Letter #70 9/24/12 New Companion!

Landon's last District

Ward Family Home Evening Farewell Party!!

Dear family,

We had another good week. I´ll start out by telling you that I´m still here in Albatros, Mazatlan! I´m pretty happy because i was hoping i´d stay. But, like i expected, Elder Lara and i were separated. He went to Culiacan.. haha i felt a little bad because he kept telling me he didn´t want serve in Culiacan for the heat but i guess the Lord had other plans for him. I´m sure he´ll realize quickly that the changes are inspired and that that´s where he´s supposed to be.

As for my new companion, his name is Elder Roman, from the Dominican Republic!! Pretty sweet eh? I´m excited to get to know him. There´s a lot of missionaries from South American countries, but he´s the only missionary in our whole mission from the Dominican Republic. He has 3 months in here in Mexico and 6 in the mission, he spent some time waiting for his visa. We´ve allready gotten to know eachother pretty well and he seems like he´ll be a great companion. He´s the only member in his family and he got baptised when he was 19, he´s now 21. He is also set on learning english here in the mission and today we´ve been speaking a LOT of english. To be honest, right now he doesn´t know a lot, but i´m sure that by the end of this change he´ll be speaking like a native! He also has a pretty sweet accent when he speaks spanish, i´m hoping it might rub off on me a bit.

This past week was a good one. We spent a lot of time trying looking for new investigadors and honestly weren´t able to have much success. However, on the brightside, S wants to get baptised here in Mazatlan!! She is going to move to Tijuana in December and was wanting to wait until she gets there to get baptised so that her brother who´s a member can baptise her, but this past week she said that she doesn´t think she´ll be able to wait! However, she recently went through a divorce and is still living with her X husband and, unfortunately, the church doesn´t allow that she can get married unless she is living apart from her husband. We´re going to pray a lot that she has the faith and desire to find a new house so that she can take the next step and get baptised. Hermana E, the women who´s 86 years old, is getting really sick. She honestly can´t go to church right now and we´re thinking that she´s going to be accepting her baptism in the spirit world. It´s a little sad because she has a strong desire to get baptised but physically can´t do it right now. I know that God is merciful and that she has no need to worry. Everything will work out well in the end.

This week i finished the New Testament!! The book of Revelations is pretty intense, i definately plan on studying it a little deeper after the mission. It felt good to finally finish the NT since i started reading it about 9 months ago. I´ve been steadily reading about 2-3 chapters a day. This Wednesday my ward is going to be sending off the first missionary in almost 10 years! He´s going to Puebla. He´s been like our 3rd companion these past 3 months and i´m super proud of him. He´s also the only member of his family and it´s been a struggle for him these past few weeks because he´s family isn´t giving him any support. Last night the ward had a family home evening to say good bye and it was super spiritual. Everyone took turns saying there last words to him and everyone was crying. We brought an investigador and i know he felt the spirit super strong!

Mom, i don´t think i have a tape worm but i´ll see what i can do to make sure. Also, this week i went to a dermintologist for my rash. They said it was due to sweating to much and gave me a soap, a spray, and a cream, all insanely expensive but luckily the mission paid for it, and now the rash is almost gone.

Wow, the cabin again!! Can´t believe it. Hope your not all sick of the cabin by the time i get home!! I got the letter from Kam and i´m excited to read it. Love you all!! Hope you have a wonderful week. Love Elder Mecham

Letter #69 9/17/12! Mexico Indendence Day!

Pizza for Independence Day!

Landon, Elder Lara, and a patriotic Hotel!

Zone soccer!!

Dear family, hope you all had a good week. I´m a little sad to hear about the BYU game, oh well.. there´s always next year! Thanks for the fotos from Labor day! Looks like you guys had a blast at the cabin! That cross bow looks pretty awesome, although it was a little strange seeing grandma shooting it. haha.

This week was a good one. Little by little we´re seeing the fruits of our labors. Despite having very few lessons, 2 a day, we were able able to bring 2 investigadors to church and put 3 baptismal dates! We have a couple people who are looking promising. We´ve found that the majority of people who listen to us here are all rather old, but i enjoy talking with elderly folks. You can learn a lot from their experience in life, even though some are incredibly stubborn.. Our 2 most promising investigadors right now are E and another named S. E has 86 years under her belt and is awesome! She wants to get baptised but is incredibly sick, can´t walk, and only has one fucioning eye and the other barely works. It´s been tough to bring her to church but we´re going to pray a lot so that she can progress. S is awesome. He is 75 and lives with his downsyndrome son. He goes to a Christian church but knows that his church is lacking the preisthood. Tomorrow i´m going to show him my preisthood lineage and hope it´s what he needs to finally get baptised! He went to church yesterday and loved it.

This week i finished El Libro de Mormon! It always feels great to finish it. Great book, i highly reccommend it to anyone who wants to find answers to life´s questions. After meditating, i´ve come to the conclusion the principal message that the book of mormon is that it doesn´t matter what happens to us or what our circumstances are, the way to prosper both spiritually and temporally and overcome lifes trials is through obedience to the gospel. The majority of the book of mormon talks about wars or rebellions. When the people obey the Lord, they always come out on top! And it´s not always easy, lots of times god wants to test our patience, but in the end we´ll be happy when we hold to the iron rod and never fall away from the gospel. The profets tell us everything we need to do to be happy, we just have to have faith and do it!

This weekend was the celebration of the independence of Mexico(16 de septiembre) which is the excuse for EVERYONE to forget their lives and responsabilities for 2 days and drink like there´s no tomorrow. Saturday, President Cantú gave the whole mission orders to return to our houses at 8 and also avoid areas with a lot of parties. Our entire area was a giant party! Pretty tough to avoid. Elder Lara and I celebrated by ordering a pizza and watching the Plates of Gold. It was a good night.

I attached 3 fotos. One is from this morning, we played soccer and volleyball with the zone. If you´re wondering who the guy in the back is with the giant beard and army helmet is, he´s a homeless guy who passed by the church and we invited him to play volleyball with us. He surprised us with his skill, it definately wasn´t his first time playing. The other picture is of our pizza night and the other of a hotel that had Mexico colors. Well love you all and i love being a missionary!!

Elder Mecham

Letter #68 9/10/12 Boat Ride!!?

Beautiful!

On the way to a baptism interview!  On a boat!!

This investigator isn't progressing very well!

Hey family! Glad to hear that everyone´s okay. And it was nice to get an email from Grandma! wow, Kameron had his farewell! I hope you recorded it so i can watch it when i get home. But how exciting! And Matt´s in his last change! Dang, goes by fast. I feel pretty good right now being right in the middle of the whole experience.

Well this week.. what can i say? I won´t lie, it was pretty average as far as the mission goes. Of course we had spiritual experiences and worked super hard, but nothing out of the ordinary. We had 2 lessons with S, the one that called us wanting to go to church. She´s great, and wants to get baptised! And she already knows the church is true and had already read 50 pages in the book of mormon before the first lesson! But unfortunately there´s a few details that are keeping her from getting baptised right now. We´re going to keep visiting her and hope and pray that we´re the 2 missionaries that get to see her baptism, but if not, i know that she will get baptised one day and is going to be a faithful member of the church forever and in the end, it doesn´t really matter who or where she gets baptised, the most important thing is that she is learning the gospel and i´m proud to be the one teaching her. Unfortunately, we weren´t able to find many people this week, walked a LOT again, but i don´t mind walking and we always seem to have fun while walking and contacting despite the heat and sweat. Yesterday we had a family home evening with 15 investigadors! A member invited all his kids and grandkids, none of which being members, and we taught them all the restoration. We´re going to be regressing with a few families this week and hopefully putting baptism dates!! Saturday we planned a ward missionay activity. It was a sports activity and they played basketball and volleyball. We had to do EVERTHING. We bought a ton of watermelon and oranges, expecting lots of people, but sadly only 15 people went, all of which being members... We´re trying to get the ward a little more excited but we´re struggling a little.

So these past couple weeks i´ve developed a fairly large rash, or some say fungus, due to the humidity. It doesn´t really bother me, but every morning i cover my entire body with powder to try and minimize the sweat. Sometimes i wish i was mexican so i wouldn´t have to deal with these white guy problems!

Oh i almost forgot, this week we went to do an interview and i got to do something that very few missionaries have the opportunity to do; take a boat ride! The future member lives on an island! It´s in the area of 2 Elders in my district. The boat ride lasted about 10 minutes and was very enjoyable, although at first i felt like i was sinning putting on a life jacket and being so close to the water. I attached a picture to back up my words. Today we had a nice P day, we went to check out some tourist areas and buy a few things. I´m loving the extra time they´re giving us. It´s always nice to have a good exciting P day to start the week, now we´re going to work super hard and find escogidos! I pray every day the the lord will guide us to the people that he´s preparing. I know they´re out there! Well hope you all have a great week. Love every single one of you!

Love Elder Mecham

Letter #67 9/3/12 Striving for the Temple!

Hey everyone! Glad to hear you had a good week starting school and everything. I had no clue it was labor day! That´s fun that you all went to the cabin. It seems like you´ve been going to the cabin a whole lot lately. And Congrats to Kameron for going through the temple! Wow, i would´ve loved to have been there. And go BYU football!! How

We had a pretty decent week this week. We continued our hunt for new investigadors and had were able to see some fruits from our efforts. Again, we had very few lessons. 14 in the whole week, but we did a ton of street contacts. And we had 5 investigadors come to church!! For 2 in was their first time attending and they both loved it. One was a street contact! We invited him to church and he said he´d go, i thought he was just saying it so we´d leave, but he went! There was also a women that called us this last week, saying that the missionaries had visited her about a year ago, but wasn´t really too interested in changing her catholic beliefs. She told us that she recently visited her sister in another state and went to the mormon church with her and loved it! She wanted to know what time church starts here so that she can keep attending. She came yesterday and already looked like a member. She was wearing a dress, arrived 10 minutes early, stayed all 3 hours, got to know several members, and had an interview with the Bishop. She has lots of problems in her house so we´re going to be teaching her in the church. As long as she´s already married and hasn´t commited any pecados graves, she should get baptised in he next couple weeks!

This weekend our whole stake went to the Temple. Here in Mazatlan they go to the Guadalajara temple. All the stakes from Culiacan and up go to Heramosilla and everyone south of Culiacan goes to Guadalajara. Our ward has been getting together every week to make tamales and sell them in order to have the 300 pesos for the bus from here to guadalajara. Savings accounts don´t really exist here. If someone needs to pay for something other than the weekly grocery run they need to work extra hard to come up with the money. 300 pesos is less than 30 dollars, yet there were several members who weren´t able come up with it. I was sad to see that only 7 from our ward went. I would LOVE to be able to go to temple!! This week i was thinking a lot about the covenents we make and the blessings that are promised to us when we keep those covenents. I know that the blessings are real and powerful. And the coventents are important. Our purpose as missionaries isn´t just to baptise. We make sure that every convert has their sights set on the temple! Baptism is great, but without make the covenents in the temple, there´s no way we can make it back to our heavenly father.

Well love you all, thanks for being amazing. Thanks Marci for writing me! Love hearing from you and about the family. Love Elder Mecham