Week 23 (Anáhuac, Mexico)

This last Tuesday we had a training from our president of the mission. He is crazy smart about all of the doctrine and stuff like that. He talked about the millennium and that was really cool but he also talked about the importance of teaching with objects and how it is important to have knowledge or an understanding of something before you know the value of it.  Like a baby will just past an iPhone on the floor because it doesn’t know the value or understand, it is the same with us and the gospel. He also talked about the importance of using our own words or the words from the heart not memorized words.

That night we took too long doing a lesson and got out at like 8:50 and we were really far from our house and had to run like crazy to try and make it back on time. We ran for like ten to fifteen minutes which normally wouldn’t be too bad but we had our giant bags.

On Wednesday we took a video in sign language to communicate with the deaf parents of the two little girls that we had been teaching. We found out that the restoration video that we have does sign language and we took a portable DVD player and showed them it was a really cool experience. The dad wasn’t there and the mom didn’t understand very much because she doesn’t know a lot of sign language. She is like 40 and just learned sign language like 14 years ago. We have a few other videos that we are going to take over and show them later.

That night we had an activity at the church with the youth where we had a few investigators come and we played soccer. It was actually really fun and turned out well.  

On Thursday we started divisions and I worked with an elder named Elder Johnson he arrived six weeks after me he still doesn’t know a lot of Spanish. I guess he went to the MTC with almost no Spanish. We visited a family of investigators shared a lesson with them and they gave us homemade tortillas at the end with honey and an apple it was really good.

The next day I worked with him again and we did a family home evening at a member’s home with an investigator. We talked about eternal families. It actually turned out really well.

That Saturday I was still with Elder Johnson and for food with a member we got to eat hotdogs American style. They were so good and it was so good to have them like that again and I think I ate like 9. The members kept telling me to eat more and more and I wasn’t going to argue because they were so good. Also when we first got there they taught us how to make some juice with real fruit. We just cut up a pineapple and threw it in and they asked us what our preference of fruit was and we couldn’t decide so we threw in lemons, oranges and guava it was really good.

This week I had the opportunity to give two blessings of health. One of the members that we ate with asked me if I could give her one because she was having problems with her leg. Then on Sunday, a youth was a bit sick and asked for one. It was pretty cool.

I have kind of learned what goes into the tortillas here so hopefully I will be able to recreate them for you guys when I get back. Everyone says that they are really simple, and that is all that I have really noticed that is different from the burritos in America. 

Sounds like a cool book (The Biography of Joseph Smith). It is really hard to comprehend what he went through and all that he had on his shoulders at the time. That is really cool that through all of those trials that he didn’t betray God or lose sight of his mission. That just compliments all of the other facts showing that he really was on the errand of God. You should send some of the stuff you learned or that you weren’t aware of.  I always like learning more about him. That is really what our message as missionaries comes down to. 

I am actually not really sure how many people we teach in a week, it is not a lot so my companion and I have been trying to give short summed up parts of lessons to people we contact right there on the street if they have the time because it has been a bit difficult finding people in their homes. 

I am getting along with my companion really well actually. I am learning a lot too, he knows the scriptures really well, especially the bible.

Transfers are this week but I am not getting transferred, and neither is my companion. They usually call Sunday nights and let us know what is going on. My zone is barely changing. Only my zone leaders are getting switched but that is it. My companion says that this is the first time in 3 cycles (each cycle is 6 weeks) that him or his companion haven’t been changed. It actually isn’t that nerve racking for me. I was actually really convinced that I was getting changed because I had been here forever I even started packing ha-ha.

I am not disappointed I was hoping that I would stay I wanted to stay, I was just convinced I would go because I had been here for so long. We have had baptisms in our areas but they don’t really count. There was this couple from the Tarahumaras (direct descendants from the lamanites, and they wear floral dresses and live apart from every day life) came up to Anahuac so that they could get baptised. The husband of the couple had been baptised a while ago and know the bishop or president of our branch. He brought his wife up here because she wanted to be baptised. It was reallly cool that they got baptised and they counted for our area but none of the missionaries taught them. There was another lady that lived in a little ranch outside of Anahuac that wanted to be baptised but neither of us taught her either. Neither my comp nor I have been at eiuther of the baptisms. 

Love Elder Blanchard