Cuauhtemoc, Week 1

Well it sounds like everything is returning back to normal over there in Utah.  So this week it is my turn to give the news! I got hospitalized! And it was awesome! It all started on Monday night when I couldn´t sleep all night due to a cough, so the next day I talked to the Sister Montoya (president´s wife) and she prescribed me a cough medicine and some ibuprofen because I had a slight fever as well. Everything went well through the night and through Wednesday. However, Thursday morning I woke up coughing up a lot of blood, so I took my ibuprofen ate breakfast and I felt fine, so I decided to leave and work hard (worst idea ever by the way). The more we walked the more I began to look like a "Simpson" in the words of my companion, we kept going until we finally arrived at the hour of lunch, and suddenly everything just hit me and I got super tired, lost my appetite, and started to convulse a little bit. By this point everyone starts to realize I wasn´t just messing around (that´s the bad part about being known as a joke guy). Anyways the sister that was giving us food me to call Hermana Montoya, and when I called her she ironed me and told me to quickly get to the hospital. Luckily the sister that was giving us food is super cool and gave me a ride to the mission approved hospital.  I got a check-up and then a MRI, I was then diagnosed with severe Bronchitis with a fever of about 103. They then proceeded to give me a very painful shot in the butt to lower my fever, they always do that here in Mexico and it is one of the few things I will not miss back in the states. Anyways they proceeded to give me a Nebulizer for around 2 hours. After that they returned to check if I could go home only to realize that my fever was only continuing to rise. So, they pulled out all the needles and gave me an IV and I had to have several bags of fluid and drugs injected into my body. Anyways this entire process began at 3:00 and ended up finishing around 11:00 in the night when they finally sent me home with my temp now around 101. The following 3 days I had to return to do tests and for a nebulizer session, and in the end, it was a pain in the butt, but it was a cool experience to have, although I would not recommend it for the adventurous spirits out there.

Also, a big thing happened this week! I got changes! I´m off to Cuauhtemoc, it is a village outside of Chihuahua where the mission has had a lot of success due to the humbleness of the people. And besides that, the food is cheap and the members are awesome! I´m also going to be in charge of an area that was opened this cycle called Anahuac.  It has previously been closed due to a massive problem that happened with missionaries about a year ago, anyways now days the sister missionaries are over there, but I get to be the guy to help them to open it up and create a strong area. Also, it sounds like my area is super cool as well with several people ready to be baptized these next couple of weeks! In the end, it sounds like it is going to be an awesome place to work, and it may possibly be my last area. So, let´s see how this all goes!

Well I was deathly ill this entire week so that´s all I can explain at this time! It´s been a great time in Del Norte and now it is time to move on and finish strong!

con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 9

I honestly feel like when i lived back in Utah, there were a lot less injuries than what has happened over these past 18 months.  I missed some very exciting months recently hahaha.  I guess we shall see how the luck continues when I get back there in 5 months.  It sounds like the whole Charlie incident was pretty intense, well it is always good to get a fun new experience to wake us up at times, that is what life is all about haha. Anyways this week was a week full of contacts, splits, and a couple baptisms!

Well everything started on Wednesday when I went on splits with Elder Salgado.  I went to his area to help him pull out some baptisms to his area.  In the end almost all the appointments  that were planned fell through, but luckily the one appointment that was super important stayed intact.  It was moved to 9, (we enter the house at 9) but this was a super important appointment so we accepted it and we went. It was quite the interesting experience because this investigator is the pastor of a semi-large Christian church, only that now he has seen the errors in his teaching and the teaching of other churches.  After attending our church he felt and saw the truth restored and decided he wanted to be baptized.  The only problem is that he wants God to give him a sign. So that's where my part came into play, basically we went and showed him with scriptures that he is ready, and well to make a very long semi bible bash short, he is going to be baptized! It's a great experience when one can teach with the spirit enough to convince a Christian pastor of 30 years to be baptized! These are the moments in the mission when one notices that the church is backed up by angels that are preparing everyone to be baptized. Anyways on Thursday we finished our splits and started a new pair of splits.  I went with E. Lignell a white elder I’ve mentioned in a few of my letters (I think, I don't really remember). Anyways he and his companion were having problems so we had to interview the two of them and see what was going on.  In the end, it was small things that built up into a disaster for example; a disorganized desk and bed, one didn't know how to mop a floor, and one took 3 pieces of ham from the other... yep small things are often the reason we can't feel the spirit and have bad relations with friends, family members, and here in the mission our companions! Anyways we talked with the two of them and helping them to give service to one another, because until that moment the most service that had been given was one egg for that last 9 weeks. Just serve people it isn’t that hard hahaha. Anyways we did splits with the both of them and talked to them about how we can all get better! Afterword we had our weekly massive contacting activity.  I ended up going with E. Mendoza we had some interesting luck, we found a Jehovah Witness pastor, a Catholic leader, and Christian prayer circle, and a pair of Jehovah witness missionaries teaching a family. I guess it was just the day to preach! It was alright though because the Jehovah witness pastor gave me a book to teach me "what the bible truly means" I gave him a pamphlet. Trade is good haha.

On Saturday, we spent the entire morning helping the sister missionaries in their area, then after the lunch, the Elders from cumbres (an area in our zone) called us and told us that they didn't have baptism clothes for a baptism they were going to have in 2 hours, so we had to run everywhere to get clothes, and we made it 30 minutes before that baptism started! In the end, it didn't matter too much because the bishop arrived 30 minutes late, so we basically arrived a hour early! Gotta love Mormon time! Anyways I played the piano and taught some kids how to play some basic hymns to keep them distracted from running around in the church, and I think I got contracted to teach piano lessons from their mother hahaha, too bad it is not my area. Anyways everything went well and they baptized two children! Our zone is famous for baptized children right now, but like Christ said, the children will inherit the kingdom of god, so we go for whatever we can get! (their parents are members, don't worry, we don't baptize random children in the streets...yet...).

On can't forget, today we played paintball! we combined two zones and we played zone against zone! there is nothing quite like getting a nice paintball bruise to show the young women in the ward... but hey one has got to have a couple reasons to return back to their mission, nah just messing.  And even if I wanted to, I didn't get bruised this time, the hard life of the Mexican paintball sniper bunch.

Well that was our more or less interesting week, I want to give a shout out to all those secretaries and assistants of the mission Mexico Chihuahua that I recently learned read my blog every week! 

You guys are the best! 

Con mucho amor,

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

Del Norte, Week 8

Sounds like it was a pretty normal week over there in Utah this week haha.  This week was a pretty fast week full of contacting, getting ironed by the President, and have an emergency mission counsel meeting.

Well this week we continued with our streak of knocking on lots of doors, and contacting everything that moves that includes the animals as well, it is not uncommon if we have 2 or 3 street dogs following us around, just so you know how hard we are working haha.  It has been pretty fun since we have been changing up our ways of contacting through interpretive dance, singing, magic, and scaring the people by sprinting to contact them. We have seen that some ways are better than others but they are all entertaining for us haha. And the best part about contacting is that one knows that with every bad contact where someone doesn't want anything you are just one contact closer to finding the person who is going to be baptized! And that is the reason why we contact everyone, you are always going to find some angry Catholic or Christian who you woke up from his nap even though it is 4 in the afternoon. But once or twice every week you find that golden family that has been praying for the missionaries to pass by! We just got to keep at it and we will find them even out here in Del Norte with all the gangsters haha.

Alright onto the iron of my mission. Well here in our zone there is an area where some investigators who were attending church since september and they finally wanted to get baptized.  The only problem is that they lived in the area of a different zone.  These investigators wanted to get baptized in the area where they were currently attending church.  The missionaries from the area of the other zone didn't like that too much. So we had a big ball of confusion about what was going on, and in the end the president had to get involved and well to make a long story short he ironed us all and fixed it all up, and so we are finally done with the problem and the baptism was great! I got to play the piano and it ended up pretty cool! 

Then yesterday we had a big counsel meeting in the house of president where we had a big facetime with all the zone leaders of the zones that aren't in Chihuahua. In the meeting we talked about how we can be more efficient as a mission. Because right now we are doing more than two times as much as any other mission in mexico but we have less baptisms than almost all of them. So we had to hold to a big meeting to see what was going on with that. In the end it was a great experience and we pulled together a large list of items that we are going to teach our zones! If all goes well that double work we've been putting in will amount to something more!

Well that was our week here in Del Norte! Full of work and soon the miracles!

Con mucho amor,

-- 

Elder Bunch

México Chihuahua Misión

Del Norte

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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