Week 24 (Anáhuac, Mexico)

My week was great. Got my hair cut on Monday and got some ice cream. They have tons of different flavors here like Nutella flavor and the flavor of those little chocolate circles that are covered in gold wrapping (can’t remember the name). 

On Wednesday we had an activity at the church for the youth where we played soccer. Wednesday is their mutual night and so the young men were going to invite a bunch of friends to come out and play with us so we could get to know them and share a little message. But the youth said that their buddies couldn’t come because they were working.

So we went over to the park by our house because that is where there are a bunch of people who play all the time. We told them that if they came played and won we would buy a pizza. They said ok and we went to the church to wait for them. Then a bunch of cars pulled up blasting music. A couple big groups of kids came in. Well a lot of them weren’t kids or youth, like 23 or 24 year-olds were there but we got most from the ages 15 to 20.

The soccer courts were filled with people kicking the balls around waiting for it to start. The youth of the church saw who showed up and they got intimidated and left because they didn’t want to play with the guys. At the beginning, we gathered everyone in a big circle in the middle and explained the rules. No swearing. They all started laughing and complaining, but they agreed. We said that we were going to start with a prayer and we taught them about god and how he is heavenly father and wants to communicate with us and then we explained how they can pray.

We said that the first people to say a line from the bible could play with their team first, but no one knew a line. We said that the first person to say a book from the bible could have his team play first, but no one knew. It was kind of sad that they knew almost nothing about religion, but we were glad to be there to help and share a bit with them.

They split into three teams, we were going to play games for like five or ten minutes or until a team scored two goals. One team would wait while the other two played, and while they were waiting we were going to take a couple from that team for like five minutes into the church to write down their names and just so they could hear a bit of the mutual lesson that the youth were having.

They all got their teams together and we got ours. Our team of missionaries was me, my companion, Elder Perez, and Elder Campusano, they are both from Ecuador and they are actually pretty good at soccer. Elder Babb was on divisions in Cuauhtémoc so this other elder was there and we took a couple of the kids who were on the teams not playing to come and help us out in the goal. We had a little kid  like twelve years old come help us out for the first part, but he got nailed in the head with a ball towards the end so we played down a man.

We ended up losing one game, but we won the rest and didn’t have to buy a pizza. We actually got a bunch of contacts and it was a cool experience.

We had to drop the family with the two deaf parents because they didn’t want anything and told us not to come back because they had their religion. They had their little daughter tell us this and we couldn’t really convince them otherwise because we couldn’t communicate with them. So that was too bad.

But, other than that we found a lot of people this week that seem to have a desire to progress and at least listen. We have been getting into a lot more houses and teaching more lessons. We will see this next week how it goes. But we have seen lots of miracles and felt all of the prayers here.

I can’t believe Emily is turning nine and that her birthday is already coming up. It doesn’t sound old, but she just looked so different in those pictures of her playing soccer. She actually doesn’t look too different in the normal pictures but the ones of her running and playing soccer she looks so much older haha.

Yesterday we got to see a video in Sunday School about John Tanner. That was a cool story to hear about. He was a really rich guy who had some disease ridden leg, lots of problems and it was in really bad shape. He went to the doctor and the doctor said that he would need to amputate it or he would die. John Tanner said that he came into the world with the leg and he would leave with it too.

So he left and started to put all of his affairs in order as he was expecting to pass away. Then he encountered the church. He went to a meeting that talked about the Mormon doctrine and he was really interested. So he talked to the missionaries who gave the class, and they came over to teach him and he knew it was all true.

They extended the invitation to him to be baptized but he said no. Not because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t believe, but because of his leg. He was told never to get it wet or something like that and I thought to myself wondering, what I would do in that situation, because that is kind of a problem and something that is necessary for salvation.

I had no idea what I would have done so I watched the next part closely to see what this missionary did. The missionary went on to ask if John Tanner had faith or believed that Jesus had performed those miracles and healed those people. And John Tanner said yes. Then the missionary said that they possessed some of that same power and that they could heal him if he had faith and the missionary asked if John Tanner had the faith and John tanner said yes.

So the missionary stood up and said to John Tanner stand up and walk and John Tanner was healed. From there on out, he gave everything to the church, everything. He gave what was equivalent to be 250 million dollars to the church. It was a really cool story.

Love Elder Blanchard