Week 65 - 9/24/2012

Tuesday. We taught a guy who owns a pretty nice bar. Pretty cool lesson actually. He planned on getting baptized last December, but decided not to. My companion thought it was because he read anti-Mormon doctrine or because he thought the members would judge him for owning a bar. Anyways… I just asked him. Why didn’t you get baptized in December, did you read anti-Mormon stuff or are you afraid of being judged for having a bar. Turns out he doesn’t what to become like one of his Mormon friends that is always saying everything is a sin. I learned from Elder M. that if you’re polite but direct you save a lot of time and actually can work on what the problem is. Haha. We taught Jonathan again. I think he was in Hectors baptism pics. The really big guy.

Wednesday. We had a zone conference with Elder Johnson a Seventy. He shook our hands and asked where we are from. He is from the Mormon colonies in Mexico so he speaks English and Spanish perfect. He asked where I was from. I say Wisconsin. He was like oh… Lot’s of cheese there. Yeah.... I was about to give a cheese head battle cry, but thought it would be better not to. He talked about a lot of stuff but mostly focused on how a lot of people don’t understand the physical nature of God. We should focus a lot on that in our teaching. Then in the second part he had us all close our eyes and said if you woke up at 6:30 every day this week raise your hand, 6 days in the week, 5 days, 4 days,  and so on. I’m so glad that he came in this part of my mission, because I could proudly raise my hand for the whole week. I guess not too many did because he said there is an obvious problem in this mission. He made an interesting promise. If we wake up every day at 6:30 we will never have any problems with serious transgressions in the mission, but if you don’t, you will run the risk of commit a serous sin in the mission. Wow, scary. Yeah, but it was a really got conference. Just a few lessons after that.

Thursday. Very busy day, I think we taught 7 lessons. The whole day we spent focusing on what Elder Johnson taught us about teaching of the physical nature of God. We taught a few less actives and it amazes me how many people don’t understand who God really is. We taught lessons but nothing to interesting. We went to the church to teach and we found the other elders teaching one of our investigators we hadn’t seen in a week. We thought she didn’t want to hear anymore after the first lesson. It turns out she showed up to their sacrament meeting and they stole her. How dare they?! Ugh… but technically she doesn’t live in either of our areas. Our bishop is going to help us steal her back to our area by finding her a house in our ward haha.

Friday. Really slow day for some reason. Pretty much everything fell through. We only taught one lesson the whole day. It was to an older lady. Her son must have been in his upper twenties. He came in and was like, Mom, did you make me food. No. MOM, I’M HUNGRY! MOM, I’M HUNGRY MAKE ME SOMETHING. It was probably the most pathetic thing I have ever seen in my life. Yeah... got to wonder sometimes... At night we went to a farewell of a sister who is going on a mission. A counselor of the stake presidency gave a really good take about the 3 most important decisions he has made in his life. Being baptized, going on the mission, and who he should marry. I don’t remember much so you will just have to my word for it, it was good.

Saturday. Well some lessons. We went to a less active and she is taking care of an old woman to is 98 years old for her job. Wow, I could not do that.... So we went to teach at the church. The youth bought pizza for their activity and they invited us to it. Good eating! Then we went to a lesson at like 8, but it was literally in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the hills. It was an interesting lesson because it was a family of like 6.  They wanted to do it outside... without lights. It was like pitch black. You could only see figures of where they were. The cool part was I could take little naps while my comp talked! Haha. Not really, but I could have. They have a pet owl. That’s cool, huh? I think it’s illegal here, but they found it hurt in the road and they took care of it so. I would have to say walking back to the house at 9 was kind of scary; it was pretty dark out in the middle of nowhere. Haha. So… I finished 15 months. Single digits that’s strange.

Sunday. We were talking with the other elders before our meetings started. Some members were wanting to know why the Observatorio elders look so much more tired. Are you saying up all night? No..... we are working and waking up on time..... Haha. But there are times we look like zombies. 

Monday. Today, well we cleaned the house again. I know hard to believe, but I can clean. Then we went to the pool.... or to play pool. Haha… scared you for a second didn’t I! Surprisingly I’m pretty good, or the other 3 elder are not. But I was dominating to be humble. We played like 4 games on teams and my team won every time. Ha. Who would have guessed. Oh… when we left the billiard place some guy came up and asked for money. He said he was from some other Central American country. He ask me to give him and coin, and said he wasn’t from here. I was like “me neither, isn’t that weird.” He was like, “yeah but you are a gringo, which is slightly offensive to say to an American. So I said, “No, I’m from Germany.”  He looked kind of confused and then we walked away. White people are just too confusing.

Hey just to give you an update. Working out is coming good. I’m not sore the next day anymore. I’m still stuck at 7 pull ups. In the upcoming weeks I hope to see improvement. I wonder where I can buy protein here. My diet right now is pancake hamburgers. I’m sure that is really healthy! haha.

Week 64 - 9/17/2012

Well it was 9/11 and didn’t hear anything about the anniversary.  I actually didn’t notice it was the 11th until I wrote in my journal that night. 

Ok so we had zone training on Tuesday.  So we spent all morning training and then we went to eat.  Then we went and contacted a little bit. We found this kid, like 15 years old and he invited us to his catholic missionary preparation class. Then this other guy let us in. We taught him a little about families and it went well. Then we went to Hectors house and he wanted us to dedicate it.  And he asked me say the prayer cause well,… you know,… “more powerful coming from an American...” haha.

Ok Wednesday.  So we had a meeting with our new ward mission leader.  He is excited to work.  He talks endless about his mission and all the great things he accomplished. I suppose it’s a good thing he is our ward mission leader right??  OHHH. Something awesome happened or at least I hope it’s true.  I think google maps in taking pictures of the streets here in Tehucan and one of the camera cars passed by when I was at the corner of 7 norte 2 oriente.  So if it was actually taking picture in got one of me there. haha.  I hope so, I can prove I’m actually working out here.  Ok then we went with this guy named Jonathan.  He is 24-25 years old and has some form of learning disability. We taught Jonathan alone and we just go super slow. He actually understands everything very well... we just have to go very, very slow.  

Thursday.  Long morning... weekly planning... that was the one thing good about being junior companion... if your comp did want to do it well,.. it didn’t happen.  But now I would feel bad if I don’t.... so... yeah... long morning.  We taught Jonathan again.  Went well.  So then we had an appointment in the church.  Well we actually had two:  one at 6 and the other at 6:30.  The lady at 6 randomly stopped us in the street and asked us some questions about marriage.  There was a member referral at 6:30.  Well we got there right at six and were waiting around.  Then one of the sisters saw us and told us a investigator came.  Turns out the lady did end up coming so we had to teach her super-fast so we could teach the other referral.  Then we had to teach the referral super-fast so we could run all the way across our area to this youth group class. We got there and went with the kid we contacted.  He was with a group of one adult, and l5 youth.  The oldest i think was 17-18.  Anyways… they asked us how our church was founded.  So with great power and authority we explained that as it teaches us in the scriptures, the church of Christ must be founded by him and as such carry his name, and that is why the church is named the way it is.  As Christ taught in the bible, that his church had prophets and apostles and thus his true church should have the same.  Then we explained how we believe that the church of Christ fell for a number of reasons and that is was necessary for God to call a new prophet to restore that which was lost.  Quite powerful I would have to say.  Then they were like “ohhhh....” and the adult said “we believe that our church is the only true church, actually, the only church, because others can’t even call themselves churches, blah, blah,….” We were like that’s nice...  Then they asked us, “why are you even here?” Do you want to convert or something?...” And we were like no.......... they just invited us... So then they started asking us other questions. We said, “we actually came here to listen to your message.” They were like ummm.......  actually we are just going to practice our dance.  We awkwardly watched them do their dance for like 5minutes when we said ok we have to go now, thanks for inviting us.”  I think it was too much intimidation to have two Mormon missionaries there. haha.  Their teacher did want to teach,… weird considering it was a class on how to be missionaries... Gotta love it. 

Friday.  Busy day. Lots of appointments in the morning.  I love it when we go to the appointments where it’s my first time being there and they are like, “wow!.. this white guy speaks good Spanish.”  We taught some lessons in the morning.  We taught some other guy after the food, Ismaiel or something like that.  He is really awesome. He was really open about everything and said well if it’s true God will tell me. We will see what happens haha.  Yeah so we went with Hector and wow was he confused.  The bishops counselors are a little confused on a lot of things and told him that he already had the priesthood and was going to be called as young mens superviser and was going to give the class on Sunday.  We actually talked to bishop about it and he said that those were just ideas he had and the counselors should not have said all that.  But we explained everything and that he did not have the priesthood yet blah, blah, all in order haha.  

Saturday. Mexican Day! Bad day for missionaries.  We really did not have much to do.  In the morning everyone is getting ready for the parties and at night everyone is partying. Soooooo we didn’t have much to do.  We taught Jonathan and he prayed and said he felt like he should be baptized on the 29th.  So that’s cool!  Then at night we ate some good tacos.

Sunday.  Well, with the night before being party night like 30 people showed up to church.  I had to bless the sacrament and guess what I did.  I knelt down. Open the microphone thing.  The same as it is in our church back home.  And without even thinking about it I said. Oh, God.... shooot..... Oh, Dios...  I didn’t say shoot, but it just came out so natural without even thinking about it, I think that was the first time I blessed the sacrament in Mexico.  

Monday we went on a little hike up to this cross that is in our area.  but really far away.  We brought 2 youth from the ward, and Fancel, the kid who was baptized and his brother.  And another guy that is a recent covert that is like 22-23.  So we went up and it was pretty hard. We saw these huge spiders and there were millions!  Probably the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life.  And we had to walk under them.  We actually felt the web and it was super strong like string.  We climbed the cross.  Let me tell you climbing that cross was scary. And more than anything, crossing over on to the out parts was really freaky. The way down was interesting.  It was pretty steep, so i was helping Fancel a lot. One time I was helping him down a pretty steep part and I slipped an grabbed some rock and cut my had open.  Ouch....  But yeah we got back and then just felt super dead and now I’m here and that’s all.

Ok so that was my week.  Good week we found a lot more people to teach.  Good stuff.   

Oh yeah so I gave Fancel and Alan a dollar each and their dad said, “wow… you have to keep that dollar safe cause that will bring you riches in the future.” Then in church they came up to me, “hey that lucky dollar works I brought it with me to the slot machine (there are these little gambling machines and slot machine is the closest translation I can think of) and all my friends lost money, but we each won 30 peso, but we didn’t use that dollar!” Haha. The magic American dollar....

Week 63 - 9/10/12

Ugh... This keyboard is so bad.  Oh how I miss my old computer haha. But what can you do.

Monday.  Well last day as secretary.  We had a great breakfast in the morning at the mission house because we had to teach the new missionaries about secretary stuff. We went to the mission house again later for the good-bye for two elders that were going home. Another good dinner.  My companion and I had to take one elder to the airport at one in the morning.         

Tuesday.  We went home and we packed until like one in the morning. And we woke up early go to the mission house. To our surprise another great breakfast.  Mmm waffles.  Anyways we took the other elder to the airport.  Got back in the middle of changes.  Got my new companion: Elder N.  We took a two hour bus ride to my area.  They put a movie on in this bus... two bad it had to be the lamest chick flick ever... There is nothing like being trapped on a bus for two hours with a chick flick going... in Spanish haha… Anyways... I unpacked a little, we went to eat and then we taught a lesson.   And bedtime. 

Wednesday. Well we woke up and guess what? We are out of gas in the house, sooooo cold shower.  Actually in our other house we ran out of gas in the last week and no one wanted to buy gas so I’m kind of used to cold showers haha. We taught some investigators and less actives.  Good stuff.  Then at night we went to teach an investigator who was going to be baptized on Saturday.  His name is Hector.  The elder that just left the area was planning on come back to baptize him.  Hector told me, “Hey, if Elder M. doesn’t end up being able to come I want you to baptize me because I want an American to do it, cause that’s where the church started and I think it will be better.” American power, huh. 

Thursday.  Well we woke up and... there was no water.  Sad day.  We had to find the owner to turn on the pump. We went and talked to our bishop about what we had to do to get Hector and his wife married so that he could get baptized.  The bishop is a very interesting guy, sure loves his coca cola.  Speaking of which, I don’t think I’ve told you, but everyone here, meaning all of Mexico, drink a lot of it, like more than water.  Oh so we were supposed to be getting a delivery for the things that the house was missing.  It was on an order I had made for all the mission when I was in the offices.  So apparently the zone leaders had told us that they had already dropped the stuff off at our house, but when we were there we didn’t see anything and we didn’t know where they left it. So I called the company the order was with and it was pretty funny because they were like ugh... ok... what house was it... I said it should be on the order as Elder M, but I’m Elder Wigington.  Then all of a sudden they were like oh Elder Wigington, yes, we dropped it off with the owner at blah blah time and blah.  But the funny part was that they just got super nice and polite when they knew it was me.  It is because I had talked to them like 50 times to get the order all organized and you know the respect you get when you make a 20,000 dollar order to a company. Haha.

Friday.  We have gotten some good references from the members this week.  We taught a reference - mom and son - that accepted the book of Mormon right off the bat.  

Saturday.  WEDDING.  Aww....  There are some pictures off it.  Yes it is just the ones of where they are sitting at the old desk.  I had to chip in 100 pesos to make it happen.  Well then later in the night we had the baptism of Hector and his son Fancel. 

Sunday. Church! Well Hector had me confirm him. 

Ok. So just other random things… The other day it rained super hard, but only for like 30 min.  Then the streets turned into rivers.  You had to use the speed bumps as bridges.  And it was kind of like maze.    

This area is pretty cool. There are some big hills or mountains out there.  We mostly work in the city. 

I actually really enjoy working as a regular missionary again.  It came back pretty easily.  Also being senior companion is so much better.  You can decide that you’re going work hard and just, well, do everything you are supposed to do.  Elder N. is 100 percent willing to work.  So we have had some pretty good days.  Just teaching and walking around all day.  Something interesting changed with the way we do numbers.  From now on, we don’t report how many people we contact, but now the number of less actives we work with in church. So that’s cool; president wants us to work with the less actives to find investigators more than knocking doors.  But he said you should still do it if the spirit says so... the spirit usually doesn’t tell me to knock doors... or I just don’t listen… haha… I’m just kidding.  I have really enjoyed this week so far.  It’s a lot better when you’re just working hard. 

I got a letter from Becca.  I read it during sacrament meeting... I mean before I went to bed.... It made me smile. 

Yeah and I love new areas where no one can say your name, makes it so no one calls on you during priesthood.  Haha.  So apparently they said something about Wisconsin on iCarly because a bunch of the young men have made comments about iCarly when I say I’m from Wisconsin.

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 62 - 9/1/12

So I think I should start off with the exciting news. President finished our changes and let us see them. Sooo... I know where I’m going now.  I will be senior companion in Observatorio, Tehuacan with Elder N. We actually both got to Puebla at the same time.  He is from Colombia but has lived in Mexico his whole life.  Kind of strange to know so much about him without ever meeting him... It’s funny I don’t know a lot of missionaries, but I know them by their reimbursement sheets they do.  I actually can picture in my head Elder N.’s hand writing….. it’s really funny.

Also I took it upon myself to make sure that every area in the mission had everything in the house: good beds, fridge, etc….not for personal reasons so that no matter where I go I have everything, but because I love all the missionaries so much.... haha.  Also president told me I would be training soon in my interview and he said I should get to know my new area fast. Soooooooo.... if I were to guess I’ll be one change with Elder N. and then I will train because I think a lot of new missionaries are coming in the next change. 

I’m going to miss having all this insight into the mission haha.

So what happened this week? Let me tell you.

Sunday. Dario showed up to church again. We haven’t talked to him in so long. Anyways he put a baptismal date for himself. Who knows if it will actually happen... but I won’t be there to see it. 

Monday. Bunch of office work...

Tuesday. More office work...

Wednesday, district meeting... office work.  As you can see we have a lot of office work. haha

Thursday. Interviews with president.  We ate some very good cinnamon rolls made by Sister Reeves. and... more office work.

Friday.  Well lots of office work as well I guess. Then president showed us our changes at the end of the day.  Hey, so, when we were in the food we were talking to the brother about how they were going through a court case and the daughter had hit someone in her car and the person who go hit wants them to pay for a surgery, but they think it was a problem that she had before the accident.  Anyways they were telling us how there lawyer wanted them to lie about some things and how they were honest and weren’t going to lie.  But then the lawyer showed up and was talking to them about their options and was telling they should make up a contract that said that they sold the car 6 months ago and that it wasn't theirs blah blah blah, and they were like ok, we trust you whatever you say that will work.  And it was like hmmm.... right... honesty.  But part of the problem here in Mexcio you almost have to play dirty to make sure you are treated fair.  But who knows. 

Today.  P-day. Well we will maybe go bowling and clean and pack a bit.

Normal missionary Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 61 - 8/25/12

Well another week.  I'm really tired right now, we did insanity this morning and I am feeling it.

Monday. We had our morning meeting with president.  Then I went with president to go pay the hospital bill.  When we got there it turns out that he doesn’t have any money on his card either.  So we had to go to get Sister Reeve’s card, so we had to go all the way to the mission house.  We finally got to the hospital and we were going to take the money off of Sister Reeves card but they were fixing the ATM and then they wouldn’t let us pay directly with the card because Sister Reeves wasn’t there.  President ended up paying with his personal card... yeah, but that was a lot of driving, but President Reeves is a very patient guy. Hey then we ate monkey!!! That was cool. The sister gave us monkey meat she bought in Veracruz.  It tasted pretty much like any old meat.

Tuesday.  Well since we have been training Elder and Sister De La Rosa, I’ve fallen a little behind on my work, so I spent all day getting a lot of things in order.  But that’s about all...

Wednesday. We went to district meeting, and then we had sometime before food so we cleaned the house. Hey this day marks one year in Mexico, wow now that is crazy thought huh?

Thursday. Well regular day, I just did a lot to get the card expenses organized.  The 24th is the day when I have to be in zeros, so yeah I was mostly catching up on everything, not too exciting.

Friday. Well we took the wrong bus on the way to the office. It took us like an hour and a half to get there.  It’s kind of weird, getting lost in Mexico doesn’t at all bother me anymore, haha.  But then I just did just a lot more office work.  The assistants and president worked on changes the whole day. As he was leaving he told us, now don’t go look in my office now, I know it’s like Christmas, but you’re going to have to wait before you see your changes haha. 

Saturday. Now we are here in the office writing, and nothing overly exciting has happed, but it’s all good.

Sorry for the boring email... kind of a busy office week just sitting on the computer, no fun stories. 

Ok that’s all. 

Bye.

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 60 - 8/19/12

Well I should be in the offices until the 3rd or the 4th.  Then I’ll be going back I think.

Monday  and Tuesday, I think we just did regular office work.

Wednesday,  Well I woke up in the morning with a really sore throat.  That was not fun.  But then at night the sister that lives below us gave me this honey and lime juice stuff and it made my throat feel really good.

Thursday.  Well I was still sick, this time it wasn’t a sore throat, but just congestion.  I was dying all day.  I’m pretty sure I just looked like a zombie.  We had a ton of work to do and I just felt awful.  Well president had to go out to this area that was like 45 minutes away and didn’t want to go alone so he invited us to go with him.  We had a good talk with him.  It was pretty cool to get so much one on one time with president.  Anyways he did his interview then we left.  It was really pretty out there in a pueblito called Atexcac.  On the way back were just talking then he all of a sudden was like Elder Wigington, First principle, first lesson, I was like ugh ugh ugh... In preach my gospel? yes Elder Wigington, what is it,ugh ugh... God is our loving heavenly father.  Caught me off guard. Then we went in a circle listing off each principle in all the lessons.  Wow... I’m a little rusty on my preach my gospel.  I knew the general concept, but the exact titles... not so much.  It was fun though. Anywho.... so do you remember when Elder V. was our companion.  Well he needed surgery so he had to go home.  So we got things ready for him to go.  We ate dinner at the president’s house.  We ate some good old American style tacos. Haha.  Then we were around the mission house the whole night, and then we went back to our house.  Then... at 4 in the morning we woke up. Well I guess that should be for Friday huh.

Friday.  Ok so we woke up at 4 to take Elder V. to the bus station.  Then we dropped him off and I was still sick.... I swear this whole week we never went to bed on time or slept until 6:30.  I was so sleep deprived and sick, I felt so dead.  Anyways we came back and I was planning on just sleeping until forever, but then I forgot on Fridays we have to go to the office at 7 to open up for the cleaning lady. So I got maybe an hour of sleep then we went to the office to open up for her... she never came.... then we went to pick up president.  We went to the office and had a day of working.

Saturday. Pday... if you can call it that. Well we woke up early... again to get to a service project at 6:30. We were going to do service at this kindergarten in this little pueblito.  We sanded down the paint and repainted the whole thing.  But you know how service goes, by the time you're half done, half the people are gone.  A bunch of the elders from the zone showed up, but because they had appointments and stuff they left early, but us, because it was our p-day we had no excuse to leave so we stayed there until like 3:30.  We got back to the house and just crashed.  Then we got a call at like 5 from the missionaries in the hospital. That they were going to leave and couldn’t leave until we paid. So I showered.  Then we went to the hospital to pay.  Turns out that not only have I used up all my money that I can withdraw but just about all of the money I can use directly off the card.  Soooooo..... I only had enough to pay for 2.... so I had to beg and plead, not exactly, but I had to talk to a bunch of people to let me wait until Monday to pay so we could pay with presidents card.  Ugh... that took a while.  I spent all 11,000 USD that I had for the month.  Watch out dad, maybe you shouldn’t give me a credit card because I sure have learned to waste money haha.  Well then we got to the offices at 8, but then I had to go buy the medicine for them with the little that was left on the card.  Then home to sleep. So that’s why I didn’t write.  

Today. Sunday.  Church, food, office.  bout it.

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 59 - 8/11/12

Wow, I really feel the love, come to internet late and... no emails.  So sad.  I bet you are all up north or just enjoying your Saturday forgetting your Mexican son.  Ok well here I go.

Monday. Well I went to the bank to take money out to pay for some visa stuff and it turns out.... I took out all the money on the mission card.  Well I didn’t take out all the money, but I reached the withdraw in cash limit.  Yeah can you believe that in 10 days I spent $6000 USD in pure cash.  Wow that is crazy.  So I had to take like another 1000 USD out of president’s card so I could pay for some hospital bills and visa bills.  Then it was president’s birthday.  We bought him a cake.  It was cool but he was pretty stressed out.  He has had to do a lot of interviews with missionaries. 

Tuesday.  We had to wake up early to let the cleaning lady in the office at 7, but she didn’t get there until like…8 ugh.  Well we did a bunch of work.  Right now we are training Elder and Sister de la Rosa how to be secretaries.  We started Insanity again.  We had kind of stopped because we had been staying up late in the office, but things are a little more regular now so we are getting good exercise again.

Wednesday.  Elder V. left.  He went to another area to be in a trio.  Well I woke up pretty sore seeing as I started to exercise again. Oh so Elder W. and Elder F. stayed at our house that night because they were pretty sick and their area was really far away.  I took them to get some blood tests and it turns out they have salmonella.  That’s what you get for drinking the water... Haha, no I don’t think they drank the water. 

Thursday.  We bought a new chair for the Sister de la Rosa. 

Friday.  Well. good day..  We had to wake up early again for the cleaning lady but... she came late again.  We went to immigration.  Then to a doctor.  We had to get that 10 retention thing I had told you about before and they didn’t want to give it.  But I had Elder De La Rosa with me as well, and it is amazing how much more respect an older person gets. Ugh, I guess I would love it if a 20 year old white kid walked into my office telling me that I had to return some money back to him... hmmmm. Then Sister Reeve’s computer had had problems and I had got it to turn on a couple times but it would never stay consistently on soooo I decided to take it apart.  It was because he had dropped it, so I thought it might have been something that was loose on the inside. I took the whole thing apart.  Like full apart, like every screw out, everything separated and I tried to find something wrong with it.  The whole laptop was spread across like 3 desks.  Anyways, I put it back together and it worked for like a minute and then died. I don’t think there is much hope for it...  but it was a lot of fun.  I have never taken a laptop apart to that extent before.  Good stuff. 

Saturday. today. Well.... we had a really tough work out. Killed my abs.  But no pain no gain right... haha ok, just if you don’t recognize me when I get home it’s because I’ll just be so buff.  Haha ok maybe not.  Well we went and did service with the elders quorum.  We clean up some overgrown grass on the sidewalk in front of a member house.  We cut the grass with machetes and shovels....  The job we did in 2 hours you could have done in 10 minutes with a weed wacker.... but more wife points right?   Well then we did laundry.  And we came here and now we are writing.  Yeah. But you won’t read this because you’re having too much fun and not writing me... I’ll just go buy myself some tacos and eat my pain away. haha.

Okeyday bye now

Elder Curtis Wigington

Week 58 - 8/4/12

Well.  You know another week in the office.  But never the less many great and exciting things happened, ok maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Sunday. Well we taught Dario.  He has completely gone back to where he was when we first met him.  He really doesn’t want to hear anymore.  He doesn’t answer our phone calls.... It’s funny since we have been in the office we have hardly done any missionary work.  Yet we had had three people super close to getting baptized, but then they talked to their mom and then didn’t want to ever hear from us again.  Moms are sooooooo annoying.  Haha just kidding mom, not you.

Monday.  Well we were in the office all day.  We had our regular meeting with president.  Then I pretty much spent the whole day getting things ready for the De La Rosas to come.  I need to remove all the great enhancements I have made to the computer so it is easier for them...  it’s really quite sad.  Also I started writing a book to explain how to do my job.  It’s a lot of fun. You should read it sometime... good stuff.

Tuesday.  So a whole bunch of office work.  Like a ton.  Just getting everything ready for the new secretaries. Still working on the book. Now I know you can picture this.  You have seen me when I am like halfway through writing a paper.  Now just image that with a spinny chair.  Yeah.  That was me writing that book or paper or whatever you want to call it.  It was funny because I finished at like 8pm and then called president to have him look over it.  I had him on speaker phone here in the office while he made corrections.  It really reminded me of college where I had mom on the phone or skype telling me what I needed to fix. Old memories... however I think I was a little more focused when I was doing it with president. Sorry mom.... Yeah, then we stayed in the office until like 12 at night.

Wednesday.  Well we woke up and went to district meeting. Then we left and while we were walking to where the bus picks us up, a woman ran over a chunk of metal and popped her tire.  My companion quickly went over and asked if we could change the tire.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t going to offer to help, he just did it first.  Anyways so he got her tire out of the trunk and was like... how do you change a tire? Good thing that manly Elder Wigington had been taught from early on how to change tires even though he hated doing it and had a bad attitude when dad asked him to do it....  But we were also in our suit coats because the new secretaries were coming so we wore suits.  Soooooo I changed the tire in a suit.  That’s cool, huh?  Then it turns out this lady was the PR manager for a zoo called African Safari.  And it’s a really cool expensive zoo.  And she said we could come by for free whenever we wanted.  So one of these p-days we will go.  Cool deal! Ok so then we got to the office and waited for Elder and Sister De La Rosa to come.  They came and we took them to their house and bought it.

Thursday.  We started to teach them how to do their job.  Elder de la Rosa will be the financial secretary the sister will be the other.  Sooo I’ve been teaching him a lot.  He learns really fast.  He used to be a stake president and a patriarch. Kind of strange that I’m teaching him anything.... 

Friday.  Zone leader conf.  yay. My favorite thing here in the office.  We eat breakfast.  We talk for like 5 minutes about what they need to do better on with regards to our job.  Then we leave.  And we come back for dinner and dessert.  It’s like just coming to the refreshments after a  youth activity. Gotta love it.

So I think we will have about 2 more weeks in the office just training the new secretaries. Then we will stay in our area until the end of the change so that if they need help we are there to help. 

Ok thats allll

Elder Curtis Wigington

I really never know how to write my name at the end.... so I just say Curtis, or just Elder or Curtis Elder Wigington or Elder Wigington or leave it blank or just how the assistants call me Wigster.

Week 57 - 7/28/12

Ok, so this week I was thinking about that we are going to have to train these senor missionaries.  And I don’t know if you know, but when you train someone, they are then your hijo.  Your son.  So I was thinking about it and it’s a couple and so that means, well, I might just have a hija... daughter.  Isn’t that weird.  Haha. ok sorry, I was just pondering on that the other day.

Monday, the madness begins. Now I hope not to confuse you...  We started off by going to the mission house.  A new missionary, Elder C. came and we ate breakfast.  So good, I’m going to miss that.  Waffles.  He had his training, but I couldn’t give him his credit card because they never sent it to me.  Anyways, then a little later on the trainer came and they had a training and I ate more food in the mission house.  I swear was just there to eat haha.  Then... all the missionaries that are going home came and we ate dinner in the mission house again.  Wow poor Sister Reeves. Then we had a testimony meeting with us, the assistants, and all the leaving missionaries.  It was good, but let me tell it is not healthy to be around so many missionaries that are leaving.  Everyone is all excited and you’re like I’m almost there too... oh wait no I’m not haha.  Anyways after all the hanging out at the mission house we went to sleep there until like 12:30.  Then we took the Mexicans to the bus station.  After that we came back to the mission house and slept for another 2 hours.  At 3:30 we took the Americans to the airport. All that went well.  We got lost on the way back from the airport so we went back to the house showered and went right to the change meeting.  We got our new comp, Elder V.  He has knee problems right now so he will be with us for a little bit.  Poor him, he just sits here in the office while we do our work.  There really isn’t anything that he can do here. We had him organize the references that we hadn’t had time to do, but.... he finished that in like 3 hours and now just spins on the chair... Anyways back to Monday.  Or now Tuesday.  We went back to the office to finish up some work there and we went back to the house at like 7:00. At this point we were going to go to sleep, but then we got a call from president and he said that a sister missionary did not have a mattress for the night and we had to take her one.  She is in an area that is at least 45 minutes away.  So we went there.... dropped off her mattress.  And the thing was....there is an area right next to theirs that was closed, so the next day the zone leaders were going to bring them a bunch of stuff... but you know... the sister can't sleep on the ground for one night......  So we got back to the house at like 10 and we crashed.  That was from like 6:30 Monday to 10 Tuesday with like a only a few hours of sleep, but lots of food, that was good. 

Wednesday.  So we got to the office early. We had to run to the north offices and then we were low on gas so we went to a gas station and they filled us up... then I gave them the credit card and to my luck, it didn’t work, or better said, their credit card swiper didn’t work......... Grrrrrrr.  And so we had to park the van and go to an ATM which wasn’t that far away, like 5 minute walk.  But then... all of a sudden.... it started raining super hard.  We went and took out the money and came back and paid. Soaking.......... Then we had to go all over the place to pick up packages and mail blah.  Anyways...

Thursday.  The president came into the office a little upset.  He tried to pay a hospital bill, and his card didn’t pass so he went to the ATM and he did know it had a limit - the atm, not the card - so he tried, but couldn’t take out the money.  So he showed up to the office a little frustrated. I really don’t think he gets mad, but anyways he told me that I had to go pay since his card didn’t work. So I went and my card didn’t work either. I went to an ATM and I had to take it out in parts.  The bill was 43,000 peso.  So I had to take it out in 4 withdraws.  That was a big stack of bills. I felt like I won on a slot machine. I mean it was just shooting out money haha. So I put all the bills in my wallet and I couldn’t close it, can say I’ve never had that problem before.  It was all in 500 peso bills so it was like 86 bills.  Haha.  Ok enough talking about how much money I took out, but one more thing.  So I wasn’t sure if I could take out that much money, so I called my boss to ask and he was like don’t worry you get 6000 USD on you card every month.  Hey that’s pretty good huh, at least for Mexico. Then I went to sleep.  And you were ready to look and Friday weren’t you? But no, someone called at like 11:30pm from some hospital saying that some missionaries were there and wanted to know if I would pay so they could go ahead to give them medical service.  I of course asked them who the missionaries were and they said some names I had never heard of, so I had them repeat it like 5 time and I thought I was just not understanding.  So I passed them to my comp because he talks Spanish better and he asked how old were the missionaries and they said like 17.  Then one was a guy and the other a girl.  And then we just told them... ugh they aren’t missionaries, bye.  So someone tried to rip us off in the middle of the night, that’s cool. 

Now Friday.  I prepared the rent for the next month.  Then the president asked us to write a... book…about how to do everything in our job.  So that is a really big boring task.  I’ll be working on it and as Becca knows I never get distracted.... like when I clean my room... I won’t be writing the book and then just think... hmm maybe I should reconfigure the printing network, yeah, that’s important, I’ll do that.  But I have gotten like 6 pages done.  I mean you see me whenI write essays in English, then when I do it in Spanish it bores me 10 times as fast haha.

Saturday.  P-day. Well we were going to go to Atlixco, but just the way the morning worked out, with a missionary needing help moving in to a new, house we didn’t do anything.  Now we are here writing, in the office and that’s it. 

okeyday thats all

Elder Washington

SOooo all the time when people call me and I call people and they ask for my name it’s really hard to explain over the phone, so I just say Washington so they understand haha.