Letter #66 8/27/12 Hanging in there in Mazatlan!

The view from Landon's house in Mazatlan!

Seems like a pretty nice place!  Big and fairly clean!

Where are the sheets?  Still... not too bad!

Hey family! Buenas tardes. Wow, interesting week. I read your letters. Thanks! Sounds like everything is great at home. Back in School!! Wow, how exciting! Mom, i hope that your kids behave themselves and that you don´t have too many "troubles children". Lexi and Mckel, i hope that you enjoy your classes, your teachers, your wards, and your roomates. And if you don't, hang in there!

Very sadly, LHey family! Buenas tardes. Wow, interesting week. I read your letters. Thanks! Sounds like everything is great at home. Back in School!! Wow, how exciting! Mom, i hope that your kids behave themselves and that you don´t have too many "troubles children". Lexi and Mckel, i hope that you enjoy your classes, your teachers, your wards, and your roomates. And if you don't, hang in there!

Very sadly, Luis didn't get baptised.. Wow, satan works hard. He had his interview thursday and passed! Everything was set, he was going to get baptised Saturday, but after passing his interview he said he wanted to wait until this saturday so that his family can attend. We told him it would be fine, then Saturday when we passed by his house he said that, for personal reasons, he wants to wait until November! After sharing lots of scriptures, and baring testimony he told us he'd pray and ask if he should get baptised this Saturday. We haven't seen him since but we're hoping for a miracle. We did a WHOLE lot of looking for new investigadors this week. Our strategic plan to find new people was to do a mix of going with less active members who have non-member family members, searching old investigadors from the area book, and talking with EVERYONE we find in the streets. We had many very interesting experiences and conversations with people. I can't believe how many Jehovas Witnesses there are in Mazatlan! We found several incredibly inactive members this week who have completely denied getting baptised and have now gotten re-baptised in other churches. We had to show them there names in the lists to prove that they are technically members of the church. Very sad.. We spent the majority of the week walking. Almos every lesson we had lasted no more than 15 minutes and was held in the doorstep of the person and basically consisted of trying to defend our beliefes with people who honestly had no desire to ever go to church or even try to understand what we share.

Right now we're just trying not to get down. ANIMO ANIMO!! Luckily, Elder Lara is really easy going and i've never seen him even the least bit depressed. We're trooping along with our heads held high and i now that we're going to find escogidos! Yesterday i spoke on patience. I talked about the sons of Mosiah and how they were stoned, beaten, and thrown in prison, yet they never got discouraged. At the end of everything, they baptised thousands! I know that patience is a virtue of Christ and that if we indure hardships with patience, never parting away from the gospel, God blesses us!

We had a great day today. President Cantu recently recieved some amazing revelation! We now have our District Meetings at 6 P.M. every Monday, as opposed to having the meeting in the morning. We now have a full day for P day!! Beforehand we usually returned to our areas at arouond 2, still needing to wash, buy, and write. Life is good, i'm happy to be a missionary and excited to work, work, work!! I love you all and i hope you have a wonderful week!! didn't get baptised.. Wow, satan works hard. He had his interview thursday and passed! Everything was set, he was going to get baptised Saturday, but after passing his interview he said he wanted to wait until this saturday so that his family can attend. We told him it would be fine, then Saturday when we passed by his house he said that, for personal reasons, he wants to wait until November! After sharing lots of scriptures, and baring testimony he told us he'd pray and ask if he should get baptised this Saturday. We haven't seen him since but we're hoping for a miracle. We did a WHOLE lot of looking for new investigadors this week. Our strategic plan to find new people was to do a mix of going with less active members who have non-member family members, searching old investigadors from the area book, and talking with EVERYONE we find in the streets. We had many very interesting experiences and conversations with people. I can't believe how many Jehovas Witnesses there are in Mazatlan! We found several incredibly inactive members this week who have completely denied getting baptised and have now gotten re-baptised in other churches. We had to show them there names in the lists to prove that they are technically members of the church. Very sad.. We spent the majority of the week walking. Almos every lesson we had lasted no more than 15 minutes and was held in the doorstep of the person and basically consisted of trying to defend our beliefes with people who honestly had no desire to ever go to church or even try to understand what we share.

Right now we're just trying not to get down. ANIMO ANIMO!! Luckily, Elder Lara is really easy going and i've never seen him even the least bit depressed. We're trooping along with our heads held high and i now that we're going to find escogidos! Yesterday i spoke on patience. I talked about the sons of Mosiah and how they were stoned, beaten, and thrown in prison, yet they never got discouraged. At the end of everything, they baptised thousands! I know that patience is a virtue of Christ and that if we indure hardships with patience, never parting away from the gospel, God blesses us!

We had a great day today. President Cantu recently recieved some amazing revelation! We now have our District Meetings at 6 P.M. every Monday, as opposed to having the meeting in the morning. We now have a full day for P day!! Beforehand we usually returned to our areas at arouond 2, still needing to wash, buy, and write. Life is good, i'm happy to be a missionary and excited to work, work, work!! I love you all and i hope you have a wonderful week!!

Letter #65 8/20/12 Rain in Mexico

Hey family, we had a pretty decent week. It went by incredibly fast! I can´t believe i´m already writing you guys again. I got the pictures from Lexi! Looks like she had an awesome time in the grand canyon. I always wanted to visit there.. It rained a ton this week. Every single day.. not all day, but a lot. The good part about the rain is that it means cloud cover, which is always really pleasing. The bad part is that it also means humidity, which turns into a lot of sweat. But the work always goes on. The weather really doesn´t change anything at all, and i need to enjoy the remainder of August cause it´ll be my last one in Mexico! This is the only chance i´ll ever have to walk around in the hot and humid rain, sweating up a storm and diligently searching the escogidos and i need to take advantage of every minute!

We had a lot of lessons this week. We have a lot of people with baptism dates, which is awesome, but unfortunately not a lot are progressing towards their dates. This week we´re going to have a lot of last visits with a few families we´ve been teaching. It´s sad to leave investigadors, but it´s part of the mission. R is continuing to progress. He should get baptised saturday! We´re going to be praying a ton that he has enough power to resist the temptations of satan and keep excited. I think he´s one of the few investigadors that we´re going to keep visiting this week. We´re going to be doing a LOT of searching this week.

Yesterday was the stake conference and it was great! President Cantú spoke and it was incredibly powerful as always. A member of the seventy also came but i forgot his name. He´s a Mexican and he also did great. He came Saturday and he wanted to visit one less active member, and one recent convert. And he chose G!! She´s the lady that got baptised my first week. He visited her with the bishop and the stake president, unfortunately they didn´t want to invite the missionaries.. but we were both really happy for her. He mentioned her in his talk sunday as an example of great faith and dedication. She is already saving money to go to the temple in one year!

Well we should have a good week this week. I didn´t tell you last week but i´m district leader. Nothing really changes as district leader but i get to hold district meatings and a bunch of fun things like that. I´ll be busier and that´s always a good thing. Well i hope you all have a wonderful week!! I´m going to work super hard so that you all get blessings. Love you all!!

Elder Mecham

Letter #64 08/13/12 Run to the Lighthouse!

Early morning run up the mountain to the lighthouse!

Looking Great!

Hitching a ride in Mazatlan!

Hey fam. Another good week. I'll start out by telling you that i'm still here in Mazatlan with Elder Lara. Looks like we're going to have another 6 weeks together! I was pretty happy. We have a few investigadors that should be getting baptised this change and i know we're going to find a lot more. I've enjoyed working with Elder Lara. He's really really tranquilo. He is basically always laughing and making jokes but at the same time he knows when to get serious. Also, i got your package! Thanks a ton. It was great! I was pretty happy to see some peanut butter. I was able to read  your letters beforehand this week. Sounds like you guys did a ton this week! Make sure to tell Kameron happy birthday for me. What day does he leave again? I can't wait to start getting his letters! There was quite a bit of excitement here when Mexico won in soccer, but i won't lie, i'm pretty happy that the olympics are over. WAY too many tempatations. Haha just about everyone was wathching them and me and my companion being, big sports fans, had to go to pretty extreme measures to avoid seeing them. I'm looking forward to the next olympics when i can sit down and enjoy them.

So this week we continued working a lot with J, but unfortunately he still didn't get baptised. We haven't been able to find his dad from whom we need to get permission. We're going to pray and pray that his dad lets him get baptised and if so, he'll be baptised this saturday. We found a new investidador that looks really promising named R. He's about 75 years old and lives alone. He was in the navy and loves to tie nots and has read the book of mormon 2 times! He said he loves it, only that it talks too much about wars. He wants to get baptised the 25th of this month. He has a small problem with smoking, but we're going to pray that he has the strength to stop. He went to our ward missionary activity on Friday and loved it! We had a movie night. Elder Lara and i organized it. We watched 17 milagros! It was pretty awesome. We watched in on a giant wall with a projector and ate popcorn. The idea was that the members were going to bring their friends but it turned out that we were the only  ones who brought investigadors. J and R. But they loved it! 

The pictures are from saturday. We ran to the lighthouse! We had to get up at 430 to be able to get back on time. I'm still a little sore, but it was 100 percent worth it! On the run back we had fun taking pictures with all the monuments on the boardwalk. Well i hope that all of you have an amazing week and remember to read the scriptures. I've been reading a lot in Corinthians. The 2 books testify that our church is the church of Jesus Christ a ton! Take care and i love you!  

Elder Mecham

Letter #63 8/06/12 Aquarium!

Landon's newest investigator!

Landon and Elder Lara hope to be together for another change!

A friend in Mazatlan!

Hey family! We had a pretty awesome week. I loved the pictures you sent! I always love getting pictures. Looks like you had a good time at the cabin and lexi´s trip looked awesome! I say our family does a trip like that in about a year. I´m glad to know that everyone´s enjoying this last little bit of summer. I´m just hoping i can make it through this August heat. Everyone says that August is the worst month as far as the heat goes and i believe it.

This last week we had a super spiritual experience with an eternal investigador. She has been listening to the misionaries on and off for the last 20 years. We are hoping that now is her time to finally make the decision and get baptised! In the lesson we were just asking questions, testifying, and reading scriptures in order to find what´s been stopping her from getting baptised. Afterwards we challenged her to pray and ask if she should get baptised. She said that last prayer and asked and instantly started to cry and couldn´t stop. I know that she was touched by the holy ghost and that she felt that she needs to get baptised. The spirit was so strong! We´re going to keep praying so that she can finally decide to act according to her answer. 

We have a very posible baptism for this saturday. He´s a kid named J. He 11 years old and LOVES to go to church. He goes with his Aunt becuase his parents aren´t members and really don´t want anything to do with the churh. He says that he´s gone to a lot of churches but that he feels something special when he goes to our church and knows that it´s where he belongs. When he told us that he had never heard of Joseph Smith and had never said a prayer. It goes to show  that if someone is spiritually open, they can literally feel that our church has the fullness of the gospel by simply attending church and listening to the spirit. 

Today we had a little district activity since we have changes next week. We went to the Aquarium!! It was pretty amazing. Basically a mini-Seaworld. We saw a sea lion show, i took a picture with a parrot, and i touched an alligator! Elder Lara and i are both hoping that we stay here for this next change. I love it here and wouldn´t mind spending a good part of my mission in this area. Well love you all, have a wonderful week!!! Love Elder Mecham