Out of the MTC - first day on the job - Delicias, Chihuahua

Email 1
My new P day is Monday, and just like on my first P day in the MTC I don`t have much time, my área to serve in is Delicias, Chihuahua, and I've been given a companion with a super weird accent that is a native, and I'm his last companion because he leaves the misión field in October. I look a Little goofy right now because I got a black eye from our final pillow fight, we invited the houses around us to join and it got hectic, so i ended up with a small black eye but it`s slightly noticable haha.

........3 hours later

Email 2
Well you probably heard I lost my wallet, luckily I guess that´s not too bad, because I had all my pesos somewhere else, so if my only purchase on that card is the baggage then I didn´t lose anything, However if you could send me a new card that´d be great and a new ordinance card (a laminated card that tells you how to start all the blessings, it was really helpful in the ccm). I have a wallet I can use that isn´t super slick haha, my pants pocket ripped sometime in the airport, or taxi, or somewhere, but that´s probably when I lost it. but at least I didn´t lose my visa, and my pesos, and I have a paper copy of my drivers license so I´m fine on that.

Anyways I have to go to the immigration office to get a new immigration card so I got set back 1 day, but that ended up being a blessing because we got to go on doubles with another companionship.  The Elder I went with took me to see an investigator, and when we arrived she wasn´t there but her husband was, and his friend, we bore our testimonies, and long-story short we have 2 new investigators for the chihuahua mission, it was great!

And my AP sent an email to dad with details to mail packages to the Texas Mission President of chihuahua, so apparently packages get here fairly quickly.  That´s super cool as well.  My companion is super cool, he is used to training "fresh meat" 6 weekers, so he´s happy to have someone who can understand him right off the bat.  Also, he likes to cook, so he´s going to show me his recipes, and I´m going to show him mine!  We also saw the home of the elders that took us on doubles, it was pretty cool, one of the walls had a massive map with all the ward boundaries and where to begin searching.  Who was active.  Who was a possible investigator.  Who was inactive.  They had around 40 investigators plus 2, haha. I got excited just looking at it, and then more when I realized how easy it was to get more investigators!

The people here are super nice, and even though they are mostly Catholic they are super accepting of the gospel.  Most of them don´t feel like they belong to the catholic church after you talk to them a bit.  These are things they have been telling me at least, but from what i´ve seen, it´s pretty accurate. And they all have dogs and soccerballs and all the kids run around free.

Oh and my green duffle bag suitcase is awesome! I probably could´ve fit 100 lbs easy, it expands to whatever i need it to, and the wheels are massive so it goes through the muddy ground super well. Luckily I remembered to take a photo of how everything fit before I unpacked it so my bags were 50 and 50 pounds, so I was safe, besides the 850 pesos for the second bag.
 
So far the only thing I've heard about my area is that it is very hot! and very beautiful.  That sounds like where I am now, this place is a mix of Utah and Idaho.  It has mountains and red rock like utah, but the greenery of Idaho, so it´s way cool.  All the houses stack on the mountain so they just tower over you, it´s sweet.  Even though it´s a small city, it´s super quiet.  That is kind of weird, but cool at the same time!

Well now we´ve got to head to our house.  I only was able to write more because we came back to the office to finish up my green card business

Doing awesome! Running free and full of spirit in Mexico

Elder Bunch

Week Two in the MTC

Doing extremely well, the Elder spoke on a bunch of experiences from his mission, and yea I´ve been talking to Jake and Keaton over email a lot. It´s fun to hear from them and I’m glad pudge (my lizard) is doing well, as well ha ha. 

Well I head out on Monday at 2:00 in the morning, mainly because Chihuahua is one of the biggest missions in Mexico, at least my portion of it is, there are actually two parts to Chihuahua, the ciudad Juarez mission and the Chihuahua, Chihuahua mission which is mine. I´m getting way psyched for it with each day.  I don´t know how or why but Friday last week Spanish just clicked for me.  I woke up that morning and could speak it pretty dang well, definitely a miracle here, ha, ha, but now I can carry a discussion for as long as I want and when an investigator is telling me about their situation, I can instantly switch to whatever lesson that I need to talk about, it´s been amazing! Tomorrow we are having a bunch of experienced missionaries to take us around the ward around here to practice investigating with real missionaries, which we´ll be doing technically on Monday, although we don´t start doing anything until Tuesday.  I´m hoping for an American companion so they can actually help me with my spanish tenses that I don´t know well, because all my current companion can say is that he learned it because he learned it. My teacher does the same exact thing as well ha ha. 

I have also learned that it takes about 2 months to get letters to the MTC so basically it´s pointless ha, ha, luckily my mission is right on the border so it only takes about 2 weeks which is quite the big difference, so that stinks for everyone that has their mail go through Mexico city, luckily packages sent through missionary mx or dear elder arrive really quickly I´m not sure the reason but they do.  I got another package yesterday but I´m not sure what it is because the post office has been closed whenever I’ve had free time, which is a rarity in itself.

Another interesting thing here is that everyone is having their appendix explode there have already been around 10 cases in just the two weeks I’ve been here, but I guess that´s what this food does for you, unlike the provo mtc the food travels to quickly to make one gain weight. I´ve gained weight but it´s all solid muscle, because whenver I´m tired in class I do wall sits, so after 3 weeks my thighs are solid as a rock it’s the best!

Today I have to get a hair cut, so I’m not sure how that’s going to go for me, they seen to do a pretty good job on the latinos who can tell them what they want, but for the gringos we get the shaved head look, so i´m pretty excited for that ha, ha. Today we got to go to the temple as well, it could possibly be my last time for 2 years since the only temple in Chihuhaua, is in the other mission, so the odds are not high on my people going. Which is sad but I much rather have my mission than a city mission ha, ha. Whenever I mention I´m going to Chihuhahua everyone who is a native gets jealous, apparently its a super awesome mission, with lots of action, my teacher says I´ll know all the lessons by heart just by using them so much. So I’m way excited, unfortunately Chihuahua also has the most laws against preaching stuff, so I have to be super careful about tracting and all of that fun stuff. 

One of the interesting things about the latinos is that they often give people names based on how they look so my companion has been called gordo a few times, some of the sisters get called gorda, or bonita, and then most of the whites are gringos or blancos, luckily I´ve received the name of guapo (handsome), so I´m pretty happy with their little nick name system. But it´s weird how brutally honest they can be at times, nothings happened to me yet but they are pretty harsh to one another and people they don´t know well. But I guess that´s just the culture, along with the use of American swear words, they don´t even hesitate ha, ha.

I have miracles occur everyday I´m here from getting the last scoop of food, to seeing last nights prayer come into play, to speaking the language, they are literally everywhere it´s great.  The ccm is a way spiritual place especially when you can understand what they are saying, which I can barely do on a good day, but it´s coming along extremely quickly, can´t wait to get on my mission ha, ha.

Still Dancing,

Elder Bunch

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tortillas-18

Week 1 in the Mexico MTC

All right, I don´t really know where to begin so I´ll just start at the beginning. After I arrived at the ccm, I was immediately separated from everyone due to the fact that even though there are about 500 people here, there are only about 10 people in the 3-week program.  So I didn´t know anyone until I met up with Ben Sierra who took me to dinner and to the devotional where Anderson of the quorum of the 12 spoke, it was also his birthday so that was a cool experience, but anyway afterword I went to my house where my room is and was immediately greeted my a bunch of native Mexicans.  I was a little worried at this point because they spoke with the speed of lightening, so I was desperately hoping my companion wasn´t native as well, but that changed when I went into my room and was greeted by my companion, who didn´t know a single word in English ha, ha. This was the first moment I realized this was going to be one fun time. 

Probably the only bad day I´ve had here was the next day where the only word of english I heard was during dinner when one of my friends from South Jordan came and talked to me. I literally understood next to nothing throughout the day, and it literally felt like a lifetime with every minute. This was also the minute that I decided to study my butt off when it came to Spanish. Luckily my companion´s accent is very slow and I know a very wide vocabulary of Spanish, so I could communicate with him fairly well compared to some other people in my group (who are all only natives, no white people allowed). However it´s only been a little over a week now and I can understand about 90 percent of religious topics and can understand about 60 percent of non-religious topics but I can speak with extreme ease and can talk for a solid 5 minutes or more to an investigator when needed. I´ve gotten good marks on all my tests with investigators and I am now teaching my class English when we have free time.  They all enjoy learning the actual words to their American favorites. Oh and they thank you for the root beer, and cookies, they were awesome even though I got them a week later, not because of the post office but because I didn´t know where the post office was, because I skipped initiation and getting a tour of the campus because of the rarity of my circumstances ha, ha. But the gift of tongues is real here, that´s for sure, that´s definitely one gift I know I´ve gotten while being here along with an awkward halfway southern Mexican accent.

Oh I´ve also been declared Mexican, I´m not allowed to say I´m american or my companions thoroughly scold me, they´ve put a bag over my head and tied my hands with a belt and carried me off, they then performed a “sorta Nemo” like ceremony where you can´t understand the words but it´s initiation. It was a great time and I became a Mexican from Chihuahua, Chihuahua. With that, I have to have a Chihuahua accent so I’ve been working on that very thoroughly but it comes pretty easily as well. My companions are awesome, they are all from difference parts of the Mexico and South America and all have their own accents and personalities. Me and Elder Morales have the same personality and will spontaneous have dance parties when anyone with any authority walks by, it´s always fun to mess with the ccm presidents by not looking too spiritual. Which by the way the ccm, is extremely spiritual, so I had to mention that, but everyone knows the mtc (ccm) is a spiritual place, this Saturday we have our first real test but we´re ready to take it on, the only barrier I have is that I don't have the words for everything I want to say, the only problem my partner has is he doesn't know when to stop talking even when I don't get a chance ha, ha. But we're getting better at it every day. I've gotten to the point where I can teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the entire plan of salvation in under a minute with near fluent Spanish, however that is only because I found someone’s Spanish study book and it has all the vocabulary for every leccion (lesion) in preach my gospel so with every new leccion we learn I have to spend around 4 hours learning about 200 new words, however with each passing day I can memorize more words faster, every morning I wake up first and study Spanish while everyone gets ready.  During this time I can pull off memorizing around 100 or more words when I'm fully awake, so it's been pretty good.

However, today we went to the temple and I understand next to nothing but luckily the spirit doesn't speak only Spanish in Mexico so I was able to do extremely well, the rooms in the Mexico city temple are almost the same as the one's in Ogden so it was kinda a cool experience in that way as well.

Oh I almost forgot, every night we have pillow fights with everyone in our house, there are around 24 missionaries about half are Mexican (including me) and half american and we have all out wars, unfortunately our pillows suffer the most, one can find parts of pillows everywhere after the fights, its great. The people who change out our pillows and sheets weekly don't enjoy it quite as much, too say the least.  Oh and this guy in another company looks just like Bryan Wilcox and smiles like him too.  So whenever I see him I break out laughing, he doesn't like it when I do, but it's alright ha, ha.

it´s weird to think i´m already halfway through the ccm and it´s only been a week, this place is amazing,

My companion wants maren´s email.  He’s the second from the right on the table photo, I'm thinking about giving it to him, he wants to be hernandez bunch so he can be my brother so he´s very convincing as well

Well I'm out of time

Having the time of my life,

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Elder Kaden Bunch

Chihuahua, Chihuahua Mision

First Email - Mexico MTC

We received our first email from Kaden.  He only had a few minutes, but it let us know he is safe and that when we get to hear from him again.

My P Day is a week from Thursday so I´ll write more then, I made it here safely, sorry I´ve only got 5 minutes to email today

Love you all,

Elder Bunch

Mexico, Chihuahua

Departure Day (Day 1)

Kaden joined about 40 other missionaries in the SLC airport to leave to the Mexico MTC.  He was super excited and made a few friends right away.  We left before breakfast and tried to buy him a hot chocolate and oatmeal from Starbucks, he did not want it in case he would end up smelling like coffee on his first day on the job.  We all gave him a hug and we were all a little tearful.  As he went through the scanner we got one last wave and a smile.

We can't wait for the first letter.