Letter #23 10/31/11 A little excitement in Cabo!!

Hey everyone! Wow.. A lot has happened this week. First of all, thanks for the emails and fotos! Sounds like the Lloyds had a blast and that Rachel and Ryan are loving Europe! Elder Carrillo is amazing. Ive learned a ton! He was a little quiet at first and i was worried but ive realized that hes an amazing missionary. He knows every scritpure there is. Hes currently teaching me how to prove every religoun wrong by using the bible, just in case... We worked extremely hard this week trying to find new investigadors because currently we have 1 investigador in total and she cant get baptised becaused shes not married and her boyfriend is crazy so she doesnt know if she wants to marry him... We have recieved over 20 refrences and have searched our entire area book for old investigadors and have contacted every single one of the houses and theres nobody. We did everthing we could this last week and nothing was working, but Elder Carrill and i both felt that by the weekend we were going to be rewarded for our hard work with new investigadors. I dont think we were rewarded but we were definately surprised.. Friday morning we woke up with a million missed calls from the members and messages saying to stay inside and be careful. I guess Friday night, when we were fast asleep, there was a mini war between the drug dealers and the police. A mini war that lasted 4 hours and had a constant flow of grenades and gun fire. This is normal in Sinaloa but not in Cabo so the people are going crazy. Saturday morning we evacuated to the house of our zone leaders and weve been here ever since. Since Friday theres been a few more miniature wars, all within 5 minutes of minutes of our apartment, so we still havnt been able to return. We also havent been able to work, weve been locked inside the apartment with 4 other missionaries. But we here that everything is over now so were hoping to be able to return tomorrow or wednesday. We now know why weve had zero success, its because our area is full of drug and gun dealers!! But dont worry, seriously this is normal and were all really safe. Seriously dont worry, we have the spirtit with us for protection. But i love you family!!!

Next email:

seriously, i hope youre not worried. were really safe. people dont hurt missionaries and only drug dealers have died. and everything is over. i know the church is true. love you!!!!!

Last email:hey good news, i just heard that everything i told you in the previous email is a bunch of rumors. haha the people here gossip a ton. We are going to return to our house tonight and work tomorrow! haha i cant believe i believed all that crazy stuff. well im really excited to work tomorrow, i know that if we rely on the spirit were going to be able to find the escogidos. I love being a missionary and i know that the Lord will always help us through our trials when we are obedient to his commandments and ask for help. The people here are amazing and i love every day of working. Due to the confusion these last few days ive had a lot of time to read in the book of mormon, pretty much all day long, and i know without a doubt that its true. I hope the everyone at home takes the time to enjoy the fruits of the book of mormon every day. I know that youll be blessed with knowledge and the spirit. I love you all and i hope you know that theres no reason to worry, everything is tranquilo here. Love you!!!

Landon loves kitties!  Happy Landon!  Not so happy mom after this letter!

Letter #22 10/24/11 Hey Everyone!!

Hey everyone! Thanks for the emails! Im excited to read everything. I hope that lexi and Mckell are happy in school and dating lots of boys, but not too many, and that Dad enjoyed Maryland. Thats sweet that get to travel there now too! And Mom, I hope youre loving teaching and the wonderful fall weather. Its continuing to be pretty hot here but surprisingly it doesnt really bother us. Once youre used to sweating all day it just feels natural.

 

We had another great week. We found out our cambios on Saturday. Elder Garcia went to Culiacan and i stayed here in Cabo. Im definately going to miss Elder Garcia. Hes a great missionary and i learned a ton from him. I feel blessed to have such an amazing first companion. But im excited for this next cambio here in Cabo with my new companion Elder Carrillo. Hes from from Mexico City, really small, and im his last companion that hes going to have. He goes home in December, which means that he has tons of experience. Were going to have a lot of success in these next 6 weeks so that he can go home happy.

 

Yesterday, being Elder Garcias last day in the area, we spent a lot of time saying goodbye to people. I think the highlight of my week was last night when we went to the hospital to see a baby of one of the recent converts in the ward. The baby was just born Saturday and is basically an angel. But when we were leaving the hospital someone shouted out for us in a different room. It was an old lady who has been really sick the last week and new that we were with the Church and begged us to give her a blessing. After we gave her the blessing she was basically crying when she thanked us and the spirit was incredibly strong. I know that we were guided there by the spirit. I am loving being a missionary!

 

I weighed myself last week and the scale said that ive lost 15 pounds since i last weight myself in our home. Im pretty sure its 15 pounds of pure muscle. I had to leave my perferct pushups in Culiacan.. Also i havent received the package from grandma yet but im sure ill get it our next zone meeting which should be in a week or 2. Thanks Grandma!!!!!! I feel really lucky to have a loving caring family at home. Thanks!

 

I sleep good every night. I normally fall asleep within 15 minutes and am out until my alarm sounds at 6:27. And i havent had any problems with feeling sick or anything. Acually Elder Garcia had a lot more problems than i did. I think i have a super tough stomach because i know that a lot of stuff we eat isnt completely sanitary. But im alive and i feel good so i really dont care. And everything tastes good and thats all that really matters. I felt pretty bad for Elder Garcia last week, he wasnt feeling good and had huge blisters on his feel and we walked more than any week yet. Hes a trooper.

 

Well love you!!! Ill write you again in a week!   Elder Mecham

Letter #21 10/17/11 Hey Everyone!!

Hola! Another good week. Thanks for the emails, Im glad to hear from Rachel and Ryan! Im excited to read their letter and see how things are in europe. Were writing really late this week cause weve been busy all day trying to fit in as many things as possible for what is very possibly Elder Garcias last P day in Cabo, and one of the Elders in our districts, Elder Palmars, last P day in the mision! Hes our Zone Leader and is a great Elder. We played Soccer this morning for a good 2.5 hours. We found a small court with turf! We were excited because normallly we only play on cement. Im kind of starting to miss basketball.. But soccer is still awesome.

We had a good week but we are really struggling with our numbers. We are having a lot of trouble meeting our goals and its a problem that weve had for the past month. We have a couple awesome investigadors but one needs to get married and we are pretty sure that the other moved last week so we really only have one.. We have others but nobody thats really potential. We have to find more people!!! That will probably be our focus for this week.

I had a really good day thursday. We did divisions with another compionship in our district so i went to work in their area and Elder Garcia stayed in our area. I worked with Elder Martinez and we had a blast. We did a whole whole lot of hiking in the desert. Their area is half house and half desert and the only way to get from neighborhood to neighboorhood is hiking in the desert. There were times when we were hiking for literally 30 minutes with out anything around us except cactuses and sand. I had fun for the day but i think i like my area more. We have awesome members and an awesome view of the ocean. The morning after the divisions we played soccer! I love starting off the day with sports. I wish we could do it every day.. Im also starting to learn a lot of slang words. Were teaching this guy from Mexico City and the first lesson i couldnt understand anything he said because it was all weird slang. Spanish is crazy but im starting to feel pretty comfortable.

I ate a ton of fish this week, and yesterday we had sushi! I love cabo. Im hoping i stay here another change but well see.

I hope that everyone has an awesome week, I love you!!

Letter #20 10/10/11 Hola Family!!

Hola!

Good week. A got baptised!! I wish i could send the pictures but i still can´t find my converter.. But it was awesome!! I got to baptize her, it was great!! A and her whole family are awesome! She has 3 kids, all boys, ages 1,3, and 6. They were all there and loved it. Thanks for those disneyland mints you sent me, those pretty much made it possitble that we were able to have the spirit during the baptism. All the kids were going crazy during the talks and testimonies, running all over the place and shouting, so before we left the room for the baptism i gave them my can of mints and they sat down and ate them in quietness during the baptism. Im really happy that i finally had a baptism, but now we really don´t have that many other investigadors that are really potential. We have one named P who is super strong, attends church every week, loves reading in the book of mormon, but isn´t married to her boyfriend who she lives with. I know she´ll get baptised because she loves the church but she´s not planning on getting married for a while, like 6 months.. But we´re going to change that today. Haha she really is awesome though, sometimes she calls us just to say that she read in the LDM and loved it or to confirm our next appointment or things like that. Other than her we don´t really have that many other people. We´re going to search hard this week to find more. The word of wisdom has been a huge problem here. I don´t think they have D.A.R.E. in their schools here because almost every male over the age of 20 smokes tabaco. It´s rare to find a nonmember that doesn´t smoke. 

Thanks a ton for the package! I was able to listen to the CD´s on a stereo that someone lent me. Their awesome! But right now i´m having some problems with my ipod.. It won´t turn on or anything. You might want to consider sending me copies of all the CD´s that you bought in case i can´t fix it. I´m in the process of trying but im having some problems. You don´t have to worry about sending me a liahona. We get the Liahonas every month. I never new how awesome they are!! The one for October is sweet! If you haven´t read it i would definately recommend it to you. 

Grandma said that she knows an Elder Foulger in the mission so i asked Elder Garcia if he knows him and he said that he does and that is a great Elder. He said that he worked with him for a day in Sinaloa. I hope i meet him before he leaves! Sounds like we´re cousins or something. 

We have a good morning today. We went tie shopping with the district. I bought 2 pretty sweet ties for way cheap. They run at about 3 dollars a peice here!! I wanted to but more but i also bought a couple cords for my ipod and speakers. I hope i can work this out.. 

Well I love you all, hope you all have a wonderful week and read your scriptures every day. Adios!!

Letter #19 Hola Family!!

Hey everyone!

Thanks for the emails! I love reading whats going on in utah. I'm glad everyone is well! We just had an insanely long zone meeting so we dont have that much time today. But we played soccer for 2 hours in the morning so its all worth it. Im loving soccer more every time i play! And thanks for the package!! I got it today. I didnt have much time to look through it but everything looks great. Thanks for the CDs and the pictures of the family at disneyland!! My zone loved them. haha. And thats awesome that Hermano Fox is in the ward!! He was one of my favorite teachers in the MTC, i liked all our subs but Hermano Fox was easily my favorite. 

So this week wasnt as great as all the rest.. haha but i learned a ton!! Now that i can speak and understand spanish a little bitter ive had a little bit more responsibility with everything. Its been harder but its good because ive learned everything that i need to improve on. I feel like this week ive really grown a ton. So we had a baptism set up with A. She is one of our strongest investigators and has a solid testimony, a best friend in the ward, and was really excited to get baptised. We didnt think that anything was going to be able to stop her from getting baptised. But Friday we waited and waited for her to show up and finally, 10 minutes after her service was supposed to start, she sent us a message saying she doesnt feel ready... I was pretty bummed.. We still havent talked to her since so we dont know exactly whats going on. Thats pretty much the only super depressing thing that happened during the week but we have faith that this friday shes going to get baptised. I think that right now i really need to work on my patience and my faith, actually i need to work on all my Christlike attributes, but especially patience and faith. I feel like at times those 2 kind of contradict each other.. Haha but were going to work really hard this week so that we can have a baptism this Friday. I still havent had a single one!!! And theres only 3 weeks left in this cambio!! We probably have 5 people right now that have a lot of potential to be baptised in these next 3 weeks but were going to have to work really hard and rely on the spirit for everything. 

The best thing of the week was definately General Conference!! Of the ones that we were able to assist i was able to watch in English! They had a separate room for all the gringos. Haha and there were surprisingly more than just missionaries. Theres 2 gringo families in our stake. 100 percent white. I dont know how long they've lived here but i asked one of the kids who is 12 years old where hes from and he told me Cabo San Lucas. Haha i love Mexico but i dont have any plans to raise my family here.

Well thanks for everything!! I love you all and i wish you all success in the week to come. Adios!!

Elder Mecham