Daylight Savings Time

Our investigators’ told us that Saturday night was the switch for day light savings. I have on my calendar when it happens in the United States.  But, in Mexico it always changes several weeks later and we had no way of knowing - so we trusted them. On Sunday morning we went to the home of one of our investigators.  Her name is Mari.  She is 66 years old and has a very southern U.S. flare to her. We were going to arrange a ride for her but she wanted to walk so we went to her house and she wasn’t ready, which was odd, but we didn’t think anything of it.  She changed and then grabbed her fancy umbrella and off we went on the dirt streets to the church.  As we walked, my comp called the other elders in our ward because we were going to be late and we needed them to look out for out another investigator that was going to church. The other elders were surprised and asked why so early? We asked where they were and they said in their house. My comp laughed and told them about daylight savings.  We heard them scrambling to get ready.  Well, we made it to church and surprise. . . .  no one was there. Wha?!  Apparently, the time change was a week later, so we were half an hour early to church. Ha, but this was great because I got to sit next to Mari before other people arrived and explain the Santa Cena.  I got Mari to sit next to a wonderful woman in our ward and they were fast friends.  Also, I was pretty excited because there have been very few times in the mish were I have had more than one or two investigators at a time in the church.  We ended up having 5 adults and 4 children.  

Fixing Stuff

We had a lot of paperwork this week so I am short on time. 

Elizabeth emailed me and told e that she has been going to church for a month now! Best news of the week.

This week I went on exchanges with the new American elder in my district. He went to Bouniful high. Our district is 4 elders and 3 hermanas. The other two elders are in our ward and their area is very close to ours. We eat with them at the members' houses every day and we play sports with them every Monday - so we are super tight with them.  This morning we played soccer then we played ultimate spoons which was killer fun.  

I also had exchanges with my zone leader.  He is from Guatamala and we stayed up until 1:00 a.m. chatting.   We also had Pedro come back and help us fix the boiler. 

I have learned a surprising  amount about fixing machines and pipes and toilets etc.....

   

While I was with my Zone Leader friend, we contacted a man that said "Listen, I respect your religion, and you will respect mine."  We asked him what his was. "I believe in la Santa Muerte" He had a large statue in his house of this saint - which he let us see. We had a long chat about that. 

Mozart & 4 Peso Gorditas

The big break-through this week is that we found Gorditas for 4 pesos!!

On another day a man that was selling tacos with his wife on the side of a road shouted at us to come over and talk to them. His sister is a recent convert and he met several missionaries though her. They gave us a free plate of tacos and agreed to listen to a lesson.

On Thursday I drank some sour milk and then we had some mystery meal that made me sick. That night we were walking to an appointment and I had to sit down because I was feeling pretty nauseous.  A bit later I threw-up a few times. I will spare you the details. Ha - it was kind of freaking out the natives who were walking by. While I was in that state a woman went up to my comp to ask what was wrong and he ended getting in a great conversation with her about why we missionaries go through what we go through. After I finished up I felt great and wiped my face and we went and taught a very solid lesson to the daughter of a new convert and our plumber (see below). 

I bought some batteries from a street vendor this week. Ya, they lasted about five minutes. The man had barely recharged them and then wrapped them in plastic. 

Whenever we leave the house here a large dog walks over to the door to greet us. The missionaries before us fed him and named him Mozart. He is super loyal to us now but he is also filthy dirty – so I am not that excited about him jumping up on me.

A recent convert in this area came over to help us fix some stuff in the house. He is a plumber and our shower hasn't been working. I had tried cleaning the shower head and when that didn't work, I tried untwisting the pipe to see what was blocking the water. It was so rusted that it snapped leaving part of the pipe inside the rivets. Our friend helped us clean it out and get it working again. Now we need to figure out how to fix the air conditioning.

I forgot to mention last week that the way we heat our water for showers is that we fill a bucket with water and then put the iron inside for about 15 minutes.

If you could zoom in on this picture you would see a baseball game going on in the middle of the frame

Homeless Man at Stake Conference

The District

Ha - I am jealous that you are in Costa Rica.  - está bien ma no se precupe (escribo mientras lloro). =(

This week a family asked us to give a blessing to their baby that is 18 days old and was born 2 months early. I have now given two blessings to newborns and both experiences were very spiritual. After we gave the blessing, the baby had fallen deeply asleep. After we gave the blessing, we talked to the family (which was part member) about the spirit and the blessing of having it in your life. Halfway through the discussion the grandfather stumbled in drunk and so we talked a little about repentance. =) One of the little boys was the Mexi version of Owen; fun little guy. I had to give him a hug as we took off.  

President Flores is going around the mission and speaking in all the Stake conferences. He talks about a scripture and then has all the missionaries go up and sing a hymn. I did it once in Parras. Yesterday, the stake is bigger than the building so they had two sessions with leadership meetings in between. It was six hours of Stake Conference because he had the missionaries do our bit in both meetings. That means we got to hear the talks twice. Ha - but it was actually a really good meeting, and the jokes were funnier the second time. 

We all had to wake up early to get there. During the second session you could look around the room and find elders with their heads nodding and fast asleep. I woke up one time to a message from another elder laughing at me. 

In the conference a homeless man found his way in and started wandering around asking for money. The men escorted him out but apparently someone gave him some money because twenty minutes later he came back in with a coke. 

There was a guy that visited Parras while I was there. He was a new convert and super stoked about the church. Well he lived in Valle Verde and I saw him there and he gave me a big hug. Well, he moved this week to one of the areas in my district. I saw him at the conference and we sat by him.  

I did my first baptismal interview this past week. The man was 60 years old and looked like a Mexican version of Lyle Reese. He was very humble and ready.   

I love seeing the photos of Costa Rica, (4 countries that you have visited while I have been gone, maybe more, haha make it to 8).   

I got to be taking off.

Speen 

Elder Pacheco

The kid looks like he is freaked out that there is a big whitey on his bike, but he was actually super excited and we rode around a bit. He stood on the pegs – I drove. “lucky" (napoleon dynamite)

They called me last night and guess what I had transfers again. They sent me to be the district leader in Gomez Palacio.  Today has been a party. We got to the bus station and my 5 best mission buddies were there. The mission is fun right now.

One of my good buddies is also in my district. My comp is a stud and has all the vids of Insanity on his USB - so it looks like we will be losing some of the tacos on my legs this transer =).   There is an elder in my district named Elder Roberts. He lived in Bountiful and knows Bryan and Steph Tagge.

The week before i got to the area a man signaled the Elders and asked for a copy of a Book of Mormon. He had been searching the bible and had a question: If God is not a respector of persons, then why does he always have a chosen people? In his search he found material about Jose Smith and started to study more. I love teaching this guy. He went to church with us this week and after the meeting he asked me super casually if we planned to baptize him now or later. Haha 

Elder Pacheco and I had drinking a bit too much soda last night and we couldn’t sleep - so we stayed up playing cards and pool.  haha i love you guys. #box=myfamilyisdabest

One of the Hermanas in the area has a dog that was hit by a car. In a frantic state she called us and begged us to give her dog a blessing. I don’t know exactly what the protocol with that is but we told her that we could definitely say a prayer with her.  Unfortunately, the dog died two days later.  

One of the men I was teaching in Parras has a house in Torreon and would go there every week. His family lived there but he had to be apart from them at times for work.   Well, what do you know but we got home to our apartment Thursday night and we found him eating outside the restaurant on the side of our apartment. Ha he gave me a hug and we went to visit him.

  

On Sunday after Sacrament meeting I learned that every fourth Sunday of the month - the adults join together in a class that the missionaries teach. The other missionaries forgot to mention that and I was a bit surprised when they asked me and my comp to teach it. There were about 50 adults, so that was a shock.  But, it actually went very smoothly. We shared stories and insights and the hour passed very quickly. After a year in the mission, teaching for an hour isn’t quite as daunting as it would have been in 2012.

Love you all,

Speen

Back to Torreon

      

I am back in Torreon.  Change is good but I had a good run in Parras. Now I have a new area with new people and new views. But, we can smell the landfill every morning as the wind pushes the odor toward us.   

My comp is great. Like all my comps, he has faced some challenges in life but he is very solid. 

On my one year anniversary we taught 8 lessons!  I haven’t ever had 8 lessons in one day. 

I am buddies with one of the Zone Leaders and he is in our district. There is also a new guy from Idaho. His family owns a very large ranch and his family is big into rodeo.  He seems like a stud.

This morning I made rice mixed with eggs and French fries that I found in the fridge and my comp said they weren't his. I normally make my own salsa, but i found some natural stuff in the small shop outside our house and that is super yum.  The Cholula is good but it is hard to get out of the bottle.  You look like you are going crazy shaking that thing and two drops fall out.

Every Sunday they have a super long Mexi market on the street outside our apartment. We fell asleep last night listening to Spanish pop music.

Luke 14:28 has a comment for people that don’t finish building their houses.

Word of the week: abofetear. ha funny word

This week I saw some Mexican look-a-likes:

   -98 year old Halli Berry

   -Jafar in Aladdin when he dresses up like an old man in the jail

    -Our ward mission leader looks like Dustin Hoffman 

   

A hermana accidently sent me a message that said "hey cutie here ya go 898776384." she was embarrassed when she figured it out.

Before I left Parras, the mission sent us the furniture for Parras 2.  They sent 5 bed bases. haha what?!  We needed 2. To get them in our second story apartment I lifted one in the air while another Elder grabbed it from the balcony. Then I had to sprint up the stairs and help hoist it over the railing and into the house. Good workout!

Did you know “padre” is slang for awesome here. I agree.

Speen

One Year Down and Leaving Parras

I am leaving Parras in an unanticipated transfer. I remember in the mtc, or maybe a little after, reading Meisha’s email about leaving an area that she had been in for 7 months and I thought that would be an eternity. Well, she had me by one transfer but still it feels super weird to be out of Parras. 

On the bus to Torreon I was thinking back on the 6 months that I was there.  I figured mathematically that I more or less:

     -ate 1400 tacos

     -walked 1530 miles

     -talked to 1700 people about the gospel 

                   (from 30 second contacts to 2 hour lessons)

     .-received 850 emails

      -studied Spanish for 255 hours

      -went on 70 bus rides taking more than 2 hours

      -was attacked by 2 dogs (chased by many more)

      -stepped on 2 cactus

BTW - I stepped on that cactus with my shoes on and one of them had 6 or more barbs go completely through the thick sole of my tennis shoes.  Ouch - but only for a second. The awful ones are the tiny hairs. Remember when Will knocked me onto the cactus?

Because I will hit the year mark pretty quick here I was thinking about what I would do if the next President asked me in my final interview if I would stay one more year?. I think I would accept.  There have been 3 year missions in the past (Israel) and Lorenzo Snow served for 7 years I believe. I asked my comp what he would do. He said yes then no then yes then no. I think my spirit would say yes, but my body and mind would argue.  Maybe if I was called for three years it wouldn't be a problem - but in the moment that my mind was already at home.....  At the end of your mission, would you have stayed?

Last night we passed by the home of one of my favorite member families. They are 70 years old but the husband loves exercise and looks 50.  There were other members there and we chatted a bit with them then they said they had references that they wanted us to visit. While we took down the names they whipped up a Mexican dinner for us, and Hermano Solis pulled out a bunch of body building books that he has. Haha we looked through them then we started doing several of the ab and pushup exercises on the floor. He was super into it so I was having a great time. 

So, I will be in Torreon and my new comp is Elder Pachuca. He seems super cool. I was very surprised that I was being transfered. 

This past week there was a wine festival in Parras. They sent up floating lanterns and got drunk. 

Did I tell you about the woman that asked us to help her change her life? We asked her what needed to change. She said she needed to repent. We asked for what. She said that she had killed someone. ha yikes "say what....?" I asked how she did it. She told me with her mind - - she knows black magic.

Brain Stew - I think from Weasels - Yikers

That really is terrible about the dog attack on Brie. Poor girl! None of us need that in life. Will there be permanent damage?  I looked in Parras for pepper spray but didn’t find any. There were always plenty of rocks.

When people get in my face here I really want to answer like the Polynesian woman at mom’s work:  "Why you in my business?"

Hey I got to take off. Love Mondays! 

les quiero