Del Norte, Week 3

This week was a pretty cool week.  I got a solo opportunity when we sang in the Christmas program for the missionaries here in Chihuahua.  We got to help some missionaries in the zone get a couple of baptisms and then we taught about 30 guys in a rehabilitation center! Oh and I took out 50$ from the card because we started to get super sick bathing in freezing water every day, but now everything is going well and we have our strength back! (p.s. I might buy a thick sweater soon (it´s cold!), there are some cool ones here that are cheap, just for a heads up haha)

Alright, well everything began Monday when we started making plans for our musical number.  We all started singing and in the end it turns out I sing a great soprano (p.s. I don´t know what that means but it gave me a solo so I like it!). We are going to be singing hallelujah from Shrek and silent night, it´s going to be a mix of the two if we can pull it off. The president Montoya asked our zone to sing for the Christmas party which is why we are doing this all in the first place.  It has been a struggle to organize everything but it appears that everything is going well.  The sister missionaries are going to be playing the piano, violin, and the flute. and all the elders will be singing the other parts.

During the week we did a lot of splits to help two companionships baptize this past weekend.  My companion did the interviews while I went with their companions and got to "know their area" (in Chihuahua mission terms this means you go and put baptism dates with all their investigators and if they don´t accept or don´t show signs of progress you have the elders leave the investigator). It was a pretty great time, I got to go on splits with a brand new missionary named Elder Lignell.  He´s a newbie from Brighton and he´s super cool and led me to some cool investigators that if everything goes well will be baptized this following month! We also found a man that basically owns a mountain and all his family lives on this mountain.  He´s helping us out to teach this message to all his family members on the mountain.  Hopefully the elders over there will start to see some cool results soon!  In the end of the week we got to see the fruits as we had 2 baptisms in the zone and many more prepared for the following weeks!

On Saturday we planned an activity for the entire zone to go to a place called DOXA.  It´s a big rehabilitation center in our zone. The plan was to visit them at 4:00 and bring a big pot of milk and rice (common dish here).  Well almost nothing went to plan hahaha.  We arrived at 4:00 and only 4 other missionaries were there.  My companion stayed with 1 to prepare the food meanwhile we (the other 3) went to start the lesson while the others arrived, they arrived about 4:30 and they had lost our appointment.  Luckily they gave us a bit of time to talk. So the other 2 missionaries and I started to teach and do a lot of activities, it was great! When we had ten minutes left before leaving, all the other missionaries arrived just in time to make an appearance and hand out cards. We then promptly finished and returned to the house, to finish preparing the food, which we then took to the facility.  In the end of the day it was a fun experience and a lot of the people have a grand desire to talk to the missionaries when they left.  They all have our contact information and want us to continue visiting and sharing the message that we have. It was a super fun and powerful experience! 

Well that was our week here! I Believe I will be skyping about 5 or 6 next Monday! It is crazy how fast this year has gone by! Anyways I’m super excited to talk to you guys next week!

con mucho amor,
 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 2

Well this week was great! It snowed a lot! (for chihuahua).  We were able to shake hands with Elder Oaks!  I also attended a leadership meeting as a zone leader (I've been to 5 when I was secretary haha). All in all it was a great week!

Well one of the best things of this week was that we ended up with about 2 inches of snow on thursday! It was super unexpected for everyone, but at about 11 in the morning the snow started, and all of a sudden the entire zone started calling up freaking out about how they had never seen snow before.  Even my companion was super excited because this was the first time for him as well to see snow! In the end we ended up going to the mall with the sister missionaries to get winter clothes, because it got super super cold.  So the entire afternoon was dedicated to getting some warm clothes so everyone didn´t "die" in the night. It ended up being super fun, we had a massive snowball fight and finished the night making a snowman in the church parking lot and having hot chocolate with the zone! It was great! although we suffered the next morning due to not having heaters and running out of gas in the perfect moment causing us to bathe in cold water, which is surprisingly refreshing on a cold morning (although i would not recomend it, unless you love an adrenaline rush!)

On Saturday Elder Oaks came! That was quite the amazing experience.  He spoke to us over several topics and helped out the mission in some of the aspects we were failing in.  It was a super powerful experience and strengthened the testimonies of everyone that was there! It was also the first time and last time that the entire mission would be in one place at a time which was a cool experience to see literally every missionary in the mission in one spot.  We got a picture, but it looks like they still haven´t sent it yet haha. On Sunday the apostle spoke to all the members in the state of Chihuahua.  They all came down to a huge conference center to hear him speak.  He spoke a lot over the need for family home teachers and that every member is a missionary and every missionary a member. super great message from him and his counselors.

Besides that i spent most of my week in leadership meetings to help us prepare our zones for the coming of the apostle and for the housing of all the missionaries coming from far away areas, in the end it was just the regular stuff. However we had some super fun experiences with the missionaries that came down. I was put on divisiones with Elder Gil (my zone leader when I was in la Junta).  We ended up getting lost, so we decided to contact people.  The first person we contacted was super cool until his drunk friend showed up and pulled a gun on us.  We got a little spooked until we realized it was plastic and we just walked off.  A little later on we snuck into a gated area and started to contact.  My companion felt the need to knock on a house, so we knocked on the door and a strange man answered and in the end didn´t have much interest.  We then knocked on the door of another neighbor who opened the door and said "we don´t sell drugs".  We talked to them about what they meant by their comment and they told us that they saw us go exactly to a drug lords house (my companion went directly to the house of a man that sold drugs).  So the girl talking to us was a little suspicious and in the end we had a fun time joking around about weird luck and to make a long story short it seems like we are best friends now.  Weird how the spirit leads one to a drug lords house and then to their neighbor who is super cool! I am now positive that God has a sense of humor, due to this experience and many others hahaha.

Oh and in terms of packages so far i´ve received the package of the calendar and the package full of candy bars.  I´m not sure when I´ll get the others because there are only 2 elders in Ojinaga and they don´t come down often and there are a ton of elders in the mission hahaha.  In terms of Skype (dang that came fast) I´ll check it out next week and check if everything is working!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 1

Well changes came in this week and I got changed!  The worst part is that my companion who has 4 months in that area got to stay and i got changed!  The cool part is I got made a zone leader, but I really liked that area and we had many more families to baptize! But it will be cool to see what it is like to be a zone leader.  I´ve gotten out of it so far due to my desire to train, but it looks like the leaders didn´t care this time and raised me hahaha. I have been moved to the area of Del Norte and I am the zone leader of the stake Tecnologico.  It is a massive area that doesn´t have very many missionaries, but due to this there are many people that are hidden and waiting for this message!

Well anyways this week we spent most of the week helping my companion say goodbye to all of the people which appears to have been in vain since he is staying hahaha.  However it was a fun experience to see everyone one last time and even though I didn´t say goodbye to anyone it was nice to talk and enjoy the good experiences.

This week we decided to go to an area called the Quemada.  It is a super far off area that takes about 30 minutes to arrive on bike and about 2 hours on foot.  Due to this most missionaries never went and when I say most, I mean just about everyone.  Anyways due to buying bikes we decided to see what the area had in hold, and wow it was an amazing experience.  It is a super poor colony both in money and in spirit.  Almost everyone we talked to accepted our message and invited us in their houses and fed us and gave us lots of coke! It was amazing! We found several amazing families and several people that used to attend church before they moved to this area and since the missionaries never visited they didn´t know that there was a church in Delicias. All in all, it was an amazing experience and a miracle to see how the Lord prepares his children to receive his message and prepares the missionaries to teach them as well!

On Saturday and Sunday, we had a 70 come down for the stake conference, his name was Elder Montejo, and dang I have never seen such a dynamic speaker.  He was super animated and knew how to get the attention of everyone and taught such basic principles, but with such an intense spirit! It was super cool and it was funny to see the leaders of the stake talk with such nervousness that they looked like new members haha. The Seventy was such a powerful speaker and when he finished he came and shook all of the hands of the missionaries and gave us all homework of how we can improve due to what he felt through the handshake, super awesome! I´m pretty sure he gave a general conference talk about the Holy Ghost awhile back because he told us a story that I knew and well it was a story of his life so I believe it was him who told it in conference. All about when he ignored the holy ghost and then his wife felt the same prompting and made him follow the prompting and help a widow. All in all, it was an amazing talk. Which we will get to see more of this end of week as the Elder Oaks comes to Chihuahua to talk to all the missionaries and then to all the members. It should be interesting and he is going to iron us a ton, he is the apostle over the missionary work and so when a mission needs to improve a bit he makes them improve a ton! It´s going to be great!

Well that´s all for now, my camera is still in repairs (they can´t find the part still) so I don´t have pictures yet!

Have a great week, con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Delicias Mexico Part 2, week 5

Another great week here in the blazing heat of the Chihuahua dessert.  Unfortunately, my camera broke a little so I don`t have it to send pictures today, but don`t worry I took it to a repair store and I’ll be getting it back tomorrow.  Besides that this week was pretty cool.  We had a massive Thanksgiving feast, we had a Mexican night in the church, and I’m still pretty good in volleyball!

Well, I guess the biggest abnormal event of the week was on Thursday with the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Sister Brown (the Samoan sister) somehow convinced a family in her ward to giving Thanksgiving to all the gringos in the zone. In the end there was about 10 missionaries, 3 of which were white guys, and the rest were companions. It ended up being a really cool experience.  We ate with an older couple only one of them could speak Spanish, the other only speaks English, so we had a great time speaking in English with everyone. We ate a massive Turkey, some ham, several dishes of food, and pies! It was great! And we took tons of photos, the only problem is that my camera fell and the zoom button broke and is being fixed so I can`t send anything, but next week I’ll most likely send some haha.

On Saturday, we had our Ward Mexican night, apparently it was for the revolution here in Mexico.  I didn`t know that happened because from what I understand the politics here still aren’t the strong suit here haha. But anyways, there were lots of parades throughout the week and the ward had a huge party where we ate tacos, pozole, and elotes (corn on the cob mexican style) while listening to one of the members that has quite the gift musically.  I believe he may also be a little mad with me since he arrived late to church and I took his place on the piano for the introduction hahaha. Anyways, in the end the activity was super fun and we got to show some investigators. that the church likes to party a bit, which was nice because many think we are like the Jehova Witnesses or Catholics or Christians and that we don`t do parties (honestly I don`t understand the churches here, I feel like in other parts of the world they are a bit more normal haha).

Today the zone decided to go and play some Soccer and Volleyball.  I’m still not the best in Soccer and spend most of my time as the “best” goalie in the world! I like to focus on using the fear tactic by yelling at my foes as they try to hit the ball in the goal.  Most of the time it distracts them long enough for me to steal it and get it to a teammate. After winning our soccer match the sister missionaries decided to try their luck in a game of volleyball.  So we headed over to a super cool beach volleyball court that is here. I ended as team captain of one of the teams and we once again used my yelling tactics to animate our teammates and to inflict fear into our enemies. We ended up dominating them using the power of pure force (oh and the sister missionaries were on my team, so I did not end up brutally taking out any of them, just elders this time)! 

A cool experience that we had this week was with the mother of one of our investigators.  We have been teaching a 19 year old girl about why church is cool and why our church is the coolest church to go to even if it is a little far (got to take a bus to get there).  She has been super cool and has been progressing a lot recently.  Anyways her mom asked my companion one day if we could go and visit her mom because she had been super depressed recently. On Friday we went with them to visit her. After a super powerful lesson with the grandmother she ended up telling us that she had been baptized in our church when she was 23.  This ended up being quite the shock to everyone in the room especially the mother and daughter. In the end all of them now wanted to come to church and see why their grandmother got baptized in the first place and to know more about the power of the holy ghost.  The best part is that it is a family of 4 that can be potentially baptized here soon if everything goes well!

Well that was my week here.  This week is the last week of the cycle and it is almost for sure that my companion will be leaving Delicias after 5 months.  He`s a little sad because we have many investigators that are super cool, but he is also excited to see what else the mission has to offer! Either way it has been an excellent journey with him these past 6 weeks!

con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Panamericano

Delicias Mexico Part 2, week 4

Well I´ve got around 20 minutes to write today.  We have spent about 2 hours trying to find a computer lab but they are all closed for the Mexican holiday that is a lot like the 4th of July.  So my letter might be a little shorter today haha.  This week was a pretty good week, I made some awesome pumpkin cookies and some great popcorn balls for a family home evening with investigators and we are teaching two different gangs here! It´s great!

Well this week started on Monday when I was looking through a previous package and found the pumpkin cookies.  I decided to make a cool lesson out of it for the district meeting, the only problem was that the package required a can of pumpkin... We don´t eat pumpkin pie here or pumpkin cookies, and when nobody here ever cooks with pumpkin it makes it extremely painful to find a can of pumpkin. We ended up spending all of Monday looking and we didn´t find anything.  Then on Tuesday we said a prayer to find a can of pumpkin and we were led to a random isle in Walmart (all the workers swore that they had never seen pumpkin in the store) and in the very back of a shelf with only 3 cans left, we found a darn can of pumpkin haha. And better yet the cookies turned out awesome even after all the Latinos told me I was crazy to cook with pumpkin haha.

On Friday we decided to teach alma 32 to a family of 7.  The only problem is that 3 of them are super young and the majority of lessons we have with them the kids just sleep.  I decided to mix it up a bit and convinced my companion to help me out.  So we taught a lesson about the seed of faith (popcorn seed) and what happens if it grows (or in our case when you cook it in hot oil, basically the same haha), and then in the end how does the fruit of the gospel taste. It turned out to be a great lesson. And although they didn´t have the opportunity to attend the church this week, the next week they are coming! I´ve started to realize more and more that if you want to teach someone something, you´ve got to find a way to incorporate food into the lesson, especially when you have a companion that can teach for a hour solo haha.

Throughout this week we have dedicated ourselves to talk with literally everyone including the "gangsters" I say gangsters because they are groups of youth that have dedicated themselves to smoking marijuana and breaking minor laws, and most of all because they call themselves gangsters. Anyways every day at about 800 we head over to local parks and teach groups of about 5 to 30 youth, we play a quick game of basketball with them or soccer and then once we are buddies we teach them a lesson about how they can change their lives.  We have had a lot of success, many of the youth that we teach make fun of us, but there are always 1 or 2 that come up to us afterwards and ask if we can visit them in their house. Some of our strongest investigators. are some of these youth, all we need now is that they convince their friends to come to church as well! It´s been pretty fun though!

Well that´s all the time I’ve got hahah.  Have an awesome week, I´m pretty sure I’m 34x34 in pant size, or maybe the same, all my pants still fit and are more or less loose haha

con mucho amor,
-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Panamericano

Delicias Mexico Part 2, week 3

Throughout this week the Presidente challenged us to find minimum 10 new investigators every week and to have a minimum of 20 lessons.  So this week we worked hard and accomplished success that was higher than both goals.  Our area is super cool and there are many people that are waiting for the message.  We have started to put our faith into the extreme, we are working hard at asking specific prayers to find the golden investigators and we have seen miracles everyday by doing so.  Many times the people we pray to find, end up finding us. Which ends up making our job a lot easier haha. Satan has been working hard against us though, every day of this week my bike tire has exploded and I´m not exactly sure if it is God or Satan doing it because we always seem to find the really cool people when my bike tire blows up, but on that other hand I have to pay about 1 dollar to repair it haha. 

Today we went paintballing, the arena was really cool here, super hot but cool. It was a bit of an awkward experience because over my time here as a missionary I’ve played paintball several times and I have been quite the sniper.  The only problem was that I ended up taking down the same sister missionary about  7 times.  I took down everyone else as well, but I nailed this sister missionary pretty good, luckily, we are friends so nothing much happened, but still an awkward experience.  The experience was especially interesting because at the end of the game an ant bit her and she had a major allergic reaction to it.  Quite the interesting day. On the other hand, Elder Merino my companion from the Junta got changed from my ward to Parral another city in the mission.  His depression came back so they moved him to the area he wanted to be in, so I guess we´ll see how it goes. Another thing that happened was that my mission sonm Elder Marx (the white guy from Ojinaga) was made secretary! He is following in my footsteps haha.

Well that was my week here working hard and taking down the sister missionaries with paintballs, doesn´t get much better than that!

con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Panamericano

Delicias Mexico Part 2, week 2

This week has been super cool. I got to return to my first area and now being able to speak Spanish, I got to talk to a lot of cool members and investigators that I knew back in my old days.  We had a day that missionaries often dream about.  We had a super cool Halloween party complete with physical injuries, and I’ve got the coolest blackest companion in the mission! Not many weeks better than the one I just had.

Well on Monday I had my changes and got my new companion named Elder Lopez.  He´s from the Dominican Republic and he now has 3 months in the mission (when he has one year, I’ll be back home, that´s crazy!). He´s a super cool missionary and has an amazingly powerful talent to bring the spirit.  The only problem is he knows a lot about the scriptures and at times tries to teach for his own ability.  Then we end up with 2 hour lessons with investigators and we are all sleeping in the end hahaha. He´s super sick and with a bit of help is going to be an amazing companion these next 6 weeks!

On Wednesday we had a day that went like a dream. All the appointments were in their houses and all of them accepted us and accepted baptism dates.  We achieved every goal we put out there, almost doubling it.  In the end of the day we found a family of 5 that accepted the message and did all the homework we gave them! We also had another investigator that when we passed by again she had read half the book of Mormon (she only had it for 3 days).  She accepted to be baptized this following in month in November.  She only needs a few more lessons and church assistance. This area is amazing, and this zone as well. This zone has had the most baptisms the last 4 months due to this area being ready for the scythe, the field is white and ready to harvest here in Delicias!

Today we had a super cool Halloween party.  Me and my companion went as Harry Potter characters, I went as Ron and my companion as Doyle in the last harry potter movie (he was black in the last one, still confused how that works). I ended up painting my face due to peer pressure and I think I’m going to have eye shadow for the next week! But in the end the party was super fun and we did a bunch of activities that the Hermana Brown (the Samoan sister missionary that was with me in the offices) made for us.  We ate pies made of cream and beans, played ¨beer pong¨ with horrible mixed beverages, and almost killed a missionary with a runaway piñata stick (don´t ever fill a piñata with flour, it´s all fun and games until someone loses grip of the stick and it goes flying into another missionary haha), and our pumpkin won second place in the pumpkin competition.  It would´ve won first but the sister missionaries always win by default haha. it was a super fun Monday and a great Halloween here in Mexico!

My camera isn´t functioning to well here so I’ll get the photos off next week!

con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Panamericano

Delicias Mexico Part 2, week 1

Well this week we had changes! And well, it ended up with good things and bad things. I`ll begin with the bad news, first as customs say. Well I ended up having changes and I was taken out of the Junta.  Also, I have a new companion in my new area. The worst part of it all was that we won`t get to baptize 3 families that we had set for the month of November that had finally started to come to church and even have special callings in the branch because they are so cool! And well that is the bad news... The good news is pretty sick! My new area is in Delicias and is the exact area in which I began the mission (panamerico)! So I will get the chance to help my first convert to complete his mission papers and if his calling arrives early I`ll get to see him leave as well! I`ve also learned that another convert I had there recently returned back after studying in the states for a while so iIll get to see her as well! It`s going to be awesome! Another cool part is that my companion, Elder Merino, was moved to another area in the same ward as me! So we basically see each other every day whether it will be for food or for missionary tasks.  That is going to be pretty cool as well! My new companion is named Elder Lopez and he is from one of the areas in the Dominican Republic that I visited when I lived over there for HEFY,  I`m going to try to be best buds with him so I have a place to stay if I visit the Dominican Republic hahaha. It should be a pretty cool cycle and if all goes well we should find a lot of success! Oh and Delicias is super hot right now compared to my old area so that should be interesting to adjust to haha.

Well in terms of my last week in the Junta we basically just prepared all of our investigators in the chance that we were to leave.  We did a whole bunch of service with a weed whacker (amazing tool by the way).  We probably spent about 60 percent of our time in the day just cutting weeds of investigators and members. We gained a lot of trust and had some amazing lessons because of it. I ended up using the 2 boxes of caramel apples and popcorn balls that I received to have 2 amazing family home evenings. Especially the popcorn balls we went with a super cool family that just wouldn`t go to church and we had a sick family home evening with them all about Lehi`s dream and the fantastic white fruit (popcorn balls).  The children loved it and understood more why we desired that they go to church.  In the end they came to church! Afterwards they asked when they could be baptized, super cool! I don`t remember who sent those boxes, but thanks! They worked magic with these investigators and a young less active girl and all her friends as we taught them about the parable of the seed that grows in the heart (like an apple tree), super cool lessons! The secret to reaching the hearts of people is through the stomach, especially when they are young haha. 

Another super cool experience that we had this week was the opportunity to eat half a kilo of ribeye steak! My zone leader, Elder Loftus, leaves this week so we partied a bit. We went to a place in which we previously only ate pizza, until a member told us some of the best steaks in Chihuahua are served there.  So we tried it out, and dang it was probably the best steaks I’ve eaten in my mission. Super super good, only problem was that you have to save money all week to afford one... But it was worth it! And it was a great send-off for the missionary, he is a cool guy and we are going to meet up to play lacrosse after the mission (he`s going to play for Weber).

Super good week here in the mission, and these next few months should be great as well! 

Con amor del infierno de Chihuahua,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

La Junta