Cuauhtemoc, Week 5

Well sounds like it was a normal landscaping home renovation week full of work and some dental work as well haha. Well like the title says, I got mugged...again!  But I’ll explain that later on, it is quite the interesting story. Well besides that we had a great week full of service, contacting, finding, teaching, and as always miracles!

Well let´s begin with the hook, I got mugged by a homeless guy that we have actually taught a few times before when i was with E. Perez, but I’ll start with the beginning of the day. Anyways that entire morning we were painting the house of the Hermana Claudia an investigator that is getting baptized in two weeks. Anyways we spent the entire morning painting her house and gaining the trust of her mother who has lived her entire life catholic and is a little closed to our message.  Still she wants the best for her daughter, and grandchildren (it is a family of 4 that we are baptizing!). Anyways afterwards we had to take a bus that took us to the farthest colony in our area where we visited a family of 6 that we are teaching unfortunately by the time we finished the lesson it was later than we thought (like 6 pm) and we had about 2 hours of walking to get back to our house passing by other colonies along the way to visit and commit other investigators to the church. Anyways this journey was marked by 3 interesting experiences, the first on the way back we passed through a University campus and somehow we ended up in a fenced off construction area and after searching for about 20 minutes we had no idea how to get out or how we entered.  So we found a little space underneath the fence and climbed under it right in front of two unhappy police officers. They thought we were stealing things until they saw we were missionaries and then they asked us why the missionaries always pop out of the weirdest spots (apparently we weren´t the first hahaha), they then showed us the correct route and joked around with us for a bit. Alright next, when we were about 30 minutes from the house a homeless guy was walking down the street and called us over asking help, so we headed over and he asked us for money, and well we had nothing to give him so we told him we had nothing, he got angry, and pulled out his brass knuckles to beat us up (quite frankly me and my comp are in a lot better shape than him, so it wouldn´t have been a struggle to take him down), anyways we told him to not be dumb, and we shared with him a pamphlet and that was all he left with. Then the final event... well to get to our house we have to cross a river, and well it was super dark out and to make a long story short we ended up taking a swim in the river that is made up of sewage... yep we both showered for about an hour that night haha.

 Well onto the better experiences and the miracles, which includes how we found the family of 6 of the previous story. Well we went to visit a sister who is not a member but all of her family is, anyways she wasn´t home, however while we were knocking on her door 2 kids showed up super excited to see us on their bikes.  They told us how the missionaries used to visit them but now they haven´t returned and how they loved attending the church.  Anyways we asked them where they lived and they told us to follow them, we arrived and the mother came outside and said "look at this miracle the Mormons finally returned" we proceeded to have a great lesson with them and although they are super Christian they recognized that God had sent us and that there was a reason that we have returned, so now all we need to do is help this family to see where is the Authority of God.

Well that was our week here, this week the sister missionaries want us to heal a person that has lupus so I guess we shall see how this goes!

con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Cuauhtémoc

Cuauhtemoc, Week 4

Unfortunately, this week we did not get around to testing our luck and doing something dumb, because we were so busy working up miracles! From playing the piano for the Elder Valenzuela (70) to having an awesome turn out in the church this week was a week to remember.

Well I´ll start out with the first miracle.  I´m on a diet! and it´s great! Nah not really, I’ll hold off on that until I get back, however my companion is on a diet and so I eat lots of vegetables and exercise a lot. It has been nice to have a companion that doesn´t waste all his money on cereal boxes and peanut butter.  My new companion will go to the store with 300 pesos (20 bucks) and we will leave with about 20 pounds of assorted fruits and vegetables and a little bit of chicken and tuna fish. The best part is I get to cook it! I’ve made some Chinese stir fry, grilled vegetables, sandwiches, etc. In the end it has been awesome to start cooking once again.  I just got my Valentine Day package so I will soon be making crepes and pancakes from Trader joes to throw into the mix haha.

On that note... my companion! Dang from the rumors I had heard I thought this guy was going to be super hard to handle, but he is amazing! He has a gift of winning the confidence of whoever he talks to which has helped us receive so many miracles.  We went with the branch president during this week, and a little background on the branch president is he doesn´t exactly love the missionaries due to several bad experiences that have happened in the past and because he is a little difficult at times. Anyways we arrived and started to ask him how we could help him out in his calling because his dream is that this branch grows and breaks into 2.  So we talked a bit and he started to give us the simple tasks (it is what the presidents do to get us to stop bugging them), when all of a sudden we shared a scripture with him that changed his form completely.  He started to give us references of his best friends and several families that are partial members, and then he asked our permission to go on visits with us this Thursday! It was a miracle!

This week we have also started a process that is called "calling down heaven" a name given by our ward mission leader from a thing he did when he was a missionary. It basically is just a massive prayer circle in which everyone is praying for the investigators of everybody and doing it at an early hour in the morning that requires the sacrifice of  waking up at 6:00 instead of 6:30.  Anyways we agreed to do it because we didn´t want to shut down the idea of our mission leader and gosh dang it works!  All of our investigators are starting to progress amazingly.  One family can now recite the entire Book of Mormon by memory, another attends every event that the church had during the week, and the wife of a member (partial family) felt the spirit during fast and testimony meeting and decided she wants to get baptized after a year from when her spouse and children got baptized. Miracle with Miracles behind it.

Which takes me to another miracle. The piano.  I had to play 3 songs that I had never heard of before or I had heard very little, and well I had to learn the 3 in under a week! That´s not an easy process on a cheap keyboard hahaha. Anyways on the day of the event I still couldn´t play the songs all that well, and well I said a little prayer and started to play, and dang! I only made one mistake throughout the entire meeting and it was just due to not holding a note long enough which was due to not knowing the song hahaha. it was awesome! And then afterwards I had an interview with Elder Valenzuela and it was super short, but it was a great experience in the end of the interview.  It was honestly a little weird to see how normal of a person he was, he was just a regular guy a little bit ahead of me on that iron bar. It was a great experience to get to know him and help he gave our mission!

And the last miracle this Sunday we brought 11 investigators to church! we brought more to church than any other companionship in the entire mission, it is so cool when you work hard and get mega blessed, Now to keep up the work and help these 11 get baptized soon! I honestly hope I can stay in this branch until I get sent back to Utah or Arizona whichever of the two, because this branch is so close to breaking into 2 and me and my companion are the trusted ones by the lord, and the members to do it!

Well that was our week here, time to keep calling down heaven and keep receiving miracles!

con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Cuauhtémoc

Cuauhtemoc, Week 3

Well looks like everyone enjoyed Mexico a lot! A some even got to have the full experience of eating food in the streets and suffering for it the next days and weeks! Good ol’ Mexico haha. It is surprising that it is still snowing over there in Utah, we are approaching into march quickly here and with March comes wind storms! Every day it is super windy over here, and it is actually quite refreshing, outside of the fact that the wind is full of dirt and dust. But that is just how it goes I guess haha.

Anyways my companion was changed this week.  This wasn’t a big surprise because president told him that he was going to have changes this last week. Anyways this week we did everything that my companion wanted to do, we took some interesting shortcuts in the area, we worked super hard, and had some awesome food! My new companion is named Elder Carbajal and he goes home in 3 months, and well this cycle is going to be an interesting time, but it is alright in the end.  I’m here to work and even if my companion has his mind on home, that won’t stop me!

Anyways this week was fairly normal, the only difference was that we did everything differently. We would knock on every blue house we saw, we played soccer with the skull of a cow, we used water tunnels beneath streets to get around, and we crossed on top of mountains to get to all the colonies in our area. Basically, we made everything a shortcut, and it surprisingly worked out pretty well, we have had a lot of success and if everything goes perfect we can get around 9 baptisms this next month (in a perfect world hahaha). But either way this next month is going to be amazing!

Well that was our week here, this next week E. Valenzuela of the seventy is going to be coming.  I have been asked to play the piano for the meeting he will have with the missionaries and i will have a very large interview with him as well after the meeting, which will be a really cool experience because very few missionaries will get the chance to have an interview with him, there are maybe 1 or 2 in every zone so it will be interesting that is for sure! So, pray for me because I don´t know how to play the piano and well if I get sent home early for how bad I play... it has been a good mission hahaha, nah just messing but I do need to practice a lot haha.

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Cuauhtemoc, Week 2

Looks like Mexico is going pretty well for all of you guys! It will be an awesome experience to join in the adventure there in a bit! Besides that, I’m doing great! My sickness has left and i am back to working hard. Basically, my role in life right now is getting to learn the area super fast due to the fact that my companion has 5 months here in Cuauhtemoc and it is almost certain he will be changed here next week. So, I’m trying to learn an area in a week and a half which is quite the challenge, but I guess that is how it goes. Anyways this week has been full of experiences from living with Wolverine, climbing the death star, and getting to know a whole new group of missionaries and members!

Well let´s begin with living with the reincarnation of Wolverine from X-men, his name is E. Perez and he is from Orem Utah and Tijuana Mexico. He´s basically the guy you want to be with if you ever find yourself in a corner with a group of Narcos. His desk of study is a workshop where he makes shanks out of animal bones he has found in the area, he sleeps in a literal nest on the floor, he doesn´t feel pain, and when he was a kid he would free climb the mountains and cross the U.S. border just for fun. So basically, he is simply an awesome companion. Right now, he is teaching me the area, we cross through rivers and holes in fences to get to the areas we need to go, we also climb random abandoned buildings when i let him do it. The most recent building we climbed was a massive abandoned water tower, it was pretty cool, it has been nick named the Death Star by the missionaries because that is what it appears to be. This week we are planning to climb a massive jungle gym looking thing, it is a massive dome! It´s going to be great.

These next months are going to be great, the area that I’m in is full of people who are progressing to be baptized, also the branch here is on the verge of breaking into two branches because of how big it is, and it would be an amazing experience to help it break in two which would cause it to be one step closer to being a stake (right now it is a district with 7 branches). and the thing is that it is not all that difficult, the only problem is that the members aren´t super willing to help out, we have sacrament meeting at 9 so the members aren´t super willing to wake up at 6:30 with us and pick up all the people that we are missing. But we will just have to see what we can do with that haha.

Well there isn´t anything super new this week, besides preaching to the drunks we haven´t had any out of the normal experiences. But I’ll keep everyone updated with the next week, adventures with my new companion and whatever other experience happens to pass along our path!

Con mucho amor,

-- ​

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte