he
asked his boss for a day off and he let him go, Sunday meeting were
great! Unfortunately Teresa couldn't get work off but she said she
will try this week. Later that night we had another lesson with them
and we talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and read 2 nephi 31, in
the lesson Edwin expressed to us that he really want to get baptized
and knows this church is true but Teresa still has doubts about why
they need to get married before being baptized so we are having
another lesson with them tomorrow and we are bringing President
Gomez(branch pres.) with us to talk about the law of chastity and
eternal marriage and stuff like that, it's gonna be great!

That's basically the best stuff from this past week.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

3️⃣6️⃣3️⃣

Happy one year mark to me!! In 2 days it will be one years since I left.

Like I mentioned in the last letter that this week was gonna be slow
and it was because of all the meetings that we had, I think it was
like 5 and they lasted for a pretty long time but I learned a lot from
them, there's this one meeting that was focused on technology and how
we can better use our iPads and skype and Facebook to have more
success as missionaries to spread the gospel, it really opened up my
mind and gave me some good suggestions on how I can better use those
tools to help others come closer to Christ, in the meeting they said
that like almost 1/2 the people in the world have access to Internet
and these days it's so easy to share something about the church on
social media all we have to do is click some buttons it's as easy as
that.

Our investigators are doing good, Edwin and Teresa are so cool, we had
a lesson with them on Monday and we were planning on talking about
tithing but then Edwin just had a whole bunch of questions and it just
ended up being a Q&A for like 40 minutes but we were able to teach
them more about the plan of salvation because that's what he mainly
had questions on. They have a testimony of this gospel but they have a
difficult work schedule and so they can't come to church, they have
been before but not since I got here, so out goals with them are to
come to church and to get married because they are also not married
and they have a kid, we are actually having a FHE at a members house
tomorrow night and we are gonna talk about families, I'm pretty
excited for that.

Something I have become good at is teaching the restoration lesson
because that's pretty much the only lesson we get to teach before the
person disappears or is no longer interested, we have found a couple
of people that we have set return appointments for so we'll see how
that turns out.

Had 2 investigators at church this week so that was pretty cool, it
was a daughter of a couple that we teach and her friend, I think they
enjoyed it and learned a lot, we have a lesson with them this week so
hopefully all 7 of them can come to church, that would be sweet.

The sacrament meeting was pretty long because the 3rd speaker started
to talk at like 2:15 and church is suppose to be over at 2 so we
didn't end up finishing until 2:45, so we had extra 45 minutes of
church, I'm not complaining because it's more time that our
investigators spend at church but you could just see that everybody
was ready to go.

Excited to see what this week brings.

Love,

Elder Pugmire