37 Snow - Parral, Mexico

 New Area:  Parral, Mexico

Bryce and Elder Morgan

 You guys aren't going to believe it but last week it snowed!!! We were studying one morning and I heard rain hitting the roof or something, and I looked out the window and it was snowing! I took a video but the internet connection here is too slow to send it over. we still worked that day. It snowed for about 5 minutes and it was just cold and windy the rest of the day. I feel like his area is going to be way hotter than mine when it heats up.  

My comp is cool! His name is  Elder Morgan. He's been out for 4 months and finished his training. He's a bit quiet sometimes, but He's been opening up more the past few days. We're getting along well so that's good.  His spanish is coming along, and He still has a little trouble speaking and pronouncing the words, but he does well. My week was tiring! I felt like I hardly slept because the morning always came so fast!  I always wake up like 2 minutes before the alarm and think it's the middle of the night, and then it goes off and I cry because I want to sleep. (Good sign he's back in a busy area!) 

I asked Bryce to tell me his three favorite things about his new companion Elder Morgan.  Bryce says:  Hes obedient, likes to learn/study, and speaks english!! haahah.

It feels like I'm opening a new area all over again. But yeah I'm super excited to keep working here and finding new people to teach. We contacted a bunch this week and are still looking for new investigators. They didn't have anything basically when I arrived, but its easier work here too so that's ok we'll pick it back up in the next week or two. 

I DIDNT GET TO GO to Nain's baptism. I was so sad. President wouldn't let anyone go. I don't think he is letting anyone go anymore. Nain and his family came to the transfers last Monday and said Hi. It was so good to see them after they got baptized and to talk to them again! (Nain is an investigator Bryce found when he was companions with Elder Fowler - back in November 2016).

When asked about safety: I feel the same her as in Chihuahua, but we go home at 9pm again instead of 8pm which was kind of weird. 

OH! I forgot to tell you about the talent show the stake(actaully called a district because they are all branches not wards) but friday they had a talent show where all of the branches had people show their talents(duh) and 2 minutes before the show, my zone leader comes up and asks me if I would be willing to help with something. idk how he got involved because he's from a different branch, but some members asked me if I would be able to read a form to marry someone, but to do it in a funny way, or to be funny up on stage. So I did it! I went up and "married" two couples, and asked them funny questions like if they still wanted to be married even though he was short, or she didn't want to cook, and everyone was laughing. It was fun! I'm not sure how it happened, but yeah it was all in spanish and all super funny. No one took pics or videos though so I was sad :( I asked Bryce if he lives in this castle house:  hahaha no its just in the area and it looked cool like the castle houses we would look at back home. Oh but the church building here is huge!!!! It's  two stories and it just looks giant! Side View of the Church Front of Church THE NEW HOUSE Theres a school right next to us with a metal roof. We live where the window is above the street! Thats where we sleep. It's so nice having a closet again and a kitchen and an actual house you have no idea. We have everything to cook! There is another house up top I think but I'm not entirely sure (Possibly residents in the part with the double windows). It was nice when we moved in to the store to finally have somewhere to live in the area, but after a while it sucked. It was a room with beds. (The living arrangement in his last area was a store with two rooms in - no kitchen, cooking, closets, just empty rooms of a store). I told Bryce good thing he's colorblind because  his new house is very colorful. Hahaha yeah  the walls are pink and its tiny, but its a nice place!  I told Bryce good thing he's colorblind because  his new house is very colorful. Hahaha yeah  the walls are pink and its tiny, but its a nice place!

36 NEW AREA. NEW COMPANION. NEW ZONE. NEW HOUSE. NEW. NEW. NEW :)

These are the Missionaries in Bryce's District that he had the privilege to lead.

All packed and ready to move. Goodbye house that is a store:)

The bus trip to my new area was 2.5 hours.  I was in the offices for almost 5 hours waiting to leave!  My new area is cool.  I’m super excited to get to work here. The bus was cool it had touch screen TVs on the back of every seat. We couldn’t watch the movies or listen to the music, but I was able to read all of my emails yesterday, I just couldn’t send for some reason. 

There were seven of us that came to Parral, and some of them I knew. Harrison from Arizona (Harrison lived in the BIG HOUSE with Bryce)  that was cool to see him again. I saw Nicoll (Bryce took Nicoll’s spot in the BIG HOUSE and they were in the same zone for quite a while) and MuciñoI (This was Bryce’s very first companion) at the changes too. Nicoll is training again and Muciño is a zone leader now.

Elder Harrison (AZ), Bryce, Elder Nicoll (AZ) Not sure who the sister is

We got to the place where the busses leave from to get to the station in Parral and left at like 5ish, and didn’t get there until like 7-7:30. When we got there we had to wait for the other zone leaders to get there and call us taxis to get home. Then we left, took my bags up to the house, then went out and walked the area a little bit. Then we came home and I unpacked and got the district meeting ready for today, and yeah went to sleep!

My comp is from Wyoming and he just graduated before he left. He doesn’t really talk much, but I think that’ll change soon. His Spanish is coming along slow and steady and I think he understands well, but speaking it is coming a little slower for him. He has 4 months in the mission and just finished his training and he’s doing really well. My comp has been in this area for 3 weeks, so he’s still kind of learning the area, so we are going to learn it together. 

We live in an apartment above a member’s house and it’s kind of small, but we have a kitchen, a real bathroom and stuff like that so I’m super excited!  I couldn’t take pics of the house this week because my camera died this morning when I went to take them :(  I’m more excited about the kitchen and that I have a closet honestly

I’m soooo excited to be out of Chihuahua! I’m in a little city called Parral and its cool so far! It’s a lot quieter than Chihuahua and there aren’t as many people. And my district is huge!!! (A district is a group of missionaries that live in a specified boundary) I have two companionships of sister missionaries and the zone leaders (zone leaders watch over several districts within a specified boundary)  are in my district, which is a total of 8 people!

Yeah I’m still the district leader. That’s why I was saying my district is huge! 4 companionships! I have more than half the zone in my district!

There are 12 in the zone in total, because they split this zone in Parral and made another one, with 12 as well. The zone leaders have to be in a district because it’s the district leaders who interview their investigators for baptism, and to be involved in the district meetings more.

Fowler  was sad he didn’t get to be a zone leader somewhere else. His companion got changed so I think he was happy about that.

I know my new zone leaders a bit, and one of the sister missionaries in my district was in my district when I first got to the mission, so I know a few people. The district meeting today was fun! We were laughing the whole time it was going, and having a good time, but it was still constructive and I feel like we are going to work super hard as a district.

I feel good about working here, and the branch (a branch is an area where there aren't enough members to make a ward) seems cool. I’m excited to have another gringo comp! It’s like what happened when Fowler (Bryce’s second companion) and I were comps. I finished my training and then I got an American companion.  My comp just finished his training and now he has an American comp.

Preston Fowler and Bryce - Bye for now, friends for life!

Questions from Jenna (Bryce’s sister) Is it uncomfortable to have to keep meeting new companions? Not really. It’s the same questions, how long do you have in the mission, where are you from, what do you like to do... blah, then you get to work. You get to know each other with time and it gets better when you both get more comfortable.

Have you liked all your companions?  Yeah I haven’t had a companion that I haven’t gotten along with yet... and that’s what scares me is living with someone that I can’t get along with for 6-12 weeks. But I think I’ll be fine this time too Elder Morgan seems cool.

Corn Tamales

Bryce and Elder Garcia at dinner eating tamales

I think this was taken because there are Nuns following behind??

Bryce and Elder Garcia 

Yeah, I have no clue

Nain and his family - This is a family Bryce and Elder Fowler found when the two were companions.  They were able to teach Nain about the church.  Nain married his "wife" (girlfriend in Mexico) and decided to have his entire family baptized.  He, his wife, and his son (his daughter is too young to be baptized yet).  Nain had his good friend baptize them.

 

35 It's Cold

It has been so cold this week!  I busted out the scarf  Fowlers’ mom sent me and it was delicious!  I’ve never used one before because it’s never been cold enough and I've never had one. My nose got really cold and I looked like a Tusken Raider from Star Wars with my glasses.

This week was good!  My comp and I talked for a couple hours last Monday about what we should do to progress more, and while we were praying a thought came to my head to start over and drop everyone. We basically dropped all of our investigators and started over contacting and finding more people. We contacted a lot and brought two people to church for the first time in nine weeks! It was so exciting!  Our plan is to basically just talk to everyone and follow up more on those contacts. We’ve also been working more with the ward asking for references and teaching with members so that has been a huge help as well!

Transfers are the 12th and 13th, so we have two weeks left of this cycle

My spirits have definitely gone up with bringing people to church and them telling us they want to come back.

Oh, and Nain is getting baptized!!!!  He’s going to get married and be baptized with his wife and son! He invited Fowler and I and were going on the 11th!

34 Climbing Mountains - Literally and figuratively

Our week wasn’t very good work wise. We weren’t able to teach very much and we didn’t have anyone in church again, but we aren’t discouraged! We are still ready to work hard and keep teaching and finding. 

Standing on the washing machine in the bedroom (why??)

Mountain hike with the Zone on P-day

  

Videos of the Hike

 Soccer with the Zone on P-Day

Yeah we haven’t brought anyone to church in 9 weeks.  When I was in my other area, we never had problems bringing two or more every week. It’s been really rough.

I have no idea why. The people we contact always live somewhere else, or don’t want anything. I don’t know what president thinks about it just emailed him about it today. We’ll see what he says next week. I told him maybe he’s just there to plant seeds that grow later That’s what I was thinking too, but that stinks being a planter.  Plus I want to stay another cycle or two to keep working in our investigators and help them more. But we’ll see what happens in three weeks

We did meet up with one lady that accepted baptism and the first two lessons, but she didn’t come to church and I don’t know why. She said her son was going to take her, and when we called in the morning she didn’t answer.   We couldn’t get a hold of her after church.

I honestly feel like we are working hard.

It doesn’t bother me much that we don’t have contacts, because we can keep trying for them every day, what bums me out is when we have an investigator that after a few lessons doesn’t want anything. That’s been a big issue here too.

33 Birthday Song, investigators, broken toenail :)

  

Bryce bought Elder Garcia a cake and sang Happy Birthday to him.  Of course he had to use trick candles.  It wouldn't be Bryce otherwise!

It’s cool being a district leader! Not really much different from being a regular missionary, aside from giving capacitacions(lessons to the district) every district meeting, and passing the numbers of the district to the zone leaders. This week we are going to work, walk, eat, study, go to church, and teach... the norm. But hopefully with more results this week! It’s been two cycles in a row that I’ve gotten one of these calls (to be a leader). We’ll see how being a District Leader goes and I’m actually excited to give it a shot! The zone changed a ton and these changes were Locas! So yeah, crazy day. The responsibility keeps building and we’ll see where it goes from here! I’m excited for my capacitacion tomorrow! I’m going to use the bean boozled jelly beans as an example. My lesson is about finding people to teach and the Holy Ghost. I teach a lesson every Tuesday. I can assign the others to teach too part of the time If I want. 4. I'm using the jelly beans that taste bad but look like the ones that taste good. The point is you can’t tell the difference and I’m going to talk about how we can't know the difference between good contacts and investigators and the bad that don’t want anything from the beginning. You can’t tell until you try them and taste the good or bad. But the Holy Ghost can help us know before we teach them and who we should talk to and help us find the good ones.

Oh! I forgot to tell you I did my first baptismal interview this week! The sister missionaries have an 8 year old of a family that got baptized a few months ago and I interviewed him to be baptized on Saturday. He is going to be baptized by his Dad.

We have everything hooked up for it to stove to work, but we need to buy gas still. I’m still waiting for the reimbursement from the water heater soo....

I’m super tired from last week honestly. We worked our butts off! But we had a fun week and I’m excited for this week as well. Did you see the pics of my toe? Yeah I almost ripped half of the nail off. It doesn’t look as bad as it did in the photos. We were playing soccer today and I kicked the ball, and it hurt. I felt it was bleeding because it was sticking to my sock, and went to check my nail, and found it all crunched and crinkled. I thought it had just ripped, but then I looked closer, and it hadn’t ripped in the middle, but separated from underneath the nail and forced backwards. The picture is after we cleaned it and someone flattened it again. It hurt a ton! But after cutting it and disinfecting it feels a lot better. 

Journal excerpt from January 10, 2017

Such a cool spiritual experience we had today! We had zone conference today, ate and started visiting. We first visited an old lady named Josefina. A bunch of her kids and grandkids have been baptized and when we contacted her she straight up told us she wants to be baptized. We are doing everything we can to help her. We talked and ended up teaching all of lesson 3 but mostly focused on baptism. We hadn’t talked about what we would teach when we went. It just kind of came (THE SPIRIT). It went pretty well and we will be going back Thursday to teach more about the restoration. Then we went to look for an investigator named Pedro who we haven’t seen in over a week. He has a really hard time with the Word of Wisdom and we’ve been trying to help him but he hasn’t been home. He was out front but with his “wife” and he told us to go on back behind a few houses to the houses in which he lives with his Mom and Brother. We went back and sat outside and his mom came out and started talking to us. She told us she had a long day at work and was sick. We sat and talked to her a bit but not too long so she could get some rest. She didn’t go up so my companion asked if we could share a scripture with her. At that exact moment a scripture popped into my head, Alma 34:40 which basically says to be patient in all afflictions we will eventually have rest from these things. I asked her what she understood about it and she answered to have patience to have rest. Then I started to talk and bear my testimony to her about his scripture and I honestly can’t remember what I said to her. Not a single word. All I remember is that I had tears in my eyes as I bore my testimony with the spirit’s guidance to her and she began to cry as well. The spirit was so strong in that moment. I don’t think I’ve ever felt it like that in my entire mission. It was so powerful. I really felt guidance in that moment and I want to be ready and able and strive to be guided like that always to do well. Man the mission is great!! 

32 Happy Birthday to Elder Garcia

Did you watch the video I sent? That was a part of my meeting that I did with my district and part of another, because the whole district wasn’t there,so they came in with me. The point was to be diligent, and the balloons represent many things in our lives and as missionaries. we have to be constantly juggling them and running one to the other, or they fall and are forgotten. For example, if one was an investigator family and we let them drop, they won’t progress. So we have to be diligent in keeping up all of our balloons. Even if it is only 1-2 at a time.

One thing this week was after we were talking to some people about our beliefs and everything, they didn’t want to listen or give us the time of day, and in church I was sitting and thinking about it, and I realized and wrote down in my agenda, that not even Christ Himself could convince everyone, and that really helped me.

It’s my comps bday today and he said he wanted to go to KFC to eat, so we went and ate.

  

The coke glass came for 20 more pesos at KFC so I had to buy it.

Speaking of temple trips, I was thinking this week if when I got back and we did a temple trip, but in Spanish? you guys could have headsets to listen in English and I would do it in Spanish? that would be really cool!

Contacting has been good, but we are still struggling right now with people to teach. It always falls through for some reason. The ward is super cool and they actually support and help us. The Bishop here is new so he is working hard right now to get everything together. so it’s been good!

We walked a ton again, and everything went crazy because gas prices went up. it was  nuts hahaha because the prices of everything went way up, and people in southern  Mexico were robbing stores and raiding. I have no idea why it went crazy but it did!  Everyone was freaking out and asking more and more about trump.

EVERYONE asks! Anyone that sees I’m white asks. It’s quite bothersome because I don’t know anything going on with Trump.

We got hot water finally! that was fantastic!

Love you all tons.

31 District Leader, I have an accent

Hey everybody!!! I’m sorry I haven’t been writing as much but things have been crazy! Training, opening area, hills, hills, hills... Christmas was fantastic huge thank you to everyone who sent packages and Christmas wishes! We had a good time passing Christmas and New Year here and it was soooooo good to talk to the fam again after 6 months!! But like the title says apparently I have an accent now... I don’t know what accent it might be, but to them I talk weird hahaha.

This past Sunday was crazy too for sure! So we pass by for our investigators and no one is home AGAIN, so we walk to church and get in kind of late and sit down. right as the meeting is starting the ward secretary comes up to me and says, "Elder, can you take some of the time and speak today?" so in 20 minutes I prepared a 15 minute talk on obedience from the scriptures and gave the talk. I never thought that would have happened in my mission...

 Then yesterday was transfer Sunday, which is always craaaaaaaazy! My Zone leader Elder Fowler called me at like 7 to ask me if we locked up the church after our zone party, and I told him yes, then out of nowhere he tells me he knows the changes, but he can’t tell yet. That to me meant that I or my comp had changes, so we were freaking out a bit hahaha. But after we got home we waited for a little bit, then I get a call from president! Freak out time! The last time I got a call from president was when he gave me the assignment to train, so I had no idea what this would be about. Then he tells me I have a change in assignment, and that I’m the new District Leader, and that most of my district got changed! So we’ll see how that goes in the next couple of weeks! 

But other than that everything is going well here. We are working hard, talking to everyone, and we`re slowly building up the area! Hope everything is good back home and that everyone has a great 2017!!

Week 30 Starring the tall blonde kid, Christmas Skype, Christmas with the President

Bryce's zone performed a musical number at the Christmas dinner with President Montoya and his Wife.   He had a few little starring moments (He never said anything so the video was a fun surprise).  Of course he had his snowman flashing tie on.  (We sent it to him in his Christmas package)  I could watch this over and over.  Love hearing my boy!

We were able to Skype for one hour on Christmas day.  He has an accent which is odd.  Dad cried.  Mom held it together until the goodbye:)  He needs a haircut!

Elder Fowler and Bryce had a small duet (so happy they are still in the same zone)