Secretario Ejecutivo, Week 2

Sounds like your area of México is quite different from my México, but the food looks about the same, lots of mangos and seafood, and especially here in Chihuahua a ton of meat. I will look forward to those future experiences in México with all of y´all.  It´ll be fun and to have the opportunity to understand when dad is trying to make fun of everyone in spanish ha ha ha. But glad to know that everyone had a fun time, this place is super cool!

This week was a solid week of learning how to do my job solo, up until now I have had a trainer named Elder Ochsenhirt (who happens to be my 4th cousin through the Warner side), and he´s been training me on how to do all the tasks and this week he basically has had me do everything solo and if I have questions he answered them.  The biggest thing that happened was that I had to help send a missionary home, it was a bit weird because he was the Assistant in the mission when I arrived. He hurt his spine really bad in one of the mountain areas and had to go home for surgery, so I spent a good portion of this week talking with global services and buying tickets so that this missionary could go home and say his goodbyes to all of his friends. When I wasn´t doing that we were moving into our new house and cleaning the old house. The new house is pretty cool but not quite as big.  The new one is a more American looking house, rather than the old one. We spent a lot of our time moving all the beds between the houses, due to the fact that we stay in the house of the mission where all the missionaries stay when they need to stay over night in Chihuahua, because of this we have about 15 bunk beds that we had to take apart and build them all again. But now all the houses look pretty good and I´m almost all the way unpacked ha ha ha.

A pretty fun part of this week though was that all the zones in the city of Chihuahua had their zone conferences with the president about how we can all improve in certain aspects, and we had the opportunity to help the president and his wife prepare the zones for the zone conference, which basically involved buying about 300 dollars of food (that´s a ton in Mexico ha ha).  It was really fun to travel to all the zones and see a bunch of my buddies from old zones and from my generation from the ccm. Another pretty cool part of the week was that we got to do a lot of baptism interviews, because Elder Ochsenhirt is still training me.  He is still the district leader so I still didn´t get to do much, but I learned that we often do the interviews for the zone leaders due to the fact that our schedule is a little more open than other missionaries. And on Thursday we had to do 2 interviews the same day, both unexpected. Pretty cool experience. And pretty soon we should have a baptism for ourselves.  There is a youth here named Carlos who wants to baptized, but only needs to be taught all the lessons, so right now we are teaching him with the goal to be baptized this next week, and at the latest the week after, It´s going to be awesome!

And that was my week here in the offices! See ya next week,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Secretario Ejecutivo 

Secretario Ejecutivo, Week 1

Hey! This week has been super crazy and today as well so I´m going to try to write super fast again, because at this moment we are moving houses (quite the exciting life here as a secretary). Anyways this week has basically been a whole bunch of learning how to do everything from putting in baptism records to going to immigration.  Apparently most missions have 4-6 secretaries, but our mission only has 2, the executive and the financial (we´re companions).  The financial secretary is busy enough, so I do the job of all those other secretaries that other missions have, and it sure does keep me on my toes ha ha. Although it is super chaotic at times, it is super cool because I get to talk to every one of the missionaries and the missionaries that I´m now closest to are the assistants to the president and the zone leaders of all the zones.  It´s really cool to hang out with all the leaders of the mission and learn from them, and to realize that they aren´t at all different than any other missionary ha ha ha. 

This week we have the leader conference where all the zone leaders come down to Chihuahua and they listen to the assistants and the president talk.  Then they go give the message to all of the missionaries in their areas. It was our job to help prepare and serve the food, and due to having a lot of free time during those 6 hours, I was able to sit in on the conference and here the messages from the sources rather than having it relayed through the zone leaders.  Even though the zone conferences are cool they are nothing compared to listening to the actual source and all the actual details that are put in place. After the leader conference almost all of the leaders stayed in our house, and everyone of them asked me how I ended up as secretary because of many reasons such as; no one had ever heard of Elder Bunch (thanks to being in Ojinaga for 5 months),  I was the least talked about of the 3 candidates to be secretary and the other 2 are zone leaders, and finally I only have 8 months in the mission, and that has never happened before either apparently. It ended up being really fun learning about all the reasons why I shouldn´t be secretary, but well here I am ha ha ha. And although it is very hard and I have to speak spanish with the authorities of Chihuahua it has been one of the best weeks of my mission ha ha ha.

And even though I´m a bit sad that I left Ojinaga after all this time, these next few cycles as secretary should be some super fun times, even if my schedule is super wacked at times.

Sorry don´t have much times again, hopefully better luck next week!

Elder Bunch

Secretario Ejecutivo

Office Week 1

Well changes came in and dang they were quite the shock.  The president called me up last night and I was thinking that I was going to train again or something like that (when the president calls it is because you´re going to train or have leadership).  Anyways to make a long call short, I´ve been promoted to district leader, but not just any district leader, I have been made the executive secretary. It was quite the surprise to be put in a situation like this to say the least, but I´m excited to have an experience that most missiornaries never have the chance to have.  The wierdest part is after today my new p-day is going to be Saturday, usually, or if it is hectic, Monday (so don´t be calling unless I haven´t written till tuesday ha ha ha).  It´s going to be way cool being a secretary here and I´ll get to know every one of the areas in the mission and every missionary.  My new house is super cool and super big, it should be a pretty fun couple cycles here!

Well this last week was super fun in Ojinaga.  Basically everyone new that I was going to have changes so I spent my days saying my goodbyes and being invited to a whole bunch of parties, it was awesome! One of the parties they made me a soup of a mix of different types of seafood.  It was awesome with a ton of octopus, clams, shrimp. Then another party was with the future baptisms of Ojinaga.  We went over after being invited to a massive BBQ, they invited all 4 of us in Ojinaga and we ate a ton of grilled chicken and steak. It was awesome! The husband is a really good meat cook after working in a restaurant and we all ate until we were full and sick.  We all slept really well that night ha ha ha. It made me a little sad to leave Ojinaga because when I arrived the area didn´t have investigators and was in mission terms "dead", but now that I spent time in both of the areas in Ojinaga I got a chance to help revive it.  Now this next cycle Ojinaga has the potencial to baptize 10 people this month! Unfortunately I won´t be able to attend but it will be cool none the less to play a small part.

Well I´ve got to keep it short this time, so that´s more or less how the week went.  I´ll probably email on Saturday ha ha ha,

See ya in a bit,

Elder Bunch

Ejecutivo Secretario 

Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 18

Basically if I don´t email within a week then you can start worrying because especially while I´m here in Ojinaga, at times we don´t if we are going to be anywhere near a server or if we are in Chihuahua.  We always get a chance by Tuesday or Wednesday, if not on Monday,  This may happen again next week because I will probably have changes (transfers) and if I have these who knows if I´ll have time.  Especially if i get called to a far off area. At least for now the Mission President and his wife know who Elder Bunch is now more than before ha ha ha. 

Anyway the family search activity went well and now the members have a firmer grasp on it.  Unfortunately we didn´t get any random people showing up, but we answered a ton of questions that the members had about their family trees.  We got them all started on genealogy and because of that we gained a good amount of trust from the members.  Now they have asked us to come to their houses to help them out with their families, kinda like my old calling in the church, ha ha.  The members really liked the banner that we made for the activity and asked to keep it so that they can use it in the future with events like this or they can use the blank side and make their own event. 

Anyway this week was pretty normal we basically left all of our none progressing investigators and now are focusing on our best and more prepared investigators and contacting a ton. This turned out to be a really good decision for us because one of the investigators we chose to stay with was having marriage problems and so we taught him basic marriage relations and now the the husband has decided he doesn´t want a divorce and the wife is going to stay in mexico with the husband.  This increased the family we were teaching from 3 members to now 6 with the wife and the two kids that stay with her!  Two of those kids came with us to the church Sunday which made the entire ward happy because usually they only have a primary of 2 kids that are a little older, so we doubled the primary with our investigators!!  The primary president was very thankful to us ha ha ha. 

The other big thing that happened was that my companion erased all of my photos. Lately we have been messing with my camera because over that past 2 weeks we have found about 100 new functions that it has that I had never bothered to try out. Anyways my camera is in English so he was messing around and accidently hit the delete all button and deleted 1300 photos from my camera and about 100 videos. Neither one of us was very happy that night.  Luckily there is a photo shop near us so we quickly ran over there and he said he could recover all the photos, so we left it there for about 2 days due to the amount of photos deleted.  Luckily I got most of them back, but I did lose all of my videos.  Wierd thing is I never really cared through the entire process.  I think my companion was more distraught than I was hahaha.  In the end I´m glad I didn´t lose 8 months of the first third of my mission hahaha. 

Well that basically is how my week went here in Ojinaga, getting very tan with the weather, but having a blast with all the free water and car rides ha ha ha

See y´all next week!

Elder Bunch

Ojinaga, Chihuahua

Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 17

Hey sorry for not emailing yesterday, we got caught in Chihuahua for the day, and we decided to return the same day so we could work today.  So the president gave us permission to write today. It was pretty funny today, mainly because we had just sat down to eat lunch when the wife of the mission president called me and said, more or less, that I had to get to the server at that moment because my parents had just called and said I hadn´t written. I tried to explain what happened yesterday but she then switched to broken english and chewed me out pretty good and very loudly to the point where all the other Elders were dying laughing. Well here we are and now you know that your phone calls do work.  I learned that the president´s wife is more scary than the president when she is trying to make a point ha ha ha. 

Anyway this week was cool, hard, and stressful. It was stressful because of certain events that happened in our district, which ended in a lot of lost trust and interviews with the president (yesterday). Basically this week I went on splits with the district leader because he trusted me to help him deal with the problem that arose. So we spent about about half of the week deciding on how to handle the situation, and after yesterday everything is back to normal.  We are building up trust again. So it all ended up well in the end. Now onto the bad part of this week, our next baptism candidate now lives in Arizona. We were going to baptize him and his daughter but we went to their house on Tuesday and were told that he was now living in arizona. We are also teaching one of his closest friends so we went with him afterwords and asked what happened.  To make a very long story short, he got upset and left to arizona to get a job and be with his parents. So that was a little difficult because he had been receiving missionaries for about 3 years and we finally had a baptism date.  Plus, since I´m leaving in 2 weeks I´m probably not going to be here when he finally decides to return to mexico. So now i´m making my companion promise to keep me updated so I can assist in the baptism when he gets back! Alright now onto the good news which involves the friend that helped us with the previous situation.  Anyway, we learned that he had been lying to us when he said that he only believes in saints.  It turns out he doesn´t believe in anything. This was a very good situation because now we are teaching him from scratch rather than breaking down a previous foundation to rebuild him again. Our lessons involve teaching him about the bible and Christ, both of which he had never read or knew much about.  Anyways Saturday we were teaching him and of course Saturday is the day to invite people to church, so we invited him.  Unfortunately he told us that he couldn´t, but that we could pass by and pick up his kids. Then both of his kids got really excited to come (we´re pretty good friends) and to make a long story short, they came with us to church. Unfortunately at church I took the older kid to the class with the deacons and left to talk with the other elders. We decided to go and sit with him after this and good thing we did because when we entered the class one of the deacons was relentlessly bullying our investigator due to the fact that he didn´t know anything about God or the bible (like his father). Anyways the teacher let us take over the lesson, and I got right up and chewed the deacon out in front of all his friends about what the church really is about. I gained quite a bit of respect from the members of the ward because no one had called this deacon out, no matter how misbehaved he was. The last thing I heard was that the deacon had a firm talking to by his mom. But now all the youth classes know what their role is if we bring an investigator to their class.  So it was a good teaching opportunity for us, and the youth investigator now thinks I´m even cooler because I stood up for him over members (according to him). Cool experience.

This week I once again had the oportunity to cut some hair.  This time I had no help from Elder Brindis for the actual cut (he helped a bit last time). Anyway to make a long story short my companion is the most gangster looking missionary in the mission right now.  His hair line got shaved high in his last hair cut and I shaved it high again, but on both sides trying to make it even.  Now he looks like he has a folded over mohawk.  Fortunately he thinks it is more funny that anything, along with the other missionaries. The day he got it he went to the grocery store and the local police man told him it looked cool and asked what hair salon he got it at. I´m thinking of starting a business to fund my collection of rubiks puzzles ha ha ha ha. 

Oh and I finally got the box with all the easter stuff and my shoe soles!  As you can see from the picture that was a very nice gift to get, although I´ll miss all those blisters I used to get and how calysed my feet are now because of them. But I guess that is what happens when you have to walk in an area that is meant for bikes. Everyday is spent walking several kilometers to reach all the investigators.  So thanks for the package, it was awesome! and for the cadbury eggs, my district and I were craving them since that last time we got some here. So that was great!

Anyways that´s what went down this week!

Elder Bunch (protector of atheist children ha ha)

Ojinaga, Chihuahua

milagros 310

tortillas 1045

Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 16

This week was a pretty hard worked week of contacting.  Previously no one dared knocking on doors here in Ojinaga, but the Mission President told me to go for it and report to him how it goes. So that is how we spent a large portion of this week. We would start on a block and knock every single door during the lunch hours.  Lunch hour gave us the advantage of finding a large portion of people in their houses.  They weren´t quite as happy as we were, but the cool thing about Mexicans is that they won´t tell you no.  So most of them say that they are really busy, so we make them not so busy by having them basically tell us their schedules.  Then we teach them a lesson on their open days.  The cool investigators we keep teaching and the rest we write down in a book for future missionaries to check on. So that part of the week went really well, unfortunately all the cool investigators that we already had either weren´t home or were found in inconvenient circumstances to teach. Our plan was to schedule 7 baptisms dates this week, but every single one fell through due to many reasons.  For example, by their parents not being home, or the father in law coming over as an alcoholic, or the pastors of their church coming in the house in the middle of a lesson and telling our investigators that they can´t listen to us anymore. So that was a little hard this week, but we´re going to try even harder this next week, and we are going to get those dates in!

As I ended off last week, we spent the first part of this week in Chihuahua, where we had zone meeting and talked a lot about the meeting with the president from 2 weeks ago.  We basically ended up talking about how to better contact and not having fear to contact people.  Otherwise the sin of passing them without a contact falls on us because they now don´t have the chance to repent... So after all that, we were all pretty motivated to work super hard (hence the knocking on a ton of doors during lunch). Anyways, after that we went to a place called freaky plaza which is basically a mall for geeks, filled with electronics, a ton of anime, and a large collection of types of rubiks cubes. There I bought a new cube called a megaminx that my companion has but hasn´t been able to solve it for 3 months.  Yesterday I figured it out and solved it.  It turns out when you are walking from house to house not teaching lessons you find a lot of time to try to figure out ways to solve a puzzle. My companion is begging me to teach him.  I´ve been thoroughly taking advantage of the situation, as I slowly give him hints hahaha. In Chihuahua we also ate rice balls, which is a tradition here in Ojinaga.  When you go to Chihuahua you go to the rice ball restaurants and order a rice ball and eat it in the bus to Ojinaga. They are pretty good and pretty feeling depending on what type you get. I usually get one called “carne de pastor”, which is a special type of meat style here in Ojinaga that is way good, and usually made with sheep meat. 

This week we tried to make my hair into the hair of a greaser after watching a Mormon movie that was based on a play (way old movie, pretty common but I can´t remember the name) anyways we cut the sides of my head (mission appropriate of course) and then we tried to get my hair to stick straight back, it didn´t work well and we ended using about half a bottle of gel in the process.  We are trying to get permission to use shoe grease to do it.  So far the zone leaders haven´t been too supportive, but they are thinking of letting me do it on a p-day and I can´t leave the house till I clean it all out. Now all I have to do is grow my hair out on top a little more ha ha ha ha. I´ll keep you updated on the progress through these next 3 weeks, before I get moved from Ojinaga haha.

See ya next week

Elder Bunch

Ojinaga, Chihuahua

Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Week 15

This week we have started to realize the strength that is required to work in the infierno (hell) of the mission, it got really hot this week and me and Elder Fastabend have started to get some pretty nice tans! I`ve convinced my district that I`m now more Mexican than they are, mainly because my Chihuahua accent is better than theirs (thanks to learning Spanish here). On a better note I got my package this week, and dang that little speaker is pretty loud, now the entire neighborhood knows when the missionaries are playing basketball ha ha ha. I also finally got all my Christmas letters that were sent through the Mexican post.  It is crazy how slow the post is here in Mexico, but cool that I got a letter from the bishop and counselors from the Farmington ward.  I also finally got my 2$ from the Warner Christmas auction!! Now I have another sweet scripture bookmark hahaha.

Well this week we had a meeting in Chihuahua.  I guess actually two because I`m in Chihuahua right now for a meeting. Anyways it was a meeting to improve our ability to bring people to the church on Sundays because here in Chihuahua the goal is to bring 12 investigators to the church every Sunday and although a high number it`s not particularly hard.  It does require a bit of effort, and a lot of convincing.  I`m trying to convince my companion to exercise so we can physically lift our investigators to bring them to church.  He`s still deciding if getting out of bed early is worth it ha ha ha. Today I had a interview with the President (we have one every 6 weeks) and we talked a bit and I was bragging how I was the king of Ojinaga now that I have been here longer than all other missionaries.  Then the president told me that I am going to have cambios (be transferred), due to the fact that I have hit the maximum time I should spend in an area.  I`m not too upset because Ojinaga is not the place to be in the summer, but I`ll miss getting my packages within the week they are sent. So these next 4 weeks will be most likely my last weeks in ojinaga. 

This week I had a pretty cool experience on getting prayers answered.  We have another investigator that has problems with his wife, which is impeding him from baptism (crazy how common the problem is). Anyways I decided to exercise a bit of faith and said a prayer and asked that the first thing I opened after my prayer be an answer to my problem. Then as soon as I finished my prayer I opened the Thomas S. Monson spiritual thoughts for the day book and the message for the day was all about solving problems in the house with relationships! Super cool stuff, getting answers like that!

Well that`s how the week went here.  I’ll keep you updated on just how much sunscreen it takes to save you in Ojinaga, because I still haven`t found the sufficient amount ha ha ha,

See ya next week

Elder Bunch

Ojinaga, Chihuahua

Miracles-290

tortillas-972