Semana Santa Shenanigans

Happy Holy Week everyone. The people in Mexico were going crazy this last week cause of that. 

Anyways hi.

On Tuesday after our district council, we went to go eat with inactive’s. I’d never met them before. We walked into their house and there was a lady just leaving. She saw us and started talking to us saying she was a member for a lot of years but she stopped going because she doesn't agree with baptisms for the dead or that the sabbath is on Sunday. According to her there's no biblical evidence for either of those topics and it HAS to be in the Bible to be true apparently. She wanted us to show her Bible verses. I went to John 20:19 and acts 20:7 to explain why we meet on Sunday not Saturday. She literally left the house to go get her Bible and came back. She started giving us a ton of verses from the old testament to prove her point. She started citing Leviticus and that's kinda when one loses interest. She was actually nice, it was just weird that when we entered some random members house this lady was so eager to tell us why our church was wrong. We also were able to teach one of the street contacts we made. It was over the phone but he said we could visit him on Tuesday of this week. Then we went to teach some converts and *sigh* they were super nice people. They've been members for almost a year and I feel bad for admitting this but they might as well have been brand new investigators. They couldn't tell us what a prophet or anything was. We helped them with all that and then invited them to church. They told us they'd be opening a food stand outside their house every Saturday night ad Sunday morning and it would no longer be possible to attend church. That wasn't ideal but I don't even know what we can do in a situation like that. 

So Wednesday we went to to teach Emma. The lady who sells juice and has waning interest. She didn't give us free juice this time. We taught her the plan of salvation and maybe she didn't understand or we didn't explain it well enough but she says she already knew all of that from the other religion she'd practiced (Catholicism). After we went to go see Enrique and Miriam in their food stand and they gave us free tacos again which was really nice of them. For this next part we've actually got to go back to Monday to give a bit of context. On Monday in the afternoon, we were walking to the church to go talk with our families and some teenage girl on a bike stopped us and asked how she could join our church. We explained a little and then gave her our phone number so that we could talk to her at a later date. It seemed weird to us cause it's not everyday that some random person (much less a teenager) randomly comes up to you in the street asking to join your church. Her name is Magaly and on Wednesday we went to go visit her. We brought along Sergio our legendary ward secretary cause we were all a little suspicious of what might happen. We went to the lesson and it was actually really good. Magaly is one of those people that you don't often meet with real, sincere desires to change. Her situation is weird though. She said her dad was gonna evict her from her house and that she was really worried that something bad was gonna happen. Her neighbors had told her about the missionaries and how she should try to talk to us. She had no clue how or where to find us or even what we looked like, but I think the fact that we were wearing white shirts and ties and walking in front of our church building, and the fact that she happened to be riding her bike down the street at that time, is what gave us away that day. After we went to go see our buddy Rafael (or Margarito as he's told us we can call him) who came to church last Sunday with us. He's a nice guy but he's quite weird and we just talked to him a few minutes in the street and the conversation went no where. 

Thursday we had exchanges with the zone leaders. We were nervous and not excited because no one loves these zone leaders too much. They live in the most south area in the mission and it has a TON of hills. It's the closest I'll ever actually get to Mexico Cty. I went with Elder Bean (yes that's his name) some guy from Idaho who goes home in less than 20 days. It wasn't actually bad though. He and I got along pretty well. They asked me to play piano for a ward activity but it was literally a song I'd never practiced once in my life so I literally had to plunk it out on one finger while people were singing which wasn't the most comfortable situation I've ever been in. We spent the day walking in between lessons. They have so many hills in their area and we were dying. We taught like 2 lessons with kids and I'm useless when it comes to teaching children so yeah. Later that night we went to go eat tacos. They were small, but they were seriously the best tacos of al pastor I'd ever had and me and Elder Bean ate 16 each. 

Friday morning (good Friday) the Catholics were out in full force. Me and my comp were walking back from exchanges and some guy started yelling at us and said Christ never came to the americas and stupid stuff like that. Also a ton of large parades in the street. Also does anyone know why the only eat fish during this time? I asked a couple members including one who grew up in a catholic family and they have no clue. We taught a lesson with Magaly again, and she told us she's urgently looking for an apartment to rent. We returned to the church and taught Enrique and Miriam. It was such a cool lesson and they are so ready to be baptized but it's just the civil situation with marriage and divorce they're trapped in that they still haven’t figured out. After that lesson, my comp, me and Sergio dedicated the last hour of the day or so for looking for a house to rent for Magaly. We worked hard. We contacted a ton of members and even went to the streets to look. We were so tired and hot (Mexico is hot if I've never mentioned) and we found nothing. It was a bit sad but it felt good to go home and rest. 

Saturday we looked for a few more houses in the morning but every room or apartment is occupied. We went to go eat with a family. They gave us pizza. It was good but the walk in the heat to the food was so long and hot we could barely eat anything. There was a ton of people (just about everyone) in their yards or in the street with plastic pools or playing with water. I have no clue if it has anything to do with holy week or if it was just cause it was hot, but it was literally everyone. In the evenings on Saturdays in the wards theirs sports activities. We hadn't brought athletic clothes so me, and my companion, Elder Soria and Elder Wiedner walked to our house to go change (our house is close to the church) we walked into our colony and there was a bunch of sketchy looking dudes waiting for us. They slowly approached us and all of a sudden they dumped huge buckets of water on us I guess as part of the tradition of the day or whatever. It was pretty fun actually. When we were leaving the colony we knew they were gonna get us worse and this time they actually forced us to sit on the curb and they dumped even more water all over us. It felt good cause of how hot it was outside. Plus those dudes were funny. Just about everyone in the colony saw it so now I think the missionaries are famous for getting water poured all over them. 

Sunday was a slow day. My comp felt really sick in the stomach. We went to go pick up some inactive’s and our new friend Magaly with one of the bishops counselors to bring them to church. The meeting was pretty boring. Enrique and Miriam weren't able to come. One wouldn't have even known it was Easter because I'm pretty sure their wasn't a single mention of the resurrection or anything. We took the day slow cause their was no way I was gonna make my sick companion work outside in the heat. We called people and worked on Facebook a lot. Facebook work is just the worst but at least the church was cool. The family who was gonna feed us just gave us money so we just bought a rotisserie chicken. That was Sunday. The week kinda ended slow. Anyway see ya 

Pics 

1. We got wet 

2. Us and the ZLs eating tacos