Letter #36 1/30/12 Hola Family!

 

 

Hola family, I hope that everyone had an excellent week! Thanks for always writing me and for everything you guys do. Thanks mom for sending that package, don´t worry about the things you forgot, i´m sure that whatever you packed is perfect. I had another excellent week. We´re writing a little late, once again, because we´ve been in Mochis all day. Elder Cardenas isn´t the best for planning things ahead of time, haha but it´s okay we´re getting along great and he´s awesome. He teaches really well and is focused in the work, for the most part. But we´re working really hard here in Ahome.

 

To answer a few more of you´re questions, when i came here i had to leave a few things behind in Cabo but nothing important. I left a few shirts that i never wore and a few books, but i put everything in a backpack and i should recieve the backpack the next time the Zone Leaders in Cabo go to Culiacan. Shouldn´t take long. Also, the language is a little different here. They just have a few different words that they use for things and a few slang words i had to pick up in order to understand people better. Also i´ve learned a lot more words for things in the farms and fields since that´s where the majority of people work. It was same in Cabo, only i learned a lot of the vocabulary for the jobs in the Hotels and beaches and things like that. The Bishop here is great. He´s active, works really hard, and has a big happy family. And as for our house, this week we found a hidden room and in the hidden room we found a blender and a microwave! AMAZING!!! There was also about a million crosses and virgen guadalupes. I´m pretty sure the owners are Catholics...

 

We have a couple awesome investigadors. First of all, someone named T. She is Awesome, she was catholic, but after we started teaching her she started realizing the truth. She is full of faith. Her whole life she has been a hardcore Catholic, but when she heard about the Gospel and how the families can be eternal she wanted to know if it was all true. She read the Book of Mormon, prayed, and already recieved her answer. We had an incredible lesson about the Gospel with her and afterwards she started crying. She lives about 45 minutes from the church building she´s gone the last 2 weeks and should get baptised this saturday. She´s awesome!!!

 

Other than her we really don´t have hardly anyone.. But something interesting about our area is that there´s a Church of Jesus Christ in one of our little ranch towns. They believe in the Book of Mormon and Everything until Brigham Young. They believe that another profet was called in his place and that they´re the true holders of the Preisthood. We´ve had a few really interesting lessons.. We´ve had to change our routine from asking them to pray if Joseph Smith was a profet to asking them to pray if Brigham young was a profet.. But from the people we´ve talked with they really don´t know too much about their church. I think we´ll be able to win them over by simply showing them how pretty our building is in comparison to theirs.

 

Well I hope everyone has an amazing week and reads their scriptures todos los dias!!! Love Elder Mecham

Letter #35 1/23/12 I love Ahome!!

Elder Cardenas, Landon's fourth companion!

Great picture!  Looking healthy and good!

Pure Landon Joy!!  He's in his true element!

Hey Everyone! Wow, great week. I{m writing a little bit late because
we had a zone activity this morning. We played basketball!!!! It was
pretty sweet. We played full court and everything. There were a few
hermanas playing but it was still somewhat competive. Im glad to here
that everything is good in Draper! Well in all of Utah i guess.. Is
there snow yet?

Ahome is amazing. Our house is huge. At least 2 of my last houses put
together and we pay less. Everything is cheaper here. Along with the
house, the area is also a LOT bigger. Ahome is where we live, but our
area is a lot bigger than just Ahome. Its Ahome, and about 20 other
Ejidos(small farm towns) that touch it. The farthest being 2 hours by
car. We spend a lot of time hitching rides since it would make no
sense walking and buses only pass by every couple hours. But I LOVE
the area. It reminds me of gold old Cedar City, only smaller and
everything is in spanish. But everyone wears cowboy hats everywhere.
The majority of the people work in the ranches. Every ejido is
separated by miles of fields. They grow a lot of corn, bean,
grapefruit, and about every other fruit or veggie. Its also a little
bit colder here at night, but thanks to the sweater grandma sent me,
im surviving. Another amazing thing about Ahome is that they have
purified water!! Or so they tell me.. But ive been drinking from the
tap this whole week and i feel healthy as ever so i{m sure its fine.

Elder Cardenas is great. We work and teach great together and were
going to have a lot of success this change. The ward is Allright. The
attendence is about the same as my ward in San jose, 40-50 people. But
we have members who are willing to help us with everything.

It doesn{t matter where i{m serving, i love being a missionary. But i
also really like this area. And companion. But i love representing
Jesus Christ more than anything. And i love all of you guys aswell.
Hasta next week, Elder Mecham

Letter #34 1/16/12 Transfer to the mainland!

Wow, a lot has happened since last monday. First of all, Elder Garcia and i had an excellent week of finding and teaching our investigadors. We found a family of escogidos thats going to get baptised early in the week, and had a lot of people progressing. We started teaching started teaching elglish classes as well which was a blast and had a great turnout of english hungary mexicans. I taught them how to do the basics and thats about all they good handle for one day. When i say the basics i mean hello, goodbye, how are you, and where are you from. But they were all great. Thursday we were contacting and i found out that one of my neighbors is American!! Hes lived here 5 years and knows zero spanish and we had a good hour long conversation about religoun. Turns out he has some pretty intresting ideas about God but he said hed gladly read a Book of Mormon if i could find one in english. Saturday A got baptised!! I was the lucky one who got to baptise her and everything was great. Theres a great story about how we found her but its too long. Saturday was also the day when we found out the changes. They let me know in the morning that i was getting changed! Big surprise since i only had 1 change in San Jose. Sunday i gave a talk in church, and enjoyed my last dinner in San Jose with my a great family. This morning Elder Garcia and i got up early to run and take pictures of the sunrise one last time and 4 hours latter my plane landed in los mochis, and from there we took the 45 minute bus ride which lead me here in Ahome.

Sinaloa is awesome! Its definately really different than Los Cabos, but im looking forward to serving the Lord here. My companions name is Elder Cardenas. Hes from Mexico, i forgot the state, but hes great. He has a little more than a year and is incredibly nice. Im looking forward the this next change and from what i can see im going to love it here.

I hope that you all had a great week. Thanks for the letters you sent. Elder John extended his mission and i never saw him so i couldnt give him my card but im going to look at my options here. I took a ton of videos for you guys. All reallly small, but its something. Thanks for sending me the pictures!! I love getting pictures. Keep it up por favor. Love you all, Adios!!

Elder Mecham

Letter #33 1/9/12 Learning to listen to the Spirit

The start of a bright new day and a bright new year!!

 

 

Hey family! We had a pretty good week this week. I hope you guys have all had a wonderful first week of January and have allready checked off a few of your goals. We are working really hard to reach our goal this month of 5 baptisms. We have the people, we just need to work really hard and hope everything goes as planned. We are going to have at least 1 baptism this Saturday, her name is A. She's awesome.She's 15 years old, but is mature enough to be 25. We have a few other investigadors right now who are progressing great and should get baptised soon.

 

I was focussing really hard this week on listening to the spirit. We are guided by the spirit every day but sometimes it's hard to descern if it's the spirit we're hearing or just our thoughts, but by focusing myself i was able to see the difference. One night, while planning, i had the feeling that we should ask referals from a certain Hermano in the ward. I told my Elder Garcia and he said that before i arrived they'd allready tried multiple times and that he never gives any names. I insisted that we do it and we put it in our plans. The next day he gave us a whole 2 referals, not a lot, but since then we've found both of them and they are both escogidos, or golden investigadors. We have baptism dates with the both of them for this month and i have no doubt they'll get baptised. It's comforting knowing that we really are guided by the spirit every day, even though at times we don't recognize it.

 

I never told you what we did for new years but here it is. We had a baptism saturday and it ended at about 7. We got back to our house at about 8. We had plans to eat a late dinner with a family, but on the way to their house we got sidetracked by a lot of drunk people and ended up teaching a lesson. We we finished it was allready after 930 so we ran back to our house before more crazy drunks could do anything. I was more than a little scared that night that i was going to get jumped, or killed.

 

The past couple of weeks we've been getting up early every other day and running! Wow it's been nice to be able to exercise. We run to a park that has a basketball court and from there we run around, pass a football, or work out using the swings. I hope all my companions are willing to do this.. Also, there were more than 60 people in church yesterday! We brought 5 investigadors, it's not a lot but it felt good to see it a little more full. Oh, and i bought a used memory foam pillow for 20 pesos! Definately a good week.

 

Well i love every one of you. A LOT. Have a wonderful week. ELDER MECHAM

 

Landon spends a lot of time filling and emptying this font!!

Landon's great district!!

 

Letter #32 1/2/12 Happy ano nuevo!!

Hey fam. Wow, i cant believe it's already 2012! And it's crazy to think that the majority of my 2011 i was in the mission. I'm incredibly excited to serve this entire year as a missionary!  There's nowhere else i'd rather be. Thanks for the pictures you sent! It looks like you guys had a blast at the cabin! I won't lie, i was missing the cabin a little bit. I have always loved going there and spending time with the whole family. But the pictures you guys sent are almost as good.. I almost forgot to tell you thanks for the wonderful backpack you sent me. It's perfect, thanks a ton.

This week has been pretty good. We haven't had too many lessons these past 2 weeks because everyone has been gone on vacations, but the good news is that we had a baptism! Her name is A and she's awesome. She's 23 years old and her husband is a less active member who really wants to get back in the church and she just really wants to have an eternal family. She lives in a neighborhood that is litterally in the middle of nowhere. It's a good 20 minutes of walking through the desert to get there and with this being the week of her baptism we went about every day, often returning in the nighttime. I have definately been glad that i brought my headlamp from home because without it we'd be lost. We have a few other people with baptism dates in these coming weeks so pray for us that everything will go as planned. 

I've really enjoyed all the food here, especially during this holliday season. But our meals have been a little repetative because everyone wants to give us the best they have, which right now is a dish call pozole, and a warm cider like drink called ponche. It's delicous. Another thing people enjoy doing here during the hollidays is have parties with piñatas. They normally break them open in the streets and rarely can they find all the candy. We're pretty much always walking the streets and are always alert for the leftovers that the kids couldn't find. We have definately taken our share from all the parties that we were'nt invited to and are never hungry while walking from house to house. 

Yesterday we went to San Lucas again to sing our missionary choir. It was great to see a few of the members from my old ward again. I love them and it was amazing seeing how happy they were when we saw eachother. There's great people here too, but it's not quite the same. But i do love my district. We are only 4 missionaries and we're all extremely close. We have changes in a couple weeks and chances are we're not all going to stay together.. Well thanks for everything you guys do for me, 

Love Elder Mecham