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