Week 34 - 2/20/12

Before anything.  I loved the little package, the valentines letters were really funny.  Also, Becca you sent me that DearElder and it was pretty good. I laughed a lot.  Thanks soo much.  I have yet to get my big package. The zone leaders left it in their house.  By the time the conference was over it was too late to go to the zone leaders house to get the package...  so I won’t get it until like sometime in march when they come out for divisions...........

Ok well....

Wednesday.  We had our district meeting, and then returned to our area.  Basically at this point we had not had a good sleep since Saturday night.  We went out and made a few visits. And really nothing that notable happened.

Thursday.  Pretty much the most depressing day in the mission.  Part of the reason was….well, it was a bad day……but when we were in the city we were there when the other district reported their numbers, and frankly the other district had amazing numbers and such.  Anyways we started off the day washing our clothes, because we couldn’t do it on our last p-day because we were at the conference. So then we went to a few people that we had contacted that said we could come back, and then they didn’t let us, that’s not anything new.  Then we went to an investigator that we had found in the street and accepted the baptism invitation if she got an answer to her prayer. When we showed up she said she was busy, and that she was going to be busy for the rest of forever. That’s ok, that happens, no problem, we only had taught her one lesson.  So then we went to a family that had been progressing really well.  They were renting their apt from a member and things were going pretty well.  We showed up, there weren’t there.  We asked the member that lived next door and they told us that they had moved and aren’t going to be living here anymore.  They moved to a pueblito, or little town, that is still in our area, just 1.5 hours away....  Sooooo then we had been given a reference from some other elders for an investigator that moved to our area and was ready for baptism and everything.  We called him and asked when we could visit him.  He told us that he wasn’t going to move to Serdan anymore. But he was kind of just making stuff up, so who knows what really happened with him. We just passed the reference back to the elders that gave it to us.  Then.... we went to a less active who has always let us in and we get along fairly well with him. When we got there we knocked on the door of his store.  We could see him on his computer working. He looked at us and then just kept working. We knocked again and he just kept going away on that computer...... and pretended we weren’t there.  Then we went with another investigator and that actually was just a normal lesson.  Then we went back to the house, sad day.

Friday.  At this point we really didn’t have anything to do, after all everyone dumped us.  So we went a knocking.  We made 30 contacts, which means we probably knocked 60 doors.  That was about 1.5 hours.  Then we went and ate.  Then we made 20 contacts.  Sooo far.... nothing has resulted from these contacts... not even one lesson.  That was the most contacting I had ever done in a day.  Basically then we just went with our investigator Edilbuerto.  He is doing good.  He just needs to get married.  But we agreed to do a fast with him on Saturday to Sunday, to help him convince his "lady" to marry him.

Saturday.  We did another 34 contacts.  Fun stuff.  We started the fast.  Wow, 84 contacts in a week, that’s a lot. 

Sunday. Well fasting for the second time in a week fun fun.  We went to church.  Then we visited Eddy again and went with some recent converts but that’s about it.

 Ok well.  hmm. 

Week 33 - 2/13/12

What a very interesting week.   Well not really, but my birthday was interesting. I’ll get to all that later.

The problem is right now I’m in the city [Bosques], and I didn’t bring my journal, so I really can’t remember exactly all that happened...

Tuesday, we started working on the secret birthday prank project that we were going to play on the Tae Kwon Do family.  Basically the plan was to make a box and then pay a cake place to cover the box in frosting and everything.  Then to write on it something to indicate it was not a cake [in English]. After reflecting on it I should have wrote "the cake is a lie", but I didn’t think of it, so I just put "this is cardboard."  It was made out a bunch of cereal boxes, all frosted flakes.

Wednesday, well.... we had our district meeting.  A Mexican elder from our district and was really excited to come to our area and take pictures of the snow on the mountain. I was just happy it was far away; I’m going to be more wimpy than mom with the cold by the time I am done here in Mexico. 

Thurday.... We knocked a whole bunch of doors...

Friday. We just a knocked a whole bunch of doors in the morning.  Sometimes we contact stores, but we feel awkward if we don’t buy anything. So it was my turn to contact, so I grabbed from the top of this shelf some of those wafer cookies with frosting in the middle.  I grabbed it, and then realized that it was covered!!! I mean covered in dust. You could barely see the picture on the wrapping.  Anyways, the guy was watching me and I felt too embarrassed to but it back... so I just took a big breath and blew off allll the dust. It made quite a huge cloud. I paid for them and contacted the guy, set an appointment, and left.  Upon leaving, I saw that the cookies had indeed expired on Dec 11....  I’m pretty sure they had been sitting there longer than I have been in Mexico, and that’s not a joke.  And yes... I still did eat them. They didn’t taste too bad.

Saturday.  My companion woke up at 12:00am to sing me happy birthday. Honestly, for the life of me, I do not remember him doing it.  Apparently I said, thanks, but I really don’t remember anything.  Then we went to a few appointments.  This guy was there and he had a bunch of questions for us and told us, if you can answer these questions I’ll go with you guys, if not, I don’t want to see you again. We were actually able to answer his questions very well and I guess we are going to go back.  But I think he just likes to have deep conversations about the Bible.  Then we went to a one or two more appointments.  We went to the food. We ate fish. It was the first time that I have eaten fish in Mexico. It was literally just a fish that had been thrown on the frying pan. It was watching me the whole time I ate it.

Ok then we went for the [Birthday] cake and took it to the house of the Tae Kwon Do family.  It was actually super heavy to carry, I mean it was huge. When I got there they threw all this confetti all over me. They were super surprised how big the cake was.  So we got the brother to cut it for us and it was really funny.  He thought the knife wasn’t sharp at first.  Then we went out and bought a real cake and they sang me happy birthday.  When it is your Birthday, you have to bite the cake before they serve it. Then they push your face into the cake. I knew they were going to do, I just didn’t feel like trying to resist at all.  It was quite fun.

 Ok Sunday….  We had to go to our stake conference.  We live really far away, like 2 hours away.  So a member told us he would give us a ride if we wanted.  When we got to the church he charged us each 50 pesos! That is how much it costs to get there by bus, and this van was packed with like 9 of us. And he charged the same even though we weren’t going back with him because he said, “I could have gotten other people to come both ways, so you have to pay the same.”  And on the way he ran over a dog!  The van was so packed and hot, that I felt like I was going to throw up.    Anyways we went to the conference. In a talk there was a girl who had put in her papers for her mission but didn’t get her call.  And she said she was talking about it to her boss and her boss told her that she should value her time here in Mexico, because she could get sent to somewhere they only eat a lot of meat like Canada….  because it’s so cold that they don’t have fruit there.........  right........ So we ended up going with another companionship and we split up so go to some lessons and stuff.  Then we went to the apartment at night and sleep [in Bosques].  But before that we go some interesting news.  The president wants all the missionaries in the whole mission to fast today for a conference that we are going to have tomorrow. So we are going to have to stay [in Bosques] another night.  Who knows what it will be about.

 So we woke up, played some soccer until like 9... then me and my comp went to the grocery store and we each bought a box of cereal and a liter of milk since we are in a city away from our apartment.  The corn flakes came with a free spoon and we ate the cereal right outside the supermarket out of plastic cups.  People just walk passed us and looked at us sooooo weird.  Anyways we did this to prepare for the fast, because now we are fasting.  I literally ate a whole box of corn flakes…. well not a whole one, I had like 2-3 more cupfulls left, but I ran out of milk and was about to throw up.  But it was a box of like 660 grams.  Take a look at the cereal in the house to see how much it was.  I really impressed myself.

 Now we are here in a internet cafe, our cell phone ran out of battery, so we don’t have a way to communicate with any of the other elders and we don’t know what we are going to do today.  Yeah, so that’s it!

Elder Wigington

Week 32 - 2/6/12

So this week we had changes [transfers], but I stayed the same.  Elder Izaguiarre is the new assistant; he was my zone leader in my last area.  Then, Elder Rodriguez went home this week. He tore his achilles tendon and will have to be home for 6 months, so who knows if he will come back.  Then we have a new zone leader.

So something really funny happened. The other Elders from our district are in El Seco. They were in a member’s house and the radio was on. The radio station is in our area, Serdan.  The radio announcer gave a shout out to all the people from Wisconsin.  So then the El Seco elders asked us what the heck were we doing that the radio announcer gave a shout out to me. lol.  It must have been for the people from WI that we ran into the other day. I’m just so famous here, even the radio stations are giving me shout outs. lol.

Wednesday.... we taught this family. That is really good. They are good friends of a member.  I think they will progress pretty fast.....

Thursday we went to a member’s house and while we were there all the power went out, and it was at like 8 so it was all dark. So we lit a candle and told stories around it. It was kind of funny.

Sunday.  We went to church, and I taught the gospel principles class. I had a really bad cold and was kind of out of it.  So my comp told me after the class that apparently I said it is important that we hunt in the temple.  Well, it’s because in Spanish “casarse” is to marry, but cazar, which is pronounced the same means to hunt. So I said it’s important that we “cazemos”, when i should have said, “nos casemos”.  So yeah, go hunt in the temple.... But really that’s all that happened that was exciting.

Sorry it was such a boring week.... 

Elder Wigington