Week 12 Ahome

The first transfers came, and my companion and I are both still in Ahome. Here are the highlights of the week.

Monday: We went to Los Mochis to eat and we fit 8 big guys in a small car. I bought new shoes already because I walk so much my old ones were broken.

Tuesday: Los Mochis again for a district meeting, and lunch with a lady who has un buen de niños.

Wednsday: Los Mochis 3 days in a row. This time for baptismal interviews. There are actually enough members in Mochis to have a youth group on Wednesday nights. They were all learning to dance to a country song, which was fun to watch. Afterwards, we caught the very last bus to Ahome.

Thursday: We went to Las Grullas to teach an investigator who showed up to church on Sunday. We did a zone fast on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, so I was starving by the time lunch came. Lunch was kinda disappointing. It was a fish with the scales and bones still in it, so we had to pick little bones out of our mouths. I´d rather have the boiling hot soup than Mexican seafood.

The best part of the night was on the way home. We had a stranger drive us the long distance back to Ahome in the back of his pickup. It was long drive where we could sit and relax and not worry about anything.

Friday: I had to speak in front of a whole bus of strangers by myself about the church. It wasn´t too bad. They probably didn´t know what I was saying, but oh well.

Saturday: We had to go to 18 de Marzo in the morning to get a baptism record that we accidently left. We saw un chancho the size of a cow. 3 men were trying to force it into the back of a truck, but is was stronger than all three of them. When we got back we attended the baptism. We haven´t had a baptism yet for any of our investigators yet, soon.

I finally taught piano lessons that night. It was pretty difficult because obviously everything is different in spanish, including the note names.

Sunday: Church and calling the other missionaries about transfers.

My training is halfway done. Spanish continues to be easier. I´m having dreams partially in spanish now, which is cool. I can speak spanish without thinking sometimes. 

That waas my week. Hasta Luego!

This is a picture of the girl that was baptized in our church building. I witnessed it. 

It was really cool, as soon as she came out of the water, the spirit came really strong to me. 

I knew that the Lord told me, as the witness, that he accepted the baptism.

The boy in the yellow is a Mexican Kaylor (my little cousin)

Lunch on Pday in Los Mochis with Victor our investigator

Those houses in the background are SUPER nice houses

This is a common sight in Mexico

Also, not in the picture, but to the right of it, there are 3 Mexicans trying to get a pig into the back of a truck. The pig is literally the size of a cow and is stronger than the 3 men. The pig got mad and started fighting, and it dragged one of the Mexicans on the ground, but the guy held on tight.

There is a dog here that we named Squashy 

I really don´t like him. He stole my galletas last week and he keeps following me. This is him.

Here is a cool lizard we saw
It is on the church wall. We saw it from the window of the baptism room.

Here is another lizard that we saw

Week 11 Ahome

Hey guys! 
The weeks are getting pretty routine. I´ll keep this letter pretty short by only including the fun stuff.

On Tuesday we witnessed a police car chase, which was pretty cool. The police caught the guy pretty fast because they have big trucks that drive on the rough roads with no problem.

Thursday night we saw a dog that had been run over by a car and its organs had popped out and were sitting next to the body. It was pretty gross. 

On Friday we went on splits again, but this time I stayed in Ahome. We get yelled at in Spanish by this guy who was on a lot of drugs.

I had a little bit of stomach sickness again this week on and off, but I think I´m over it now. The food is brutal sometimes. It´s been super hot outside, and we always have boiling hot soup to eat. It makes me sweat so much as I´m eating.

The teaching is getting better. It gets more interesting the more I learn spanish because I can understand some crazy stories that people have. 

We have one more week until my first transfer. It went by pretty fast, 15 more transfers after that and my mission is over. I have mixed feelings about Ahome. I wouldn´t care if I was transfered or not. I like the people here, and some areas are pretty, but I don´t like all the walking, all the trash in the sewage drains, and I don´t really like my apartment. I want to feel like I had success here in Ahome, so I´m gonna work especially hard in this next week, just in case I end up transfering.

Photos of Our Apartment

This is where we iron and hang our shirts.

Here´s our shower. This is why I need shower sandals.
Scrubbing doesn't help.

Home Sweet Home. It´s amazing how much I´m used to it now. 
When I go back to the United States I´ll feel like I´m living in a mansion.

Week 10 Ahome

Hey everybody! 

Happy Spring Break for those of you back home :) This week was pretty eventful. Here are the highlights of each day.

Monday: We had crazy problems with our house. Our toilet wasn´t working all day long, and we had mouse poop all over our kitchen again when we woke up. After P-Day we went to a members house to teach, and they asked me if I would teach them some piano lessons. It´s gonna be hard teaching spanish piano lessons, but I´m excited to try.

Tuesday: The highlight of the day was when an investigator gave us a picture of Christ that he drew.

Wednesday: We had a training meeting for 6 hours, but we got pizza afterwards so it was worth it.

Thursday: We caught a mouse in a trap that we borrowed from a member. We killed it by shaking the trap really hard. A random stranger bought us Hot Dogs because he says we work really hard. We don´t know everyone here in Ahome, but they see us, and recognize us.

Friday: We taught a very frustrating lesson. The people agreed with everything we told them, but they didn´t at the same time. It´s hard to explain but it was just frustrating.

Saturday: We killed a second mouse by beating it with brooms. I think we are mouse free finally. We went on splits with some members. I taught the old man Octavio and a brand new investigator without the help of my companion. The experience proved to me that I can teach better than I thought without my companion.

Sunday: At church, we were asked to speak during the meeting, with literally no time to prepare anything. I walked up with nothing on my mind, but thoughts came to me as I just spoke. I was kinda nervous, but there are only like 60 people at the church, and they have all seen me make a fool out of myself before and they know I can´t speak spanish well. At the end of church, I took a picture with a kid who looks like a younger, mexican version of myself.

That was my week! Hasta luego :)

Here is our mouse-trap. Animals are everywhere here. It works great. The mice don´t die when you shake it though. I shook it and it looked dead, so I went to take a shower and when I came back it was moving around again.

My companion and the mousetrap.

Week 9 Ahome

This week marked 2 months for me in México. Only 22 more to go! It´s going by pretty fast though. Once I´m done with 12 weeks in the field it should go by even faster because that´s when training is over.

It´s starting to get really hot, and there are a lot of mosquitos here so that´s great. The mosquitos are nothing compared to the cockroaches and mice. Every morning we have about 3 cockroaches in the shower; I think they live in the drain. Also, we are trying to kill a mouse that has been pooping everywhere in our kitchen. It´s pretty disgusting.

Teaching has been a little challenging. No one wants to go to church. We committed 4 investigators to attend church with us on Sunday, but when we went by their houses to meet them before church, only one of them was even home. Octavio is the only investigator that goes to church. He is a really old man who uses a wheelchair, has about 4 teeth, and is considered mentally insane by his neice. Also I can´t understand hardly anything that he says. He is hilariously to teach though.

I went on splits on Friday, so I got the opportunity to be with our Zone Leader, Elder Cole, and work in Los Mochis for one day. It was so much nicer. I got to speak English to Elder Cole. We didn´t have to walk far to get anywhere, and all the roads were paved. We went to this old lady´s house, and she started preparing us food, even though we had just eaten lunch an hour before and were really full. She made us a huge plate of black beans, and a tortilla that was the thickness of a pancake and really disgusting. It was so bad, I almost puked with every bite. I have eaten so many beans here. When we were almost done and ready to die, she gave us 3 cobs of cold corn with a cream on it. We ate every bite of the food.

A lady in Los Mochis who can speak a little bit of English told us that people in Sinaloa speak faster Spanish than anywhere else in Mexico. That is probably why I´m struggling to understand spanish when I could understand it a lot better at the CCM in Mexico City. I´m getter better with each day. I write down words and phrases that I hear that I don´t know and that seems to be helping me. I understand really well when we are talking about the Gospel, but other things still go right over my head.

Anyway, this week has been pretty good. With every new challenge, I just tell myself that it´s all part of the experience.

Week 8 Ahome

Hey guys! 

My last email was pretty long, I´ll try to keep this one short and to the point.

The first couple weeks in the mission field is extremely difficult. Those of you returned missionaries probably know exactly how I´m feeling. The important thing is that I keep working. For you guys getting ready to leave the CCM, it will be tough in California. Read the book, Adjusting to Missionary Life frequently, because it´s super helpful.

We have had our bad days and good days this week. We visit a lot of people, and a it seems like most of the time, they aren´t home. We don´t go around knocking on peoples doors, because most of them don´t have doors. I´ve seen some of the poorest houses ever. They have no roofs, cardboard is stapled to wood for walls, and some have dirt floors. There are always kids playing outside in the dirt. Our lessons are getting better, and I´m talking and understanding more everyday

The most difficult challenge we have in our area is getting the people to come to church. Yesterday, we had one investigator attend church, and that was only because we went to his house and pushed his wheelchair all the way to the church. Church was good though. I didn´t play the piano this week, and the songs were funny. They started out singing, and it was ok, but by the end of the verse they somehow changed to a different tune of a completely different song. I just sat and laughed.

The first day I got here, they were setting up these huge carnival rides in the center of Ahome. Every night there has been crazy carnivals in the plaza area with rides, games, food, and really loud music. I thought that it would be over by 2 weeks, but they still party hard every night.

Those are the highlights of the week, Adios