Del Norte, Week 7

Well it was great to hear from everyone again.  I'm not sure what happened with all the email errors but at least this week everything turned out good. Anyways this was a solid work of acting like a missionary in the United states, and what I mean by that is that we knocked on a ton of doors, got a lot of contacts and had everything fell through in the last minutes. This week we also pulled of a massive contacting activity, and deep cleaned our house!

Anyways this week was my first week with Elder Alavez, and dang it was a week of hard work for the both of us.  Every day we went to bed with our legs and feet sore and then every day we went back at it hard! I'm not really sure what happened this week but it seemed like every appointment that we put down just fell through, and well when a missionary doesn't have anything better to do they get down and dirty and knock on all the doors.  So that is what we did, every day we knocked around 100 doors and contacted every person that walked by us. It was a nice humbling week though, we worked harder than we have in a while, because quite frankly when one is in Mexico where the work is fast and you see the miracles quickly you start to forget that the missions in other places in the word are harder, so it is always nice to get a hard wake up call to make one work harder than ever!

On Tuesday we had our zone meeting, during which we asked the zone what they would like for us to do as leaders.  We were given quite the big list!  Anyways one of which was the desire to go to one area in the zone with all the missionaries and to contact everyone. So on Thursday we planned an activity to go to one of the areas that was suffering a bit. We planned out 1.5 hours where we would all contact. I offered 50 pesos to the winning companionship to spiff of the excitement a little bit. Anyways we began and everyone went crazy.  We contacted literally an entire mountain, a good comparison would be contacting all of Farmington. We had the sister missionaries contact everyone that entered and left the colony, and all the elders contacted and knocked on all the doors. In the end of the 2 hours we united the zone and after adding the numbers up we gathered over 200 contacts, or about 1 contact for every half second! It was amazing! And of course, not all the contacts were super cool but several were and several attended church this Sunday and have dates for baptism! Good times for a missionary in Chihuahua haha.

Another big part of this week was that the president asked us to deep clean our apartments.  This task included quite a large list of things that missionaries otherwise don't clean. Such as the patio, old missionary clothes, every cabinet in the house, etc. More or less many small things that no one typically wants to mess with. Anyways this would not have been such a big deal except for the fact that our house has had missionaries living in it for over 6 years, and well there are still clothes and trinkets from the missionaries that were here 6 years ago... Anyways to make a very long story, short, the day was full of hard work and after a lot of axe spray we were able to clean everything up and burn it! Because quite frankly nothing makes one feel better than a massive bon fire in the middle of the city, we took advantage of cleaning all the dead leaves on the patio and broken branches from the trees and we burned everything! The fire lasted about 2 hours, but it was great! I am pretty sure I will smell like smoke for a few weeks, but at least the house is clean! That was a tiny miracle that we were able to pull it all off in one day!

Well that was my week here in Mexico! Full of hard work and cleaning!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 6

Well changes once came around again, and as expected my companion got changed! He`s going off to Cuahtemoc and I am staying here in Del Norte! My new companion is Elder Alavez.  He was my leader back in Delicias when I returned.  He`s super cool and is one of the hardest working missionaries in the mission, so it is going to be an excellent learning experience to be with him! He`s got a lot of knowledge that is going to help me a lot in the future, and his constant desire to work is going to make him an excellent companion for me!

Alright this week was a little disappointing, but full of blessings as well! This last week a member contacted us and asked if we could do a musical with her because she had always had a dream to do it.  Fortunately, she now had the perfect group of missionaries to pull it off. Anyways we had to plan it all out for this week because all the missionaries that played instruments were going to get changed out. So every day of this week we dedicated a large portion of time to preparing the stage and practicing and memorizing our songs and lines. It was pretty intense for my companion who had to learn 3 new songs on the piano within one week.  All I did was sing a solo and a couple choruses so it was pretty easy to learn. Unfortunately, due to all of that practice, we lost a large portion of time we would have otherwise dedicated to actual missionary work. However, in the end it was a great experience and when the event finally came around many of the investigators and less active members we invited ended up coming! And in the end we had a large turnout with almost over 80 people showing up many not being from our ward, and almost 20 percent being investigators! So I guess when one sacrifices lots of time for a good cause the Lords gives us a few miracles haha.

Well it has been a solid cycle, I’ve learned a lot, and it was nice to have a solid companion as well.  This was easily one of the fastest cycles I have had! But I guess that just is how it is going to be now days, every cycle goes a little bit faster! And I’m pretty sure these next few cycles now that I’m with Alavez are going to go even faster and are going to be full of blessings! The end is coming up and now is the time to give it everything! 

Well that sums up the week pretty well! 

Con mucho amor!

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 5

Well, in all honesty the worst part of the week was when the prophet died, besides the fact that it was a sad time for the members, the missionary work seemed to take a turn for the worst.  Almost everyone in the zone had horrible "luck" and lost a ton of investigators that were close to being baptized. It seemed like the entire world was against the missionaries and the people we were teaching. Many of our investigators had horrible accidents and some simply decided they didn´t want to progress. Anyways this type of thing was happening in all the areas of the zone. Due to this we ended up doing splits all week with several companionships in order to cheer up some missionaries and help the others to take advantage of the opportunity to work harder!

Our splits started out when I went to an area called Quintas with Elder Mortensen.  I went over there to "destroy" the area by putting baptism dates with everyone, unfortunately it didn´t go to plan.  They had put down 10 appointments that day for me to go visit, and every single one of the fell through... So we got that chance to knock on dozens of doors and work our leg muscles hahaha.  The next day I stayed in the same area but with Elder Fastabend (an elder from Ojinaga that I was with previously).  I stayed around to see if I could try to destroy the area once again, unfortunately all the appointments once again fell through except for a few that already were on track to baptism. The next day one of the elders called and said that he wanted to return to his house because everyone thing was going wrong and he lost literally every one of his investigators.  So we did splits with him, my companion went with him and I went with his companion Elder Lignell.  We worked in my own area where we had a family home evening and then attempted to teach a girl about the word of wisdom.  In the end she decided she will only stop drinking coffee when she decides to get baptized and that she is going to buy me some hot pink pajamas with multi-colored coffee beans all over it. She then gave us a ride home and proceeded to go to the local superstore to buy coffee. She´s cool but we´ve got a lot of work to do haha. The next day I returned back to Quintas where I did a baptism interview and played the piano for the branch, this is where the miracles began to happen...

Alright, well after the horrible week of all the appointments falling through and everyone losing their investigators we were expecting a low church attendance this week. But this is where the biggest miracle of the week came into play, in our zone we have 6 companionships and at church we brought 25 people to church! Almost every area brought 4 or more, it was amazing! Then in the night as everyone passed their information about the week we had 93 new investigators!  Unfortunately, our goal for the zone was 100 so we decided to call everyone up in the zone and to have everyone leave the house and get at least 1 new investigator.  Everyone got super excited and left and we achieved our goal! It was a super cool blessing! And a great way to end a week that was a little more difficult.

Well that was our week here in the zone of Tec 2!

con much amor,

Elder Bunch or Elder Sheeran (nickname by the members of Del norte) or Aunt Elder Bunch (nickname by the sister missionaries because i sew, cook, and clean. I guess that is abnormal hahaha)

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 4

It was a great experience to see you all on Christmas and it is a little crazy to see how much everyone has changed! I barely recognized everyone hahaha.  It will be quite an interesting experience to see everyone in 7 months!  It is good to see that everyone is doing well, even if my internet connection was horrible this year! haha.!

Alright, well this week was pretty great! Our baptisms fell through but one is getting baptized this week, so it ended up well in the end! We also got to have several parties with the members! This week I got to go on splits with the assistants, in all honestly it is a lot more fun to do divisions/splits with the assistants as a zone leader than when I was a secretary haha. Anyways we spent almost the entire day contacting and I was in the area of the assistants with one of them and unfortunately almost all the appointments of the day fell through. But it was still a great experience in which I learned a lot that I have been applying in my area lately and helping the missionaries in the zone. Another cool moment was I got to see my mission son again, right now he is the new secretary so he was in the same house as we were, good experience! He still hasn`t changed at all haha.

Yesterday for new years day we had a massive zone activity.  We started out the day by playing a weird version of Mexican football.  In the end we finished with a massive argument as all the white guys started to explain the actual rules of football and all the Mexicans tried to explain that their football was the true football.  It was a fun experience up until that point, although I’m pretty sure I’ll be sore for the entire week (these darn games always end up in tackle haha). Afterwards we all took naps and then prepared a lunch/dinner.  Every companionship brought some food and we had a large meal! I made about 15 pounds of wings, Chinese style! They were super good although I’m pretty sure I might have gave 2 missionaries gastritis, but they tasted really good so I guess that is the sacrifice you make when you eat a lot haha. Unfortunately, the activity ended 30 minutes late and with the 2 missionaries getting sick, the event made the president of the mission a little angry and he ironed us a little bit.  It was alright though because we deserved it a little bit hahaha. That is just how it goes when you throw a super hip party for your zone!

Well that was our week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión