Letter #27 11/28/11 Baptism & Dolphins!

Hey family! Sorry for writing so late and probably scaring you a little bit. A lot happened this week. Ill start out with the best news, V got baptise! I dont know if you remember me mentioning V before.. He was one of my first investigadors with Elder Garcia. He lives with his friend who got baptised in Utah about 15 years ago and is incredibly inactive, but it turns out his friend has no record of getting baptised so if he keeps the commandments with week were going to baptise him too! But we stopped teaching V about 2 months ago because he had no plans of getting baptised, but last wednesday we were in front of his house talking with his friend when he arrived home from work, we started talking with him a little bit and mentioned how his friend is going to get rebaptised and challenged V to pray about it and see if he should get baptised as well. We returned Thursday and he said he would do it! He told us that the day before, while at work, he had been praying a ton for help in his life and when he got home and saw us he knew it was his answer. He got baptised Saturday! I was stunned, we had no plans of having a baptism last week, let alone this cambio, and now were going to have 2! Well if B can stay away from the temptations of Satan..

The reason that im writing so late is because our Zone completed our goal for the month and today we had a day long activity, approved by the president, in order to celebrate! In the morning we played soccer in a huge turf court for about 3 hours, and we spent the rest of the day watching movies! Nothing special, just some movie about football, singles ward, movies like that, but we had a great time. After i wrote you guys last Tuesday we were lucky enough to get to see Dolphins! Theres a member in the ward who is a dolphin trainer and she told us that we could come and watch people swim with dolphins one day if we wanted to. It was pretty thrilling, but a little strange walking around in the tourist parts of Cabo. For the first time since i arrived in Mexico i wasnt the minority. And you would be extremely surprised how many mormon tourists there are. Id say 1 out of every 5 groups of people were mormon. We know this because of course every single one wanted to stop and talk with the missionaries, and me being the only one who speaks english got to do all the talking.

More than anything id say that this week ive learned the God rewards us for our efforts, even if its not how we expect. We have been working incredibly hard to find new people, and weve found a lot, but nobody that seemed escogido. But after everything, we ended up baptising someone that weve hardly talked to the past 2 months. That was definately a miricle I hope everyone knows i love being a missionary!

Well i love you all! This is the last week of the cambio, it will be interesting to see if i stay or if i go. haha. Im hoping i stay. Please pray for me. I love you and i think about you a lot, but not too much, but i still love you an incredibly large amount and i hope all is well. Elder Mecham

P.S. Thanksgiving i did nothing involving thanksgiving, i almost forgot. But i love the pics!

Letter #26 11/22/11 Cabo Youth Conference!

Hello! First of all, im sorry that i couldnt write you guys yesterday. We changed our p day to today, only for this week, because yesterday we were helping out with a giant youth conference the whole day. All the youth from the Southern part of the Baja have been in Cabo this past weekend and yesterday we helped them with a missionary activity. It was pretty sweet, we taught them how to contact houses and after we split up into groups of 6 youths and 1 missionary and went out and contacted. I had a group of 6 boys who were between 15 and 17. They were all super excited and loved it. After that they had a giant Cultural dance that lasted 3 hours. It was awesome! It was held in a giant dance pavillion in Downtown Cabo and there were a ton of people. We brought 2 investigadors and they loved it. Its good for the investigadors that mormons have fun.

But thats why i didnt write yesterday. In case youre wondering, no, i didnt get to dress up like Santa Claus again... But were going to do it again in the near future. Everybody keeps asking us when Santa is coming to come back so we really dont have much of a choice. This last week we worked really hard to find the houses of the people and give them their pictures with Santa and share a quick message. Some of the people have been really accepting and weve made other appointments to return and teach them, but others were just really happy to have their free photo. But if all we get is one baptism, it will all be worth it. Right now we are still really struggling to have investigadors that are progressing. We have a lot of people who are super excited and potential for baptism, but have absolutely no time. They leave in the morning to work at 10 and get back at 9, which unfortunately are the hours that we work aswell. With these people we basically only can find them one time a week and that really isnt enough to get them to progress fast enough.

Ive been thinking alot about faith this week, and putting our confidence in God. This past week we had 2 investigadors who have already recieved testimonies of the Book of Mormon, and know that everything is true, but still wont get baptised because their afraid of what their families are going to think. We told them that they need to put their confidence in God; that he created all the planets and the sun and he can use that same power to make things in our life work out the way we want it to if we just have faith. Afterwards i was thinking about it and i realized that its not only true with our with our investigadors, its true with us aswell. This area hasnt really had much success the past few months, but im conviced that if we just put our confidence in God, are obedient to all the rules, and love everyone, that were going to find the escogidos and have baptisms by the end of this cambio.

I hope everything is good at home. Its crazy that its already thanksgiving, it still feels like summer to me because of the heat. But its starting to feel really good when the sun goes down. Lots of people are starting to wear coats starting at about 6 at night but im pretty happy with my short sleeve shirt. Well i love you all, were working really hard here and trying to get lots of blessings. I hope some of them make it back home to Utah. Thanks for all the emails, Love you all!!!!! Elder Mecham

Letter #25 11/14/11 Ho!Ho!Ho!

 

He knows Lexi and Mckell would love this!!

Hey everyone! Hope you all had an amazing, exciting, and spiritual week. Thanks for the letters! And thanks a ton for the packages! Don´t worry i didn´t open anything that i shouldn´t open. It was a little hard with the packet from Aunt Marci because the package was already opened (they have to open everything in the airport security) but i didn´t even take a peak. Thanks!!! And the music is amazing mother, thank you very very much.

This week was fantastic, but we didn´t have a baptism... But we are slowly finding more and more people. Our investigadors most potential right now are our neighbors. It´s a mom and her 2 daughters, ages 8 and 9, and they´re awesome! They went to a baptism last week and loved it and church on sunday. One of the daughters was feeling sick during church and we gave her a blessing before she went to primary and she basically instantly recovered and was fine the rest of the day. They´re going to get baptised for sure. They love to learn and love reading in the book of mormon. Allthough, it´s a little weird that their our next door neighbors. We don´t have blinds or anything in our apartment and they run past our window all the time playing tag and other games, normally around 10 oclock at night when we´re getting ready to sleep. And every time the run past they stop and talk to us, and they talk a lot... I haven´t had much time to get things done at night because we spend a lot of time talking.. There´s not much we can do. But i´m super excited for their baptism!! Should be the 25th of this month. 

So this week, in order to find more investigadors, we tried something a little different. We had planned that we were going to set up a table outside of the local market and hand out pamphlets and Books of Mormon with a few members of the ward, but our ward mission leader thought that that was too boring. He showed up with a full on Santa suit and a giant sign that said free pictures with Santa. And me being the only white guy got to wear the suit!! I spent half of saturday dressed up like santa clause shouting Hohoho and feliz navidad. Haha i´m going to try and send you some pictures but i´m having some problems with the computer right now. But it was a huge success. We have 25 new refrences. We told all the people that took pictures that we were going to deliver the fotos to their houses and share a message for their families. 

Well i hope you all have an amazing week. Oh and mom, to answer your question the spanish is fine. I´m thinking in spanish always and i´ve had dreams in spanish but for the most part their in english. It depends on the setting of the dream.. But i love you all!!

Good thing he's still wearing his tag!!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Letter #24 11/7/11 A calmer week!

Landon and Elder Carrillo outside the church in Cabo.  

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the emails you sent. I love reading them knowing whats happening in Utah. Also thanks for the packages! Were going to have a zone meeting tonight and the leaders told me that i have 3 or 4 packages waiting. Thanks!! And dont worry, im going to save them for Christmas... I hope that everything is good in Utah. The weather here is starting to cool down a little but im sure its still hot compared to back home. The mornings are pretty cool here though. Ive been using a blanket every night this past week wich is weird because a 3 weeks ago i had my fan on full blast and i would still wake up sweating. I like sleeping in the cold more, but showering is getting a little uncomfortable.

Everything is a lot more peaceful here than the week before. Thursday night we were finally able to sleep in our apartment, but we worked in our area the majority of tuesday and wednesday. The President just wanted to be extra safe that everything passed. Last weekend was pretty interesting because we werent able to work for almost 3 whole days! I thought it would be nice to have a little break and rest but i was wrong. The whole time i just felt lazy and wanted to leave! We had fun but i was definately ready to work when they finally gave us the green light. 

We started working tuesday morning and continued our search for new investigadors. We worked incredibly hard contactacing refrences and old investigadors but still had no luck. We did everything possible but nothing was working. We were a little frustrated because finding people to teach really shouldnt be that hard, but we new that if we stayed obedient and work hard that everything would work out. Finally wednesday we started to have a little success. We found an ancient area book that has records of investigadors that didnt get baptised from 3 plus years ago. We sorted out the ones that looked potential and started contacting them. We ended up contacting about 30 houses and in the end we were left with about 5 new investigadors that are awesome! I know that it was the spirit that led us to find the old area book and that our prayers get answered when we have faith. 

Im continuing to learn a ton from Elder Carrillo every day. We havent had that much time to study because every morning last week we were taking buses from the house of the ZL to our house, but Elder Carrillo is an incredibly hard worker. I know that if we keep working hard that were going to be blessed this cambio with success, hopefully lots of baptisms. 

Well i hope that everything is good. Im excited to read you letters! Love you all!!!