Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 2

No Manches [way]! You already wrecked my jeep, I´ve only been out 3 months! Man did I call that before I left! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  I´m glad to hear that my jeep still holds up against other cars well, and it still sounds like Davis High is still super dumb for car crashes.

Anyways, this week was probably one of the longest weeks of my life here in the mission. When we arrived in Ojinaga our district leader told us straight up that no one had worked in our area for 3 years. Apparently with the old president, if you got sent to Ojinaga it was because you needed to shape up, and for the most part all the missionaries did in Ojinaga was party in the Jacuzzi in the house. So now, the new president sends the missionaries to the area to help it grow that he knows will work, or so I’m told.  So to sum up this week, all we did was contact all day every day.  My companion has a watch to count the kilometers and we never sunk beneath 40 kilometers in a day! I was super sore for the first few days, especially because my new companion has an excercise program called Insanity from youtube. It is super super intense and we use it everyday from 630 to 700. It’s paid off because now I can eat even more food than I could eat before the exercise ha ha ha.

Since we didn´t have anything real cool in the week, I´ll describe Ojinaga a bit.  Ojinaga is a small town that is half in Texas and half in M exico (I have a cool picture of me in front of the dividing wall)  When I say a small town, I mean from our house walking to downtown Salt Lake. It is super big, and unfortunately our dorm mates have the only bikes.  I´m not sure why, but our dinner appointments always seem to be in the farthest part of the town possible. Well onto the climate, the days are super super hot, it is definitely called the inferno [hell] for a reason.  The nights are super super cold.  So basically it is just like a desert, which it is, so I guess that makes sense ha ha ha. The fun part about Ojinaga is that all the Americans that live in the Texas part drive here to buy their groceries because they are super cheap, along with the cars.  I don´t know why but every person here has a porsche, or a super super nice truck or jeep, or in general just a really nice car ha ha ha. Unfortunately though the food in comparison to Delicias is expensive, but it´s not too shabby because we don´t have to ride in buses everyday and lose about a third of our money to do it.  Now with walking during the days, I have all my money to spend on food, and dang it is a good life. The district leader loves cooking and I love cooking as well so we have been teaching each other recipes.  He thought it was the coolest thing when I made rice krispie treats.  Apparently the thought to combine marshmallows and rice cereal together never came to him. So we had a few fun times with that. The best part is my new companion is a cleaner, he can´t look at something dirty and not clean it, only problem is he lives in a house with 4 missionaries ha ha ha ha.

Guess I´ll describe my new companion a little then. My new companion is named Elder Merlo.  He is probably the quietest missionary I have yet seen ha ha ha. In reality, I think that is why he got put with me, because no missionary stays quiet with me for very long, whether that is a good thing or bad thing ha ha ha. Anyways, he has 6 months in the mission, and was the trainer for my companion in the CCM, because of this we enjoy talking about the stories about my old companion Elder Hernandez hahaha. Besides Elder merlo, there is Elder Marx (the new gringo), luckily he is getting used to the food, although I do enjoy calling him lava boy when he was in the bathroom for awhile.  Elder Marx is super cool but equally timid as my companion.  His companion Elder Cruz likes having me go on divisions with Elder Marx because he feels comfortable around me talking around me as well as contacting people and teaching lessons.  He´s super cool and he´s getting better each day with the language.  Finally, Elder Cruz, he is super cool and excellent in holding a conversation and teaching.  We have a fun time with each other and this often involves meddling with one another during certain items.  Such as turning off the hot water in the morning when it´s 40 or 50 degrees ha ha ha. He has 10 months in the mission and thinks it has gone by super fast as well as I. 

And you don´t need to worry, we had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner.  The only thing was that it was a day late, on the actual day of thanksgiving a member made a turkey for us, but the only problem was that we arrived a little late and it had already been eaten.  Luckily the people that ate it left plenty of egg salad and macoroni salad...it was not a good day for me ha ha ha ha. Anyways the next day we were waiting for a youth to follow along in front of the church, when suddenly a guy pulled up in his Subaru and asked if we wanted to go get something to eat. I said yes! My companion decided that we should probably should run it by eElder Cruz.  Elder Cruz was equally hesitant but I was hungry and so I convinced my companion to come get dinner with me, and this mysterious guy, who wasn´t a member. Anyways we pulled up to a house and inside was probably about 30 people and on this night we ate 2 turkeys and 3 hams and about every thanksgiving side you can imagine.  It was awesome and because of it, we now have a ton of new investigators.

Well that was my week, oh and thanks for the packages! This week the mission of 120 missionaries received 12 packages...I received 5 of those 12, My district is super excited and I´m super excited to open them up in a little bit! So many thank yous for all the gifts that I will have in about a month!

Elder Bunch

Ojinaga, Chihuahua

Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 1

Well we had changes this week! I`m off to Oji Naga (I think that is how you spell it more or less), a lot of missionaries call it the infierno (hell), because of how hot it is, but they say that in the winter it is the nicest house in the mission and that it has a Jacuzzi!  oji Naga is a small town right beneath Texas, to the point that there is a part of the town where you are now in Texas! I`m looking super forward to starting in my new area.  The only reason I`m not there in this moment is because the only bus that goes to there left at 3 and we arrived in Chihuahua at 3.  So we missed it ha ha ha. I`m half sure I`m being sent to this new area because of all my packages, because this area is the one that picks up the packages from the man in Texas.  So now I will receive my packages in less than a week when they are sent.  Oh and on that note this week 3 more packages arrived, and one of them was the package with the jelly beans!  So that was really fun for my companion and I.  I can now play 100 years and the theme to Indiana Jones near perfectly on the piano thanks to the sheet music that you sent!  The packages are always fun.  Granted I think that my zone enjoys it almost as much as I do, mainly because in the end I end up splitting my entire package.  I guess that I won`t be doing that anymore for awhile.  Our new area is 4 hours from our zone meeting place, so in reality it is super rare to see our entire zone because of how much money it costs to travel back and forth. But it`s all right because that just means i`ll be splitting my dulces (treats) with my district instead of my zone.  The best part is my new district leader was a chef before his mission and he`s going to teach me how to cook some of the more native foods from here! So although I miss my old companion a little, I`m still super super excited for what this next cycle holds for me!

Well more on what happened this past week, unfortunately we weren`t able to get Elsa baptized, since both me and my companion have changes, so now it`s up to the new missionaries in the area.  However right before we had changes we were able to baptize a boy named Joshua Capucchino.  He and his family are super cool, and were a great find and blessing. It was really a blessing for me and my companion to finish off our last week together with a baptism even if it wasn`t the person thought we were going to baptise hahaha. This week was pretty sad though because we learned that we were going to have changes, we thought it was just going to be only one of us, we learned that it was both of us... Well it was a sad moment because it`s changes like these when a lot of investigators are lost because they don`t like the new missionaries, or the new missionaries don`t have the same interest in the investigators, so that was hard on my companion and me.  It was hard on my companion because he really wanted to baptize Elsa and she asked if he could baptize her.   It was hard on me because I had 3 months in the area and zone and knew all the members and a lot of the people around us.

My new companion is named elder Mylo (more or less ha ha ha), no one really knows him because he only has been on his mission for 6 months and he has been in the same area for the entire time, kind of like me ha ha ha. But he is super super cool, granted he is a little shy, but no one stays shy with me for very long ha ha ha.  Also, living in my house with us is another companionship and one of the elders is a brand new gringo from Arizona named elder Mar. I think I’m going to have fun with him because from what I can tell he is still living in his own bubble, and if there is one thing a mission does for you, is it pops your bubble ha ha ha.  I`ll be there when the first 6 weeks get to him, especially because he was already nicknamed lava boy for all his time in the bathroom in the ccm (MTC) because of the Mexican food. He asked me if we eat a lot of chili here because chili kills his stomach... I’m still deciding on how to break it to him in reality ha ha ha. 

Well that basically sums of my week, I’ll tell you about my new area the next email, and send some pictures(my camera is in my suitcases)

Elder Bunch

Ojinaga, Chihuahua 

Week 11, Delicias Mexico

It has started to get a little chilly here; all the missionaries have colds, but nothing more so we like to mess around with sniffling in the meetings with the zone leaders.  If you could find a cool electric blanket that would be super cool, my old companion gave me one, and he thought he was being kind by washing it before he gave it to me, but long story short all I have now is a towel with wires inside of it ha ha. We also have a couple heaters to keep us warm, every mission house has electricity and because of this we all have those small plug in heater things. They are kind of like the propane ones just not as hot.  We used to have the propane ones, but the missionaries were having problems with them exploding, luckily only one house got badly burned, but no missionaries hurt ha ha.  As usual cooking is going really well here, only problem is they use fire to heat their ovens. This method works well except you can`t have an exact heat setting, and you have to double the time for ever recipe in the oven.  Basically the only difference is we have to check the food more and wait a lot longer ha ha ha.  Unfortunately i still haven`t received the jelly belly bean package. I received the package from grandma bunch already, and I thought they sent the package after you, so I`m hoping I get it this week sometime. 

Otherwise this is how this week went down, since the cold weather has started coming in we have decided to go to all the areas in our zone and carol and contact while caroling.  This week we went to meoqui, it ended up being super successful and we probably got around 120 new potential investigators for the misioneras of meoqui to contact.  it was really fun to contact while all the missionaries were singing, mainly because it was really easy to talk with the people when they walked in front of you to see what`s going down ha ha

The only bad thing that really went down this week, was that our baptism fell through because of the ex husband again.  A big problem is that we now haven`t been able to enter into the house.  This is weird because the investigator is always inside of her house, so something is happening.  We are hoping to sort it out and get her back on the path to baptism again.

This is the last week of my training, so officially I am now an old missionary.  I don’t know but my next companion may be right out of the MTC.  That makes me nervous since then everything is reliant on me, particularly for the first 2 weeks while they are adjusting.  No matter what happens, I`m looking forward to it!

Elder Bunch,

Delicias Chihuahua

miracle count 152

tortilla count 395

p.s. I`m working on a package and I have little notes in there for everyone, and one for Maren in Spanish, because I recall that her Spanish is better than mine ha ha ha

Week 10, Delicias Mexico

All right as for the Day of the Dead, it was pretty cool! A lot of people had their skull painted faces and went to parties, although I learned that it is more of a party for the youth, and pretty depressing for the adults, kinda like trick or treating ha ha ha ha. It was fun though my companion bought me tripitas and umbre, and we had a feast with the elders that came to stay with us every week; one of them being the other gringo. At the end of the feast I asked my companion where the meat was from on the cow because it was really good and I hadn´t had it before... in hindsight I think I kind of set myself up for the answer, anyways he informed me that the awesome meal we ate was intestine and udder.  My gringo buddy didn´t look to good after that, but me on the other hand wanted to go buy some more ha ha ha. 

On the cooking part, I´m doing pretty awesome! Granted a small crockpot would be cool, but the church has an awesome oven so when I need to cook something we go cook it there. As of today I have about 5 pounds of chicken marinating in the fridge in the house. I made a promise with an investigator that I would cook Chinese chicken wings, and so I am, as well as a cobbler, just because I want to make a cobbler ha ha ha. But either way, I´m pretty excited for it! But if you ever want to send some recipes feel free, grandma bunch sent a few recipes and ingredients and I´m looking super forward to making them! Mainly because there are a couple dulces. So yea, if you have some simple recipes that don´t require a bunch of expensive ingredients I would love to have them, the book you sent with the 52 weeks of food, is working out super good.  All the recipes don´t have very many ingredients and are easy to make, so it is super super easy to use.

All right onto the week! This week was super awesome, and super bad as well, the bad part was that I got super sick, nearly to the point that my companion threatened to send me to the wife of the mission president, which is basically you sit in the office for a week doing nothing.  So there was no way I was going to let him send me away from my investigators.  So instead I did a little research and got myself a strep throat drug, and now I´m doing awesome! Only problem is now my companion has the same sickness and he´s taking it worse that I did.  Today he´s doing better, although he´s upset with me as of this moment because of something I did to him in his dream last night... I´m still trying to get him to tell me what exactly what I did.  All he´s told me so far is that he returned from his mission and I was married to his sister ha ha ha ha.

All right onto the good part of the week! Hermana (sister) Elsa the investigator from last week that couldn´t come to church because of the ex husband, we went to her house yesterday to make sure she would go to church.  It was a good thing we did because she was not ready at all, her kids were running around everywhere and everything was in chaos.  So we showed up, helped her get everything ready, and eventually got her to church about an hour late.  But when we got to church, the bishop said he wanted to interview her, so of course we let him, and after the interview he told us that we could baptize her at any moment she wanted. We told her this and she immediately said she wanted to be baptized that day.  We went to the bishop after she told us this, and he kind of freaked out and got super stressed out, and told us that we needed to wait till the next Sunday so they could make programs, tell the members, and get everything ready. It was all right with us and we understood that it was better to not rush things, but Elsa was pretty upset.  But she is excited that she can be baptized next week. Almost as excited as us, who threw ourselves a little party by making hot chocolate and eating beef jerky ha ha ha. 

Also this week I got to finally see one of those giant centipedes.  It was probably about 2 feet long, it was super super cool.  My companion was freaking out because he was told if it bit you that you would die.  So he wouldn´t let me catch it, so that part was kinda sad.  At least I got a photo of it, so I’m pretty content hahaha. 

Well that was my week, so I’ll email you next week with my new updates!

Elder Bunch

Delicias Chihuahua

Miracle count 146

Tortilla count 368