Bye bye, Melchor

Well I’m back I suppose,

Anyway, what can I say about the week.

So Tuesday we had some district council and stuff. Not much else happened. We went to Elizabeth’s and talked to her. She revealed to us quite a sad problem she has, and all I have to say about that is just watch the decisions you make kids, cause the consequences on your life can be devastating. Later we were doing some work in the street and found this guy working in a papelería and we talked to him. He’s named José Luis. He has some very different beliefs but we also share some similar ones. He really likes helping people but he doesn’t believe in a church or anything like that. It was a good conversation though. Some people think the ONLY thing were here to do as missionaries is baptize, and while that does have a lot of truth to it, it kinda discounts the good and interesting conversations you have with nice people in the street and in shops who probably will never have a ton of interest in baptism as a "waste of time" and I can hardly believe that god would think talking and being nice to people in the street would be wasting our time. But who knows.

Wednesday we had exchanges with the zone leaders. They came over to our area. I went with Elder Stabler, a some what crazy guy from Arizona. He’s cool though. We didn't achieve a ton. It was one of those days where you just kind of walk around looking for people cause lessons fall through. We found some but we also has a tough time. We did have one lesson with Jesús (the blind recent convert) and that guys quite funny. He’s super nice to us, but he does have a grumpy old man personality and its quite funny to hear him rant about all the noise that all his neighbor’s cause and his family and is convinced they're just doing it to spite him. He also believes that theres tiny cameras and microphones hidden all over his house watching his every move and last week he actually had us take a walk through his garden to help him find them. He really is a nice guy though. It was funny though cause as we were leaving the house there was a truck being really loud outside his door and he started whacking it with his cane. It was pretty funny. We tried to contact the rest of the day but it was very rainy and the area is well, very catholic.

Thursday began slow, as many days do im afraid. In the afternoon we went to the house of our friends Betty and Maria Clara. They’re super nice. Maria Clara is a grandma. She’s like 70. She always greets us with a handshake and a kiss on the cheek. We actually found them one p-day as we were eating chilaquiles in their cafeteria they own. They’re extremely nice and were very interested so for the past few weeks we've been visiting them. They’re pretty dang superstitious though. They have a son who’s a drug addict and so he’s in a drug rehab center and they invited us to go speak there that night. Some guy who runs the place "Padrino Angel" talked to us on the phone and sent us the location and all of that and so that night we went. It was a rehab center for drug and alcohol addicts. There were about 12-15 of them there. Some very young. Some kids were 16 and another who couldn’t have been over 12. We went in and this "Padrino guy" introduced us. I’ve obviously never been to a place like that, so it was really different. We didn’t really know what we were gonna do so when he introduced us just got up and went to the pulpit they had in the front of the room and just started talking. I talked all about the gospel of Jesus christ. I always feel so self-conscience speaking in front of groups of people in Spanish cause im afraid no one understands my accent. I spoke for I don’t know how long and then closed and sat down. I was kind of relieved when I was done. Then my companion spoke, then after they invited us up to the front to answer any questions they might have. They had a ton. Some about stuff we said and some a bit more random like if we could explain verses from Job and Genesis and stuff. They did ask some very good questions though. We answered a ton of questions for about an hour until it was time to go. It was quite an interesting experience and one of the most unique I've had too. One of the things I really didn't like though is that they were all smoking cigarettes a ton and the aroma in the room was making me nauseous. After, literally all my clothes like my suit and stuff smelled like I'd been the one smoking, so that wasn't necessarily ideal. It seems like cigarettes should be banned in that type of place. Right before we left, we gave out images of Jesus and every person in the room really wanted one. They want us to come back one day but its out of our area so we'll see.

Friday wasn't a bad day. We went to go talk to an inactive member Isabel. She's a but older and she has a very run down house. Kinda like José Vega. She feels bad because she needs a ton of help economically and theres not a ton we can do. We brought her some pills she needed but they were the wrong ones. We taught a short lesson and left. Then we went to alamos (its just another part of our area) to look for a couple we were teaching named Axel and Angie. I had only ever been to their house once and theres a ton of houses in Alamos so I really didn't know what I was doing. It soon came apparent I didn't remember where we were so we stopped and asked a random family if they knew an Axel or Angie. They pointed us to a house that I knew wasn't theirs but we went and knocked anyways. I started my really awkward door approach (I suck at those) and it turns out the family we knocked was an inactive family that hadn’t been to church in a few years. They invited us in and we talked a while. It was cool we ran into a good family amongst a ton o’ random houses. 

Saturday not a ton happened. We did go eat with some members who for some reason lived outside of the area and we didn't realize. They were really nice. They have us some good spicy chicken and the coldest, most delicious Coke I’d ever tasted in my life. I literally think they put some magic substance in it. Later we went to visit some recent converts (which we do a lot cause no one else seems to want to listen to us) and we brought one some cake. That was pretty much it.

So Sunday started out normal. We went to church as normal, only one investigator showed up as normal, (some guy named Profirió, he’s super nice, but he talks SO quiet and with his face-mask he is so hard to understand) we went to eat with some members as normal, some lessons fell through as normal, so we contacted as normal. Then, we got transfer news. I wasn't even nervous at all cause I thought there was no way they'd change me after only 2 transfers in Melchor Ocampo and only 1 with my companion, but nope. They're shipping me off north to a place called Pradera with some dude named Sanchez. I know very little about Sanchez and NOTHING about the area. It was quite a bummer to hear that. The AP’s who do the transfers must think that they're just playing a game of Risk when they do them and just ship random elders off whenever they feel like it regardless of their feelings. Sigh. Later the Mission President’s wife called me and basically cautioned me about the house im going to live in Pradera, and said it’s really messy. So the only information that I've received about this place is literally a warning. So im not gonna lie, at the moment im not too excited if you can believe it. My companion here is getting some guy from the Dominican Republic which will be the first missionary here out of a country different then the US and México. Anyways I should pack or clean or something. 

Ps. My two favorite Spanish insults are the words "asqueroso" and "seboso" they’re not swear words, but they’re pretty good still 

Bye

I have literally no pictures. Just two from last Saturday when we helped a member move and they put us in the back of the moving van when they were driving