A New Experience: Washing Clothes in a Bucket. Plus a Mission-Wide Service Project to Light the World

Hola Mamá y Papá! yeah it’s pretty crazy here but I am doing my best to have a good attitude about it all and really it’s not that bad! Every night is like a sleep over with the Zone leaders haha but it’s fun living with more than one other person, we are never bored! This past week we were able to find more contacts but no new investigators. It’s kind of frustrating because we are contacting tons of people but the appointments with them almost always fall through because they aren’t home or are busy so we have to reschedule the appointments. We only have 3 investigators in total so I think mainly this cambio we are here to find new people and prepare them for future cambios and missionaries, but it will be worth it! 

Monday was my 14th month mark and was the first Lunes (Monday) that I had to wash my clothes without a washing machine in all of the mission. It was kind of strange because I put my clothes in a bucket with water and detergent, then took a broomstick that had the top part of a coke bottle cut off and attached to the stick that I used to “churn” or wash my clothes. It really wasn’t bad just took a lot of time. Washing machines are a true gift and privilege from God – oh and dryers too! :) After I get home I will never take them for granted. I do love it here in Mexico though.

Tuesday we had a district meeting and talked about involving the members more. They are very important because they will be there after the missionaries are gone and can be friends with the investigators and recent converts, support them and be there if they need anything. After that we practiced singing a song as a district for the Christmas devotional this week. It’s a primary song called Estrella de Luz. The rest of the day was pretty rough, all of our appointments fell through. We contacted a ton of people but nobody was interested that day. It was disappointing but Wednesday was a new day :).

Wednesday we found a super great part of our area where we were finding quite a few contacts. Then we randomly got a call from one of our zone leaders telling us that we had 30 minutes to get to the casa. We didn’t know why but we were in the other end of our area so we started heading back as quickly as we could walk. About half way there we got a call again from Elder Mencia telling us that we didn’t need to go to the casa and that all is well. We wanted to go back to where we were before but it was too far, plus we had a couple of appointments in the other direction toward the casa. So we contacted until then and found a really awesome woman named Nicolasa. She was super open to talk and is very interested in learning about the church and loves to do service. We had an appointment later with a Jehovas Witness, but she got home late so we had to reschedule. 

Thursday we mainly spent the day contacting. We went back to the part we were in on Wednesday and found quite a few people again. It’s rough to contact here in the evening because it gets dark around 6 and people tell us a lot that it is very late to be preaching in the streets and no one will want to talk to us. That’s when the hooligans and troublemakers come out so it’s very dangerous and we need to be super careful. We are very careful though and try to avoid the dangerous parts cause we can’t go back to the casa until 9 p.m.

Friday we had intercambios with Elder Loomis and Elder Mencia. I went with Elder Loomis and it was pretty good. We had one appointment but he wasn’t there so we mainly contacted. We were able to contact 6 people, and a couple of them are super great. Oh the family we ate lunch with was super awesome. They have a son named Erick who served in Sandy, Utah. I actually got to meet him and talk with him a little during a stake conference we had when I was in Villa del Carbón. Now I’m in the same ward as him and it’s cool to hear about how his mission was in Utah.

Saturday our entire mission had a service project where we went to a park close by the offices to clean it up. It was a fun way to start off December and the Light the World initiative. We split up into zones to clean up the park for a couple of hours and it went really well. We had to go back to our areas after we were done and I was super drained but we went and contacted for a bit. After about an hour or so of not finding anyone, we decided to take a break and sit down to rest for a minute. While we were resting a woman came out of her house and invited us in to talk with her family. They wanted to give us some hot chocolate and sweet bread. It was great and they are a cool family. Oh I also found out that the Elders in Villa del Carbón baptized a little boy that Elder Zapata and I found while we were there! What wonderful news!

This was his reaction to hearing that we got to shake hands and take a picture with Elder Uchtdorf: Holy Fetch Seriously?!?!?!?! Que Genial!!!!!! Estoy super celoso! (Translation: How cool!!!!! I’m super jealous!!!!!!)

Thank you so much for letting me know how things are doing back home and for that super awesome quote! I love you so much! have a great week!