Elder Todd Grilliot's Mission Blog

I think i´m leaving centenario hey elder meade is going to get a son today in the mission. So we will be in a trio for one week and then i will probably leave centenario, that makes me pretty sad because i have really loved centenario, this has been a special place to me, I´ve really had a lot of joy here.  Today marks my 8 month mark in the mission, honestly it has gone super fast.  We found some really wonderful people this week and made a lot of progress with our investigators, really exciting things are going on in this area and the ward is so awesome. sigh. It will be hard to leave, but i feel confident that the lord knows what he is doing and has prepared a work for me in another area. 

I learned something about repentance this week Teaching the gospel of jesus christ is my favorite thing, like faith, repentance, and baptism, and as a missionary, you talk with alot of people about the same stuff alot, but everytime we teach it, the spirit teaches me something new. This week i lea…

it snowed this week! it hasn´t snowed here in 20 years, but this week it got really cold and it snowed all through the night on friday.  we live above this member lady and she is really awesome and kind and she has a grand daughter who is 5 years old and her name is abby and abby´s christmas wish this year was that she would see snow, and she was soo excited and the hermana made us tacos for breakfast and we played in the snow with her granddaughter and we snowball fought and she made a little snowman, she is super cute. she sang jinglebells in english and did a little dance, all the snow had melted by like 10 o clock, but they still canceled school.  Mexicans are a little superstitious about some health things, the bishop gave us doctor masks because he said that when you breath in cold air it goes to your lungs and gives you pnemonia, and i´m like, "dude it´s like 40 degrees, i don´t need a doctor mask". but i apreciated the thought.  more cristmas miracles, we got gifted…

hey guys, overall, all in all, looking at the big picture here, i had a great week. 
some freaky dreams i had i had some really freaky dreams this week, i don´t remember alot of the details, but i remember that in alot of my dreams the world ended, or almost ended, like my dreams were of problems of unreal proportions, like, epic dreams, legendary dreams, larger than life super dreams, in one dream, i armed a nuculear bomb, hid in a bunker, and waited until it blew up and destroyed everything, and i think people were trying to stop me, but i just did it anyway, and then i came out of the bunker, and i talked to my family, and then i armed the bomb again, and i went in the bunker like i did before, and there were like 3 minutes left on the bomb, and i was like, "wait why do i want to blow up the city? i like the city." and so i walk out of the bunker and disarm the bomb. weird stuff. Earlier i had a dream about the british sherlock from the series, and henry b eyering, and to…

man i don´t have any notes but i´m just going to think really hard and pull a beautiful email out of thin air.  This week i got better from my sick. i´m not sick anymore basically. but i can´t really remember anything super eventful from this week. I´ve been feeling low on energy as i´ve been recovering from the fever that i had.  mmm let me talk about wild dogs. There are a lot of wild dogs in mexico! and they are like kind of all abused and so they don´t like people but they also really want love at the same time. like all the dogs secretly want to be petted, but they just aren´t sure if you are going to throw rocks at them, and so they hide or get mad sometimes, the best approach i have found to dealing with wild dogs is just to not make eye contact with them, then they know that i plan on just leaving them alone, but you kind of get a sence for the dogs that feel insecure and the dogs that want love. smaller dogs are really insecure but they´re not very threatening. One time i al…

yeah really though i am not having a great week. i have had a  fever since thursday. i had one or two really rough nights where i couldn´t sleep. We´ll be going to the doctor tomorrow. i would like to come off as optomistically well humored about the sick stuff, but i also really want your pity too.
two funny things that happened this week.  the worst night of the sick was friday i think, and i just had a heck of a time. but when morning came i was wandering around in my underwear looking for something to eat, and elder meade was like "whayt the hey?? Elder your underwear is on backwards." I looked down and realized that it was true. "waking up with my underwear backwards is the perfect description of the night i just had." Elder meade thought that was super funny, he´s a very laughy guy.  Anotherthing is that when i get sick i ofter get weird dreams, one dream made me wake up from laughing in my sleep. We were in district meeting and our zone leader was giving a l…

Me and Elder Higgins my childhood hero. I imagine that every missionary that arrives in a foreign land has one missionary in there district that really pulls them through those first couple months, for me Elder Higgins is that homie.


Companion Elder Meade (10/16/17) me and elder gomez climbing up the hill. haha look at his face. a panoramic from the top of the hill. May pancho villa protect this city.
Here is a picture of the street gorditas and the magic they do all up in there. A gordita is basically a stuffed tortilla.

Good morning america, i have some words for you.
let me start general and then i will get more specific as i go, that just seems good to me right now.
generally speaking I am an american boy who came to mexico with a dream.  God has an army of relief society sisters that he employs to feed me and take very good care of me, often when i thank one of the sisters for a rad meal, i like to recognize that in God´s great plan for me, he included in that plan that i would eat a lot of rad meals in mexico. i accepted that plan and i greatfully eat my fill of tacos and pozole. I think there is a lot of beauty in the little things. like, to think of all the work that had to go into my tortilla, some farmer had to work dang hard to grow that corn and some workers had to process it into flour and then dough and then some one has to deliver the corn to the tortillaria so they can put it in their machine and make beautiful tortillas, then some hermana walks to the tortillaria and buys a kilo with th…

Outside out Apartment at night

hey really short because i wasted all my time playing helicopter in the google homescreen. jk, i had very important missionary stuff to doooo

This was an awesome week me and elder meade are so dang focused let me tell you kids.

Elder Meade (newest Companion)
 My Old Zone in Nazas,  Love these Guys!!



Elder Grilliot, october 30th. 2017 oh woow tomorrow is halloween. I just realized. Here in mexico they celebrate two holidays around this time of year. the first is halloween, but it´s not as big as american halloween, the stores give out candy to the kids but nothing else.  the day of the daed is coming the other holiday that i think is a lot bigger is the day of the dead. On the day of the dead all the people in mexico pay respect to their dead. They go visit the graves and build them a little shrine to pay their respects, they do things that they remember the dead person liked, they cook their favorite foods, and things like that.  Something really cool about this holiday, we have a cemetary in our area, it´s a huge cemetary, it´s probably nicer than most that i have seen in the u.s. and everybody goes to the cemetary on the day of the dead. So i´m excited to see and experience this part of mexican culture. it´s …

This week i got to know elder meade and we did some great work together. We taught with the spirit and have a lot of progression in our area. I feel like the best missionary that i´ve ever been with elder meade. The members in our area are really wonderful. 
Elder Grilliot

This was my first week in my new area, centenario, elder gomez is my comp for another week and then he is going home to guatamala.  Our area is really big, which for me is cool, i like the change, because my last area nazas, was really small and i knew it all really well. It feels really refreshing to have a new area, i have a buch of new friends to make and people who don´t know me but are excited to know me. There is a great big hill in the middle of our area, and we climbed it one night as we were walking home and we could see all of gomez and it was really beautiful. It gave me perspective on how big the city really is. Also it`s starting to cool off a bit, it`s still hot all the time, but it`s not like painfully hot, i`m excited for january. haha Elder Gomez is really wonderful, he is spontaneous and excited and  likes to talk. He plays the uke and treats everyone like family.
the boiler This week Elder Gomez showed me how to light the boiler, we have hot water which is amazing, …

Earthquake
nanciwg@gmail.comSep 21
to Todd You ok!?!?
Did you feel it. Yikes! Kinda freaking me out for you!

Sent from my iPhone

okay gang. hold on tight. This email is hot hot hot.
This will literally be the greatest email that i have ever written. Let us begin.
The 15th of Spetember The 15th is a great big holiday here in mexico. It is the Day of independence of mexico, similar to our fourth of July. On Thursday we had a ward activity which saw super successful in my opinion, activities aren´t always super conductive to missionary work, but with the right ingredients they can be very effective. We walked out of that party with a bunch of new appointments and people to visit and a large amount of horchata and some other mysterious drink that is really goood. There was a flag ceremony and we sang the nacional anthem, i didn´t know any of the words but it didn´t matter, I sung that song in such a way that any mexican would be proud.
Letty Letty is an investigator who is so sweet and kind to us. I just wanted to share this little kindness. She recently moved here into a new house and she is searching for work and s…

Good Times in Mexico


me and my comp Elder Villatoro , , a cool sunset
and me on exchanges with Elder Bermudez (the older gentleman is one of the kindest members that i have met here in mexico and he always helps the missionaries out in Campestre)

Here is my street, some street food (gorditas)

This was a tough week. but not without some cool blessings.


the great and abominable church In mexico, cocacola is huge, at first i didn´t understand. The majority of people drink at least one cocacola every day. It is a strange thing to drink water with your meals. A returned missionary from texas told us, "man, in the US they drink plain water like all the time, it´s so wierd" because here in mexico they either drink cocacola, or like, kool aid. there is sugar in everything. In america there are laws that define how much sugar there can be in a beverage, but not here. And that is why diabetes is such a huge problem here in mexico. The company cocacola is huge, like really, they must own mexico. I´ve heard people say things like "man, seriously i haven´t had a cocacola all day, i need to rest." and every corner there is a store for cola.
dave We are teaching a man who has had problems with drinking all of his life. Dave is about 50 years old and he lives alone and f…

Sister Swartz sent me a letter with some questions from the kids in primary.
Andreu Davis "are you having any success teaching people the gospel?" Andreu! Great Question! Yes, we are having success. the people of mexico are very friendly and have great faith. As many as we can help to feel the spirit and read the book of mormon recieve a testimony that Jesus Christ has restored his church. God works very hard to prepare people so that the will be able to feel the spirit when we come to teach them. Many people here in mexico have lived very hard lives, some are very sick or very poor or very lonely, but the greatest joy that we have as missionaries is to help to poor in heart feel the love of God.
Chamae Silvey "What are you learning on your mission?" WOW great question! haha I am learning TONS on my mission. I´m learning a lot about myself and my different strengths and weaknesses, and how to use my strengths to help people. I´ve learned a lot about how to help pe…

okay listen up good because i´m gonna unload a fat weeks worth of mexico onto all yalls and there is nothing you can do about it.

Homeless Steve We were contacting on the far side of our area and we saw this guy sitting in the shade and he was watching us knock on doors and we went over and talked to him. He was really thin and young, like 26 years old, and I remember thinking "man those are cool pants". And he spoke really softly and it was hard for me to understand everthing that he said. But he was happy to talk to us, he told us that he didn´t have a place to live and that he had lost his job, that he was pretty heavily using drugs and because of the drugs had lost his apitite and hadn´t eaten in three days. Elder Villatoro was full of charity for this dude and told him that he would buy him food but the guy declined. Elder Villatoro is wonderful, just a side note. The guy talked about how he felt that he had fallen out of the grace of God and wanted to change but didn´t k…