La Junta Mexico, Week 4

Another excellent week here in the village of La Junta! And don´t worry, it isn´t too dangerous here, just enough to keep us on our toes a bit hahaha.  Nah just messing, as long as you don´t mess with the gangsters it is against their code to mess with you, and for the most part they are pretty sick guys as well!   Another cool part of the week, I got my birthday package on Thursday! It´s going to be a struggle to not open it for another 3 weeks, but it´ll make it that much cooler I guess hahaha.

This week was a bit boring because we spent the entire week more or less moving houses and dealing with the grumpy old house lady boss.  The problem was that she knows that the church has a fairly large sum of money and well she wanted to get her hands on it.  So everyday this week we cleaned the house and then she would come, or her son, and would tell us what we were missing and what wasn´t sufficient so we would return the next day and fix it up or clean it, and then in the end she basically said that we could never do enough to fix it all up and it would be better if we paid her 10,000 pesos.  Well our mission president didn´t take it too well and they are still fighting at this moment... I´m just glad that we don´t have to waste another day cleaning that house, it´s spotless hahaha. A cool part of this week was that we got to celebrate Mexican night with the zone leaders.  On Friday I believe we had to be in the house at 6 because of how crazy it gets that day, so at 5 we split into groups and bought a ton of food for a party.  We bought pizza, corn on the cob, nachos, and a lot of peñafiel and pepsi, good stuff hahaha.  The cool thing about our new house is that it is above a massive tool shop and all the walls of our house are just massive windows so we were able to see all the fireworks from our house, it was awesome! It was basically just like the 4th of July, but here in México.

This week was also a little rough because all the furniture that was in the old house didn´t belong to the mission, so we had to leave it, so this entire week we have gone without a fridge, a stove, a table, a washing machine, or beds (sleeping on the ground is surprisingly pleasant after the first 4 days of pain hahaha). We have plans this Thursday to bring up new items from a neighboring area that got closed so that´ll be nice, but until then we shall feast on Ramen and canned soups and Corn nuts, it´s the breakfast and dinner of champions hahahaha. 

Well that has been our week here in the mountain range.  Hopefully it cools down this week or we get to see a natural disaster as well (we´re feeling a bit left out of the party haha). But this next week should be an excellent one!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

La Junta 

La Junta Mexico, Week 3

Hey sorry for writing a little late all the leaders had a special meeting with president this Monday and it takes me about 4 hours to go to Chihuahua and 4 hours to return so that didn´t let me have to much time in the end hahaha. Then yesterday we moved houses! That was a painful experience.  I don´t think I´ll ever understand missionaries who move houses for fun, because that was an awful experience hahaha.  It is finally starting to cool down here! It´s great! I´m pretty sure my companion is cold blooded because he can barely move in the mornings but we are making progress on that as well hahaha.

This week was a great week of work with a little disappointment (that just tends to follow lots of miracles haha). This week we scheduled 4 baptism dates and found several people who have an extremely strong desire to be baptized and to be part of the true church. The first of the 4 was a initially a drunk guy that used to threaten the missionaries and yell at them whenever he saw them. We didn´t know that when we found him in his house and we began teaching him and learned he had an extreme desire to come to church and to receive the Holy Ghost.  To make a long story short he has completely changed in the past 2 weeks we have taught him.  If all goes well on the 27th he´ll be baptized! The other 3 baptism dates are for a grandma and her 3 granddaughters (one only has 7 years of age).  The grandmother has extreme interest in the church and the grandaughters are getting there. The only problem is the history of this family is super ugly due to the corruption here in México, which has involved the police, military, and drug dealers.  In the end we couldn´t visit them or bring them to church this week, but today the mother came back and straightened everything so hopefully in the afternoon all goes well and we can go visit them all!

On the better side of things this Saturday we had a Mexican Night with the ward because this week on the 15 is the actual Mexican Night but it gets a bit ugly every year and well it´s not the best place to be especially if you´re a white guy hahaha.  Anyways we threw a huge party for the ward.  We planned it out great and had everything ready for when the party started at 6.  Well at 6 pm only one family showed up and it was the guy in charge of drinks...He brought 6 packets of powdered iced tea, and not just any iced tea, but black tea....When we told him that we couldn´t serve it and why he felt pretty bad, but after a while he was fine.  Finally at 7 pm another family showed up, all they did was leave the food they prepared and left for another party (a quinceañera – “sweet 15^th birthday”).  We were a little bummed out because no one had came when suddenly at about 8 pm about 50 members of the ward decided to show up.  It turns out they just wanted to show up for the food and so they all came late...very late. In the end everything went well! And the best part is the ward has a lot more trust in us to throw great parties and activities! They promised to come on time to the next activity hahaha, oh! and we learned how to dance a style that is half country half mexican cool stuff hahaha. 

Sorry I don´t have much time to write today so iIll cut it there,

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

La Junta Mexico, Week 2

Hello from the biggest forest in Mexico!

This week was a solid week of work and almost a baptism! The area I´m in right now has been one of the best areas I´ve been in (I guess that isn´t to hard since I’ve only been in 3 areas hahaha).  The entire Junta (my area) is basically a massive prairie with a couple of trees spread around.  In my district is another area called San Juanito which is the highest point of elevation in our mission.  In this area it is just a small village in the middle of the forest that looks a whole lot like Yellowstone, if they didn´t put any big streets in the middle of it.  In this area there is a whole bunch of waterfalls and animals like bears and pumas and things like that, cool stuff. This week I had the opportunity to visit this area and it was awesome! I´ll explain a bit later in this email what i did over there. In the Junta, I’m companions with Elder Merino a goofy elder from Peru who really really likes cats (it´s a little weird how much he likes them hahaha) he´s super cool and works super hard! Our house here in la Junta is massive only problem is that every time it rains the water enters the house and soaks certain parts, bigger problem... It rains every day hahaha. It is alright though we´ve been fixing it up a lot with duct tape and super glue! I´m hoping it is going to start getting cold soon and especially when it starts snowing, I´m hoping that I’ll still be here!

Alright onto the week, well this week we have been focusing a lot on putting down baptism dates because here in la junta the people are super humble and almost all of them accept us.  That doesn´t mean that they are willing to act on our message, so in order to find who were our strong investigators we put baptism dates with all the ones that were there ready.  In the end we found out which investigators are going to be baptized this month and the next and which ones we are going to be left for missionaries in the future. On Thursdaym, the Elders from San Juanito called me and told me that i needed to come down the next morning because they had an investigator that was going to be baptized Sunday, so the next day I hopped on the bus and headed over to San Juanito.  It was super cool and I got to meet a lot of the members.  That night we went with the guy that was going to get baptized.  The only problem was that the missionaries hadn´t told him he was going to be baptized so he had to think about it.  So we made an appointment for the next day and sent one of the elders of San Juanito back with my companion in La Junta to help my investigators over there. Meanwhile Elder Hernandez (the Elder who stayed in San Juanito) and I went back with the investigator (Omar) who was going to be baptized.  He told us that his answer was that he would like to be baptized but he couldn´t because he hadn´t repented completely, and he wanted to tell us what he had done but couldn´t because his family was there (he didn´t tell us that part but it was pretty easy to see/feel). So in the end we couldn´t do much especially when we leaned that he drank coffee and wasn´t married.  In the end I had to talk to the Elders of this area to explain to them the requirements to be baptized and that they need to first teach the investigator before baptism hahaha. The next day was Sunday and the special thing in San Juanito is that the Elders are the First and Second counselors to the Branch President due to there only being two active brothers (and the one that isn´t president has an unpredictable schedule) in the entire branch and 40 more or less active sisters. In the end only 11 members showed up and the branch president brought a frosted doughnut for the sacrament (the kids sure loved that hahaha).  it was an interesting but cool experience, the missionaries have a lot of work to do hahaha. In the end I didn´t get to see Bears while in San juanito and we didn´t get to visit the waterfalls because the Narcos take you out pretty fast. But I’ll try to check it out on my next visit in a couple weeks haha.

Have an excellent week, con mucho amor
-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

La Junta 

Oh and about my release date, no one really knows what we are going to do, due to changing my initial departure date, the system got pretty messed up and my release date is super weird and drops me off in the middle of 2 cycles so we aren´t really sure how we are going to pull it off quite yet, so I guess we shall see with time. Oh and big news!!!! My first baptism in the mission just put in his mission papers to go serve his own mission!!! Super cool to be part of sending other missionaries off!!!