Letter #95 3/18/13! Gone Fishin'

A fisher of men!

A great p-day!!

Dear family, we had a great week this week. It´s starting to get hot!! Luckily we have air condicioning in our house. We are turning it on every night, it´s incredibly loud, but it works! I´m guessing that it´s still not feeling to hot in Utah.. And no, I´m not wearing green today.. You´ll have to pinch me when i get back, if you remember. They don´t celebrate Saint Patricks Day today.

We had another week of success!! We had 6 investigadors in church yesterday. A and her kids are Awesome! Yesterday they arrived early, without the help of any member, and properly dressed for church! Hna A sang in the choir and is going with the relief society to an activity on saturday. They´re going to be dancing and she´s going to participate. They´re basically already members, but Hna A still needs to get divorced before she can get baptised. It´s looking like it could be a long and costly process. Chances are i won´t be here to see her baptism.. But i´m glad to have found her be the first missionaries to teach her. We´re going to see if her kids can get baptised this month. We usually try not to baptise kids if there parents aren´t active members, but this is a special situacion. A is active, but not a member. Her daughter is 15 and her son 9. We´re also teaching their neighbor,  L. He´s 13 and yesterday he arrived to church 30 minutes early, and all alone. He lives almost 30 minutes away from the church. He is reading the book of mormon and wants to get baptised. He´s a stud, definately a future missionary. He could also be baptised this month, but we´re not sure if it´s the best thing to do.

 We want to make sure that he´s going to stay active. The investigadors have to have more than a testimony. A testimony is not that hard to obtain. Satan knows that our church is true, but that doesn´t mean he´s going to follow it. The investigadors need to be converted!!! If they have a true conversion it means that they know it´s true, and they´re willing to follow the will of God, no matter what it means. As members we also need to make sure that we´re "converted" to the gospel, and not just have a testimony. 

This last week we had a conference with President Cantú. It was pretty intense. We talked a lot about giving ALL of what we have. I want to make sure that i´m really giving EVERYTHING i have for the rest of my mission and like dad always says "not leave anything on the court". If i could give everything to win a basketball game, i can give  everything for the Lord. 

Today we did something i hadn´t done in a while. We went fishing!! Only here you don´t fish with a fishing pole, you fish with an empty coke bottel with a fishing line tied around. It´s works better than you´d think. Some other people that were there were using the same thing and caught more than 20 fish. I think we´re better off fishing for men(investigadors).. A few investigadors took us and the other missionaries in our district. We didn´t catch anything, but we had a good time.  L went. He already wants to be a missionary! 

I hope you all have a great week!!! Love Elder Mecham

Letter #94 3/11/13 No voice!!

Dear familia

We had a great week.We´re teaching a lot of awesome people here. First of all, Hna A and her kids are still progressing super fast! They would be getting baptised this Saturday, but there´s a road block like always.. Hna A has to get divorced and then married before she can get baptised. But we´re not losing hope, she said that she´s willing to do it, but it could be a long process. We´re still hoping that her and her kids can get baptised this month! We´re also teaching her neighbor, a referal she gave us, and her sons friend. We had 5 investigadores in church yesterday! C isn´t quite as excited as beforehand, but he still has his baptism date for the end of this month. The problem is that there really aren´t other kids his age in church. He´s 14 and all we have are 2 young men, both less active and not very social. We need to do some serious prayer to find out what we can do to excite him. 

I won´t lie, i´m a little scared that there going to take me out of this area. We still have a long time to go until changes, but there are 8 missionaries from the Utah that are waiting for there visas that could arrive any time. I´m praying that i stay here for the rest of this change! It´s an awesome branch and i really think that at the end of this month we´re going to have several baptisms. 

This week i had a little reminder of my first couple months here in Mexico. I completely lost my voice and couldn´t preach! A missionary without his voice is like a car without a driver.. Worthless!! I was a little frustrated, it´s incredibly hard call people to repentance if you can´t talk! The past year and a half i basically have been talking ALL day EVERY day. Whether i´m talking with my companion or people we meet in the street, we´re always talking. I lost my voice Friday, and it was our turn to give talks on Sunday. On Friday i went to a clinic to see what they could do for me. It ended up being a great idea. They gave me shots! Only here in the clinics they don´t actually inject you, they just give you the medication and the seringe and send you off. My companion doesn´t know how to give a shot so we went with a sister who kindly helped me out. I took one shot every day and by Sunday i was ready to speak with a voice of a trumpet! And i needed it, the microphones were broken in the chapel and i had to give my talk like in the olden days. 

Something i´ve loved about Elder Lopez is his dedication to the scriptures. Every morning, before the regular study time, and every night after planning, he´s reading the scriptures. I´ve been trying to follow his example and it´s been awesome! I finished Jesus the Christ and am close to finishing Doctrine and Covenents again. I´m studying more than i ever have in the mission, i need to take advantage of every second i have! I know that i´ll never have another opportunity to study the scriptures like this again in my life. 

This week we´re planning on having a lot of success and giving it all. I hope you all have a great week!! Love Elder Mecham

Letter #93 3/4/13 A sucessful week!!

Dear family

This week was a week of success. We worked hard and were able to bring 4 new investigadors to church! That´s the most we´ve ever had here, and it´s pretty good considering that there were only 40 people in church in total. We are teaching a family! It´s a mom and her 3 kids, it would be much better if we were teaching the dad as well, but he´s not as excited as the rest. The mom´s name is Alma(soul in english). They loved church. I´m pretty sure that i told the story about how we found them in my last letter. They lived in the house of a reference from a street contact. The whole ward was talking helping them a ton, saying things like "we´re so excited for when you get baptised". We´ve haven´t talked with the mom since church but i´m pretty sure she either got really excited and is going to want to get baptised as soon as posible, or is scared to death. We´ve been praying that it´s the first option. 

We´ve also been teaching C a lot, he´s progressing but wasn´t able to go to church yesterday. We´ve been worried because there are zero kids his age in church, but we´ve deciced that our best option is going to be teach and baptise all his friends and their families! I´ll let you know how it goes. His friends actually love listening to us, but we don´t want to baptised anyone that´s just going to inactivate afterwards and more than often when teenagers get baptised and their parents don´t support their decision, they inactive quickly afterwards. 

We´ve been trying to be a little more creative with our teaching methods. Not a single lesson is the same because we teach people not lessons, but i won´t lie, after 20 months of teaching the restoration every day, there are a lot that are very similar. We´re trying to change that. I have a small white board that i bought a while ago and we´ve been using it in the lessons. During our lessons we´re constantly drawing, and making lists to help people better understand the basic principals of the gospel. We´ve had a lot of fun coming up with new ideas to teach. We also made visual aides to teach the church of Jesus Christ with profits and apostles. I never actually thought i could be creative, but my calling is bringing out my true talents! I´m hoping it sticks with me when I get home.

I´m glad to hear that i got accepted to BYU. It´ll be good to have the option when i get home. Also, i recieved the package!! Thanks mom!! Today we went to Culiacan with the district to go tie hunting. We had a good time. I bought an ab wheel that i´m pretty excited for. Got to go, but i love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!!