La Junta Mexico, Week 1

Well I finally got out of the Offices and sent to one of the areas I was begging to go to! So I´m super happy to have the opportunity to check this area out! I´ve been put in charge of a nice sized town call La Junta, it originally had 6 missionaries here but due to certain problems with the previous missionaries, they all got pulled out of the area and me and my new companion Elder Merino got put in their place to help this area to become strong once again! I´m super excited to have the opportunity to serve here and to watch the growth of the branch that I´m in! It should be some awesome months ahead of me!

Otherwise this week was fairly plain. I just finished up the training of Elder Dustin to the best of my abilities (he won´t truly be ready for about a cycle or two haha) I also had the opportunity to show him around to all my current and previous investigators and we got two of them super close to baptism. Now all he has to do is find the time to visit them haha. It was a good time in the offices and I learned a ton but I´m very happy to say that I have now been released of my office calling and can spend the rest of my mission as a normal missionary!

Don´t have much time to write today as we just barely got here and we still need to unpack.

con mucho amor!

Elder Bunch
México Chihuahua Misión
Secretario Ejecutivo

P.S. My zone leaders asked me to photo shop the missing missionaries in the picture I think it turned out well haha

P.S.S. And the shirt that I burned was small on me even before the mission, and granted it may be a little tighter now, but that´ll be fine because now I´m in a area where don´t eat much so I´ll be losing a lot of weight! It should be pretty sweet!

Secretario Ejecutivo, Week 18

Hey que tal!

This week was pretty uneventful, but on the good side we got to work in our area a ton due to the new plan I put in place for the secretaries! So that was a really cool benefit of the week, otherwise though, I basically just invested this week into my second week of training the new Secretary! If all goes to plan next p-day I´ll be writing from my new area!

Well anyways this week was pretty plain like I said earlier, but in the afternoon we got to work super hard knocking on doors, all day, every day! How I´m looking at it right now is that I´m going to be leaving here next week, and so I want to try my best to leave some great investigators for elder Dustin so that he won´t have to dedicate so much time to finding new people to teach (we honestly waste so much time just trying to find people, that we could use so much better teaching). Because of this we haven´t really done anything other than work in the offices in the morning, eat, and then knock on doors and contact for the past 2 weeks. It has been great! I feel like a regular missionary again! It feels like I´m starting the mission over again though because I´ve been more or less out of action for so long that it feels so strange to spend the entire afternoon working in the field. So while we are working it brings a whole new air of excitement! I´m psyched for wherever I´m off to next! Although I´m really hoping I get sent to the jungle or the forest, I´ve got some really good friends over in those zones and quite frankly I´m getting a little tired of all these desert areas hahaha.

Well not much more happened so I´ll explain the plan I put in place for the future secretaries of the mission in order that they will have the ability to work more in their areas. Well previously me and the financial secretary were together as companions and in my line of work I finish all my work by 1:00 (that´s when the government buildings close), unfortunately my companion doesn´t have a work schedule so he often would work all afternoon (that´s when the restaurants were open to get receipts), so we ended up almost never getting the opportunity to work in our area for long periods of time. In order to fix this I came up with an experimental plan to place regular missionaries with certain characteristics with each one of the secretaries in order that both the secretaries can work in their own areas when they have free time due to having a regular companion. We put my experimental plan in place about 2 weeks ago at the end of the cycle, where normally the 2 new secretaries and the 2 old secretaries are all one companionship, we separated the both, putting the financials in one ward, and the executives in the other. And well these past 2 weeks we have seen amazing growth with the 2 companionships, the financials work all morning in their area, and we work all afternoon in our area! And because of the success, the actual plan of action is going to be put in place when I leave here in 1 week! It has been awesome to help out the future secretaries and I´m hoping it goes well!

Well that´s about all I have this week… Oh, and I burned my shirt! So that was pretty cool, I used one of my super old cotton shirts that I feel like I´ve had since I was Nate’s age (it was so tiny, I just used it to provide baptism clothes to teenagers). Great stuff!

Have a great week, don´t kill the goats or sparrow quite yet, and sounds like everyone is doing about the same, Henry still is whiny, and sounds like Charlie is a Minecraft pro! That´s pretty cool I guess hahaha.

Con mucho amor

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Secretario Ejecutivo 

Secretario Ejecutivo, Week 17

Hey que tal!

1 YEAR ON WEDNESDAY!!! 

Well your thought was half right, I´m getting transferred, but in about 2 weeks since I have to train the next secretary so he knows what to do! So in about 2 weeks I’ll be able to finally get back into the field! I´m hoping that I get to leave the city and will get sent to some small village but we shall see in a bit I guess haha. But due to this whole training process, we have been super busy and I haven´t had time to do literally anything that I used to do in my free time.   That is also why I didn´t end up writing last Monday, due to how chaotic it all ended up.  Almost the entire mission had changes whether in the area or with their companion! Only 7 companionships didn´t get changes out of 140 missionaries! Super chaotic day for someone that has to organize a large portion of it ha ha. My new companion (future secretary) name is Elder Dustin and he´s pretty cool and lives down in Provo, about 7 minutes from BYU.  He ´s going to UVU so he´s alright ha ha. Elder Mendoza is training Elder Consospo (future financial secretary) which is pretty cool because Elder Consospo is my younger brother in the mission (same trainer).  So that was super sweet! The hardest hit to our district though was that the Samoan Sister missionary Brown got changed after 3 cycles.  She was one of the hardest working sister missionaries in the mission, if not the hardest working one overall ha ha.  In her place we have a sister missionary from México who is fresh from the CCM.  She´s pretty cool and is working hard to fulfill the expectation of who she is replacing, super cool!

This week was a pretty long week on my part due to not really doing anything.  Now that I’m training I don´t have any work to do in the offices other to check every once in a while to see if everything is going well.  So basically I have just dedicated myself to studying the bible throughout the week, I got through hechos (Acts) and I’m halfway through romanos (Romans).  I’m fairly convinced that Pablo (Paul) was the most powerful Apostle of that time in terms of converting thousands and having literally no regard for his own life. Super cool guy ha ha ha.  Yep, that was basically how I spent almost every day this week when I wasn´t working in the area in the afternoon.

The coolest moment of this week and maybe my mission so far was the opportunity I had to return to Ojinaga on Wednesday… So the day before the President asked the assistants if they wanted to go to Ojinaga or if they should send Elder Bunch (due to it basically being his second home).  In the end I won out and I got to go to Ojinaga.  So on Wednesday the president passed by the house at 8 am, and little did I know, but it was just him and I in the car for the entire trip.  Ojinaga is about 3 hours from Chihuahua city.  On the way up we talked about life before and after the mission, family, friends, favorite foods, favorite books, drones, insects, etc. basically just a whole bunch of stuff! When we finally got to Ojinaga we went to the new prayer house (we went up to see if everything was good to open the prayer house).  it was super cool and I got to see a few members and the branch president again! It was awesome! Before we went home President asked the branch president where there was a good place to get some tacos because he had a strong desire to eat tacos.  Unfortunately, all the good taco places were closed so we settled on a steak restaurant and we had grilled cabrito, it was super good! On the way home President asked me to take him to the famous Pei Wei canyon that is up in Ojinaga because this would be the only time he would be able to take the curvy scenic route that leads to the canyon (due to his wife´s bad car sickness).  When we got to the canyon we took a few pictures and then he began to try and through a rock to see if it could reach the water down below…it didn't. I tried as well and couldn't even get close, so I started pushing massive boulders down, and after a bit of trying we left without success ha ha ha (turns out I also gave president nightmares where I slipped after throwing a boulder and fell into the canyon ha h aha).  On the way home he shared an instruction that only the new mission presidents receive in order to start their missions well. Afterwards he asked me how we could do better in the mission and we focused a lot on how the new Secretaries can be better, and be more missionaries than secretaries. It was a super cool experience, and felt a bit like a 10 hour interview with president haha, great day!

Well that was my week!

Hopefully Maren´s muteness has healed ha ha ha

p.s. Here´s a few photos of my week, and so you get to know who my mission president is a little more!

Con amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Secretario Ejecutivo