Monday, January 27, 2014

Justin Bieber?

This week was... welp... interesting. So... i had changes and am no longer in Arboleda and am now in the area Pantitlan. And my comps name is Elder Benitez. The area is like freakin heaven. I have not seen a dirt street in like... a week!!! Yeah that is definitely a blessing to not have to re-deep clean my shoes everyday. but... yeah...

So... this week the first day i was here we were just wrapping up our day and we turned onto this street and saw this car stuck in a mud hole (and i now know that you are thinking that i just said that i have not seen a dirt road in a week and so... just to clarify i have not seen a dirt road besides this one part of this road:D:D) so we went to help this man with his car. so we spent like 20 minutes trying to lift this freakin thing and we could not get it to budge, so finally someone brought a jack and someone brought another one so with these 2 jacks we managed to get the back end of the car way up. but... the problem is... it's the front that is stuck so... with time we slowly repositioned the jacks a little bit forward until literally the car was just suspended like a teeter totter. (i hope you can imagine what i'm tryin to explain.) so now we have the car suspended but... the car is front wheel drive... and all 4 wheels are off the ground. hahah so someone had an idea to fill the mud hole with rocks. and once we thought the pit of endless despair was full we lowered the car down and!!! it started to sink yet again but the owner quickly jumped in and gunned it. I have never seen a car bottom out so bad and mud was flyin everywhere but... he got out:D:D:D yeah what a great first day adventure eh?

and the next thing i just wanted to share is...we were sharing this lesson with this hermano and as we were wrapping up i just had a thought that i should share this scripture, and ya know the last 50 times that i have had that feeling i just shrugged it off and didn't say a word but.. this time i just decided what the heck. so i just talked to the man and told him that i wanted to share a scripture with him. and i shared the scripture that had come to my  mind and after that he told me that this scripture was exactly what he had needed to hear. OH YEAH! Hooray for doing something right. eh? and so that was a pretty cool experience being able to actually have the courage and have the spanish come out fine to explain to this hermano this scripture. yeah.. that's all i wanted to share about that... kinda lame but... what eva. 

this other time we were knocking on the door of this ladies house and my comp said... we already taught her the lesson before that we have prepared so... i'm just going to let you take over and make something up... oh great... that is just fantastic. that is exactly what i want to hear right as we are walking in, right? but... so i just decided that i was not going to worry about it. ya know the whole open your mouth and the Lord will fill your mouth with what you need to say? yeah.. so lets just say that i was really depending on that blessing. so right as we ended the prayer yet again anther scripture that i had studied that morning came to my mind and so...i just flipped to it and with what she had told us before, we started the lesson i just began to apply this scripture to what she was currently going through and so... ya know i really don't know what exactly i said.. but, she started to cry and that might have been the spirit of contention as i might have just offended her long lost daughter type of dealio or... i actually shared something of worth. and so when i have finished up my comp shared a scripture that he enjoyed as well and we wrapped up that whole lesson with a nice time of asking for references and yeah...

Hahaha.... this is probably one of the weirdest experiences that i have EVER been in, in my life. so we walk into this house of a family of 7 that are investigators, yeah let me hear a HOLLA but.. they are not that interested... but what eva we are going to try anyway. and so we walk in and i introduce myself and we are just talkin with the family, and all of the sudden this really old lady just pipes up and says... "ya know elder anderson, you really look like the boyfriend of barbie." yeah.. needless to say.. i was shocked.. i have never heard that in my entire life... the only thing i could say was... um... thank you? yeah... everyone started to laugh and yeah.. i'm glad i could give everyone a good laugh with that straight up lie. yeah.. that was a pretty awkward moment i'm not going to lie... but ya know i'm a white person in mexico, anything i do is a joke.  and that was not only the end to awkward things that happened this last week. 

so... the next one is that we were at church and we just had finished and i was going around meeting everyone. and these girls came up to me and i got to know them, but they were from the other ward so.. i didn't really understand why i was trying to get to know them amongst the many many other people i have to memorize where they live, but then their brother came and told me that those girls and his mom thought that i looked like Justin Bieber.... yeah.. i know right? what is this? 1. I don't sing like a girl. 2. i don't even look like him. 3. yeah... thats all i got.  but yeah.. weird moment number 2. so the brother continued to tell me that his sisters and his mom would like to get a picture with me. (i don't know if this is just the new missionary hauntin train or what... because I think i am just in the middle of a huge justin bieber/ken joke here in this part of town.) So i was like.. um..  sure..? so me and my comp got a picture with his sisters and his mom, and then the sisters had me sign their hymn book (i know right? a hymn book? but ya know... haha) they had me sign it as "to my best fans (two names that i really can't remember) and then I signed my first and probably last imitation of the signature of Justin Bieber. yupp... what a good awkward week and sunday:D:D: But.. ya know.. memories:D:D 

and Victor Castro got baptized this week. I was not there for it but.. elder Lee told me that he got baptized (the guy that i prepared and did everything but.. i had changes before his baptismal date... yeah.. kinda blows.. but i'm glad that he decided to follow through:D:D:D What a man!!!) 

GUESS WHAT!!! ELDER GREENWOOD IS IN MY DISTRICT!!!! We eat lunch with him everyday!!!:D:D:D

but... this was my week... full of spiritual and adventure and Justin Bieber imitation. (and here in a photo of my new comp and me and elder lee and his new comp.)

PHOTO OF THE WEEK...Monday, January 27, 2014

Going home...

Changes...Goodbye Arboleda.

Monday, January 20, 2014

awkward family photos?

well... this week i don't have as much to write as the last week:D:D:D but... the big news is.... i have changes!!!! well... it actually kinda sucks... cuz i just have had the best time with probably the only american comp that i will ever have in the mission. so... now i have to go back with a mexican. great. 

but this week we just finished up teaching one of our investigators who will be baptized this coming saturday... yeah i know you now are probably thinking that i have changes and i won't be able to see this man get baptized yupp thats the darn truth but... yeah... i will see him in heaven so thats good:D:D:D  but yes this is the man that thinks that he is a werewolf and he always has yet another fun thing for us to hear every time we go visit him:D:D:D so thats always a good time:D but the latest thing is that he told us that his whole family have been kidnapped and that the government is always looking for him and that he has seen a half lady horse thing walking around his house in the night. haha yay for half lady horses!!! :D:D:D but this is all that has been going on with our investigator and he is progressing ver very well and he will be a fantastic member!:D 

but haha i was just going to write a quick something that was quite interesting that happened this week:D:D So... we eat at this same ladies house every week and she always has something that is... well to say the least... interesting. so this last saturday was no different to. we showed up and she gives us this bowl with this red soup with this food ( i'm stretching to say that it was food) and my comp turns to me and says. do you want to know what this is?. and... i just said "tell me after" because i just wasn't sure if i could eat it if i had an image in my head of what this thing was. so we start to eat this... mass. and it kinda looked like an organ or something kind of underwater sea food but all i knew that what ever it was it still was not cooked very well and i asked my comp when the hermana left the room and he said as well that this was not cooked almost at all. so literally we choked this down and quickly told the hermana that we were full and peaced out as fast as we could before she could try and fill up our bowls again. and when we got outside i asked my comp what in the world had we just eaten because that was almost worse than the brain we ate that one time. and he told me that it was cow stomach and a lot of people like it here and usually that it tasted a lot better when it is cooked. and i was honestly just wondering is that even healthy to eat stomach? because when your stomach is eating itself that isn't healthy. right? :D so then why is it good to eat the stomach of a cow? yeah.. easily that was another one of my blessings that i wrote down to hopefully avoid eating almost raw cow stomach ever again :D 

and... yeah:D one of the pictures that is black and white here is when me and my comp went searching for this man who needed a blessing. (because there is this hermana who tells all of her neighbors that she has 2 friends that give away free blessings.) so we go literally every where for people who just want blessings and we do it because that is a good way to get into people houses and introduce them to the gospel. but this photo is when we got lost and to find this guy we had to leave at 8 in the morning so when we got lost we just decided to take a small walk and found the edge of our area. yupp.. that is all:D:D:D

and the other one... well yeah it is kinda the same as last weeks but i just decided to send it... maybe i already did... but... i don't remember. but... yeah Return with honor right? or something like that. 

and... yeah i have changes so... changes are almost as bad as a awkward family photo. right? especially since everyone knows how much I dislike family photos:D:D:D

this week my mom said i could spend whatever i wanted for my birthday, so i did.  i bought two jars of peanut butter! 

today i am good, tomorrow?

well.. that is all for this week:D:D:D 

peace. 

PHOTO OF THE WEEK...Monday, January 20, 2014

changes are almost as bad as awkward family photos:D

Monday, January 13, 2014

Entrando Mojado
(Entering Wet)

This week was quite an adventure I'm not going to lie. You know all the crazy things that happened at the beginning of my mission? (well... i am still in the beginning of my mission.) For a while nothing really cool happened and i couldn't really speak spanish? (lets be honest. i still cant speak spanish but... that's not what i want to focus on) so this week was full of running away from drunk angry people who wanted to kill us (i don't know if that is true but the running at us and speaking very sternly crude english words that i would rather not repeat), taking sick pictures where they just recently found 3 decapitated bodies, two of our missionaries got assaulted and robbed, satan bluntly working against us, we currently have 3 progressing investigators and a bunch of members who want success and joy in the church while they just sit on their couches :D:D 

ok so i guess i will just start out with the running away from angry drunk men and another companionship getting robbed. So it was the night of 3 kings (the night of the arrival of the 3 kings to see the Christ Child and the biggest party I have seen them celebrate since coming here, and boy can these people party- even bigger than my mom celebrates 3 Kings) We were going to our last appointment and things were pretty good.  we had cranked out 8 lessons that day (a new mission record for me) and we were headed to our last appointment that we had for that day. but as me and my comp were walking to their house through some really sketchy streets (I'm pretty sure there are dead bodies buried there or something but.... who knows.) hahah but yeah:D we were just walking and talking about how its really funny how a lot of people here know a lot of crude words and just love to YELL THEM AT US (its like we are suppose to understand them or something) but as we are just exiting these sketchy streets a man just started to come at us. I just didn't have a very good feeling about this man with the anger on his face (good thing I get these feeling) and thats when he started yelling very very crude words at us and boy he did know english pretty well. And thats when i recognized his face and his voice. IT WAS THE MAN WHO GRABBED ME IN THE STREET MARKET! So i knew that this man would not be hesitating to grab and probably destroy us. So that's when we decided to just pick up the pace a little bit. and ya know usually people just give up when they know that they will have to walk pretty fast in order to catch up to us. but... this moment with this man was a very different experience. when we picked up our pace he decided to double his and ya know just started yelling the usual "get back to where you belong americans, you don't belong here, yeah that's right just walk away" That was a generalized sum of the sentences that he used and taking out all the really really crude words. but he continued to chase us for about 5 minutes (he was a very very determined that little fella) but ya know nothing that two out of shape missionaries couldn't run for like 5 minutes and finally lose him this time thank goodness.  after that little incident we arrived at the house where we were going to teach our ninth lesson. and right when we were about to start to teach my comp gets a call telling us that one of the pair of comps just got assaulted and robbed and thats all we were told. well.. along with that they were unharmed. So we had to excuse ourselves and take the backroads of where we could run over to the house of the elders and see if they needed anything (which honestly i don't know if that was the smartest thing that we could have done. cuz weren't the other elders just robbed in the same area? this sure isn't Highland thats for sure. and so why were we walking in the same area? i don't know... but ya know. life rolls on in Mexico. :D so we arrived at their house and all was good because they didn't stab them or shoot them, so that's a relief. so we just asked them to tell the story to us. 

They were just walking down the road after they have just given a discussion. and this car  went flyin by them. and right as they passed them they quickly swung back around and started to come right at them. one of the elders has had a little more time in the mission and has heard how people do drive by robberies, so he screamed at his companion to run and he took off (hahaha it's like the story of the bear. it doesn't matter if you can out run the bear just if you can out run your friend:D:D:D and thats exactly what happened:D:D:D:D) The newer elder didn't really realize the importance of running as fast as he could so the people caught him before he could get very far and threatened him with a knife at his side and then took everything he had, all the way down to his gafete (missionary badge.) so after the muggers took off his comp came back to see if he was ok (what a great comp right? :D) I'm not going to lie, i would probably do the same thing. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST BABY! Right? hahah yeah  not too cool, but it is my mission. 

hahah and now i guess i will just type a little something about the river with the bodies in it:D:D: hahahah it's not that exciting but ya know.. just not something that you hear every day in the states.... or.... ever. .:D  So me and my comp were just working away (like usual) and we had just heard from a member that the authorities had just found 3 decapitated dead bodies in the black river not too long ago. so... ya know... the timing could not have been better because just the other day we had received a reference that we were going to go visit, and you won't be able to guess where this person lives?!?!? yupp!! you guessed it!! RIGHT NEXT TO THE BLACK RIVER!!! :D:D so clearly after i have just received an email from someone telling me that i have been cracka slackin in my photo of the week, i decided that a sick photo would be a missionary doing a cannon ball into the black river, right? Hahah not. that was just a joke but it was quite the coincidence that right when we get this reference we hear about the 3 decapitated bodies:D:D:D and yeah... there will be a photo of the week this week::D:D:D  And it will be in on the banks of the Black River where they found the bodies.  I am amazed I would even go because movies like this freaked me out but now I live them and I am jumping in front of them.

and now i would just like to write a quick something about how satan is literally working so bluntly against us. So we are teaching an hermana que se llama Patricia. and she has this small store and when we went to go visit her for the first time we learned that she does not get very much business and is really struggling. so clearly we thought that this was the perfect moment for us to go and help this lady learn about the gospel, right? yeah that's what i was thinking as well. so the first lesson that we teach she had told us that no one has come in today so far, and so we start to teach and teach and right when we get to a good powerful part in the lesson someone just happened to walk in. so she got all distracted and had to go sell some things. and then when she came back we only got like another 5 minutes of teaching and then a whole line of people came. yeah you heard me. A LINE! man so we just finished up what we had and had to take off because of our other appointments. so then we came back the next time and she told us that it was strange that so many people had come that last time, because she never has that many people come in at once. so yeah... maybe it was a coincidence. not. because we started to teach again this time and you know what happened? yeah the same thing. person after person after person. and it wasn't that people just came, they always came when we were in the groove and the spirit was really strong. so this was no coincidence let me tell ya. but we were not going to be defeated by satan, so we took the hour and a half to battle this out and still teach to her needs and we did get through the lesson and she loved it. well... ya know... i guess you just got to deal with different battles with different investigators.:D:D:D hahah yeah that's about how satan is just blatantly working agains us.

haha so... thats really all i have to write about this week. but i guess i will just quickly explain the pictures that i have attached here:D:D Hahaha cuz they are pretty funny:D:D:D so the one with the pan on top of the silver thing is when me and my comp just got back and i decided that i was going to go cook a pot of rice. so clearly i started to cook that. but here is the funny thing, so as you can see that we have two cooking surfaces there but.... clearly only one of them works, bienvenido al barrio (welcome to the slums. i think that's what that spanish means... but... who knows...) so being two missionaries who want rice and tortillas what do we do? clearly we turn up the heat on the rice and put the pan on top and start to cook the tortillas!!!! yeah... ya know the usual missionary creativity survival skills you get when  you are in the slums:D:D

and the other picture that i have here is one of me and my comp behind a table of candies. so yet again this story starts with me and my comp walking in the street. so we are walking to our appointment and we pass Leticia, our recent convert. as we pass her, we just decided to stop and see how life is going right now for her. and after our small relief society session, we asked her if there was anything that we could do for her. usually she just tells us no, but this time she told us yes.:D:D she just asked us if we could take control of her candy stand that she runs for a few minutes while she swings by her house to grab something. so ya know, we just decided to take some photos of this moment:D:D Cuz how many times are you able to man a candy stand in mexico? Yeah.. never. :D

this is the last week with my companion from Brigham city. i have come to love him for his great work ethic.  he is the bomb when is comes to comps.:D:D  it has been the break needed from the last. i didn't write last week. it is hard when you feel you are not liked and then when something is promised to you for weeks and then it is taken from you last minute and it was something you really wanted to do. feeling picked on wasn't one of the things i was expecting. there have been people in the scriptures who have been picked on more than me so why i felt bad i don't know, just not use to it i guess. love the american comps! :D:D thanks for your prayers i have needed them and feel them.:D

I bet mom is glad my mexi hair cut is growing out:D:D

well.... yeah... that's my week... not too much but just enough. oda le pues... hasta luego muchachos y cuidence mucho eh? nos vemos en un ratito... o... pues.. posible. 

PHOTO OF THE WEEK...Monday, January 13, 2014

so... here is the photo of the week:D:D

se llama: ENTRANDO MOJADO:D:D

hahah yeah... kind of a weird name but.... ya know... 

and sorry there is 2 but.... i could not decide between the 2 so... surprise you get two:D:D:D