So much food I almost died

This week we had a lot of good lessons. We are working with a member who has a friend that is about 60 years old. She has paralysis in her right arm and depression. We taught her the plan of salvation and about the atonement and the spirit was really strong in our lesson. We have taught her twice now and she has a baptism date for February 10th, but her husband doesn't like the church, so we will see how things go.

Everyone here thinks that the missionaries like to eat a lot of food. Some days this is a blessing and some days it is a curse. On Tuesday we had so much food I almost died. I had to hold back throwing up as I put more food into my mouth. You might be thinking "Why not just say no?" Believe me I tried. You can only say you don't want more food about 10 times before caving in and saying "ok but just a little" to which they will bring you back even more food than they gave you the first time. 

On Wednesday I had exchanges with the district leader and met the biggest dog i've seen here. We rang a doorbell and the door opened and out came running a dog the size of a bear. Luckily there was a gate between us and the dog, but when it barked the pass along card I was holding blew out of my hand.

On Thursday, not much was going on, so we decided to leave the main city and take a bus to one of the outlying areas to contact. As we were walking, I felt prompted to knock an orange door I had been looking at. We turned back and I knocked the door a couple of times and no one answered. As we were about to turn back a middle aged lady opened the door. We taught her the first lesson and she accepted everything. Shes Catholic and has a really strong faith in Jesus and Heavenly Father, but luckily her faith didn't stop her from seeing the truth that we have. She remarked that there was something different about us. Shes talked with Jehovah Witnesses and others, but she said we were different and had a spirit and respect with us, so go Mormons.

This week went by super fast and I didn't get any pictures (sorry mom ill do better next week). Just imagine a Mexican town that is 30 degrees in the mornings and and nights and about 70-80 midday and then imagine with frostbite and a sunburn.

Adios 

Elder Warburton

Three Months as a Hermano

As the title suggests, I am not an Elder. I am a Hermano. Who knows why, but by almost all the members here we are called Hermanos and don't even get me started on the number of investigators that call us hermanos too. Its ok though, there are a lot worse names people could be calling us.

We have a recently converted family that we teach about once a week and this week, they wanted to see what my companion and I were like before our missions. So, they looked up my Instagram account. Everyone was shocked at my beard. They all said I looked 40. My companion said that if he would have seen me in the street with my beard he would have steered clear of me. 

I've probably mentioned this earlier, but the tortas here are to die for. They may be the best thing about the mission. Attached is some pictures of me in the best torta shop i've found here and me with my torta (my companion thinks i'm crazy for making/getting tortas with fried eggs). 

A little backstory for the funniest thing that happened this week. We have an investigator who is a woman about 55 years old. Her husband works a lot, so we teach him some of the time, but they both have a baptism date for the 3rd of February. They have a girl who is 7 years old and named "Ojukee." Every lesson, at least once, the woman will randomly yell "Ojukee" followed by "bring me something" and its always completely random and in the middle of our lessons. So, me and my companion have started yelling "Ojukee" too randomly just in our house or in the street. This week when we were teaching her, like always she randomly yelled "Okjukee!! da me mis lentas" and me and my companion started dying laughing. We were trying to muffle it, but we couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the lesson. Everyone time we would get it under control one of us would start laughing again. Luckily, I don't think she noticed.

The ward mission leader in the other ward (there are two wards in the same building) is basically the mission leader for our ward too. Anyway, he has a tradition of cutting the Elders ties and yesterday he cut mine. I was wearing one of my favorite ties and I thought I was safe because he has a rule that he wont cut ties on Sundays, but I guess this week he broke his rule. It all started when another Elder, Elder Burton, passingly said "I like your tie" and that was when Hermano Serrano (the ward mission leader) got that dangerous look in his eye and I knew it was all over.

Adios

Elder Warburton 

Almost a perfect Christmas

As the title states, Christmas here in Mexico was almost perfect. Everything last Monday was going good until we got back to the apartment and found out that we had no water. We tried to get the supers help, but she was too busy with her family. We went that whole night and the next morning without any water. We finally got the supers help in the morning before we left the house and it turns out all we had to do was flip a breaker switch. 

We lost two of our golden investigators this week. The first one moved houses and didn't tell us. When we went to meet with her, we looked in the window and saw the house was completely empty (picture). We decided to ask the neighbors to see if they knew where she went. We found her new house after some searching, but she wont answer the door or our calls. The other stopped answering our calls and meeting with us. We are not sure, but we think the Jehovas Witnesses have gotten to them.

We had intercambios this week and everything was good with those. Nothing too exciting, but we found a scorpion just hanging out on the floor in the house of my intercambio.

We have 13 new investigators this week and a couple of them are of gold. However, that isn't good enough for our district leader. He wants us doing 20 contacts a day, which is hard when we have so many investigators. We want to focus on the investigators we have that are progressing because there's no point in finding new investigators if there is never time to teach them. I also got chewed out by the district leader when he watched our weekly planning. Apparently I was supposed to be doing more, but how was I supposed to know when my trainer has done the same thing every week and I just follow what he does? I don't know these are questions one day ill get the answer to.

I've made it through my first transfer and my companion and I didn't get changed. However, there were some shake ups in our district. One of the other missionaries that was training got transferred to a different area and another that was training got a new trainer, so crazy stuff happening here.

I had my first real battle with the food here this week. Friday morning I was sick all morning and spent a lot of time in the bathroom. I was finally feeling better Sunday, when we got the grossest shrimp soup I have ever had. The shrimp were literally swimming (only a slight exaggeration). Then of course we went back to the same house today and had the exact same soup except this time it had been left out for a night and was cold. Wish me luck.

Adios

Elder Warburton

Christmas Throwup

This week started out good when we found a new investigator Monday night. His name is Aldolfo and he has been studying religion and philosophy for his whole life. He is Catholic, but he accepted everything we taught him and he liked how everything we said all made sense. At the end he said something really cool. He said that he has read a philosophy that "If you study, teachers will come." He remarked how hes been studying his whole life and then two teachers finally showed up at his door.

I also got my first planch this week. A planch is basically like being chewed out. Luckily, the planch wasn't really for me and more for the other missionaries in my surrounding area, so everything is good. Glad that I got my first planch out of the way.

On Friday, we had a Christmas party with half of the mission in Puebla. Before the festivities though I was given a challenge. On Thursday night, my companion ate a bunch of potato chips and Friday morning, before we left he wasn't feeling that good. When we woke up, I went to do my morning business as usual (Keep in mind we only have one functioning toilet, the other doesn't work). As I came out of the bathroom of my companion with the working toilet, I heard a disturbing noise coming from my bathroom. My thoughts were along the lines of "What in the world is my companion doing in my bathroom?" Come to find out, he was throwing up in the not working toilet. So, he cleaned it up a little bit, but as my luck would have it, it fell to me to clean up a majority of the toilet and my sink (I have no idea how he got throw up in my sink). After we went to the Christmas party.

The Christmas party was fun and I was selected to be one of the people who got to take some swings at the pinata. My first Mexican Christmas and my first Mexican pinata, i'm basically one with the culture at this point.

On Saturday we went with the ward mission leader to kill a turkey. Hopefully ill be able to attach the pictures, if not you'll have to check back next week. We killed the turkey, then brought it back to his house where we cleaned it. We will be eating it a little later today for our Christmas dinner.

Adios 

Elder Warburton 

Danger (and The Last Jedi) In the Streets of Morelos

Hola everyone.

 This week I got to see the more dangerous side of Mexico. Monday night we were in one of the smaller Pueblas around our city walking in the dark and we heard a man call out "elders" behind us. When its dark and you're walking alone and a man calls out elders in the street its a good idea not to stop. Luckily we didn't stop and we had an investigators house pretty close by, so we knocked on the door and luckily the guy kept walking and didn't rob us. On the bright side, we got a baptismal date with this investigator. Then last night (Sunday) we got kind of robbed. We were waiting for the bus and this guy came up and gave us high fives. I was busy trying to figure out if I was supposed to know him or not when my companion handed him 10 pesos and I realized he was there to take our money. Lucky for me I ran out of money that day, so I had none to give and the bus pulled up and we hopped on. Then on the walk home back to our apartment last night, we took off our jackets and ties, so we would be less of a target to rob.

This week I made some new friends with the kids of our investigators. The kids cant talk in Spanish very well and I cant either, so we get along pretty well. My companion will teach some stuff, and while he is teaching ill entertain the kids for a bit until its my turn to say something. Lets just say there are some wild kids here in Mexico.

We met an inactive family this week and they have a boy that just turned 17. We went to their house to celebrate his birthday and we got some good bread/cake stuff. Hopefully we will be able to reactivate him and his mom and convert his dad. We got four dates for baptisms this week. It would have been six, but a lot of people here aren't married. They'll happily accept a baptism date, then we find out they're not married and have to backtrack and help plan their wedding.

We went to a neighboring area on Saturday, Humantla, and sang carols in the park. It was a good time and we contacted a lot of people.

Pirated movies is a big business here in Mexico and I wondered how long it would take before The Last Jedi hit the streets, well I got my answer today. Now every time we walk past a pirated movie shop, The Last Jedi is staring me in the face. Hopefully I can remain strong with this daily temptation.

We also played soccer today for p-day and attached is a picture of the winning team.

Adios

Elder Warburton

Two Months as a Jehovah's Witness

I've made it two months into the mission and every day people think we are Jehovah's Witnesses. There are a lot of JWs around here, but I think our message is a little bit better.

This week while we were contacting, we encountered an old man who really didn't want to hear our message. He started yelling at us, something about money and how religion is a scam, but he had a picture of Jesus on his wall, so I don't know what he was trying to get at. On the flip side, we had lunch on Wednesday with a really cool old man. When we walked into his house he had Glenn Miller playing and he has a huge collection of jazz records and CDs. He also has a bunch of old church books and regular books. He had a box of old pesos and he gave Elder Tarrega and I one each.

We had some good lessons, but those aren't as interesting as the crazy ones. We have an investigator named Noberto Carmona and lets just say he is totally crazy. He yelled cash for about 5 straight minutes to make sure I knew what he was saying and the whole time we taught him, he had a rip in his pants in the part no one ever wants to see. 

Its getting even colder here, but I found a portable heater in our house and plugged it in. We used it for one morning of study, then when I went to unplug it, one of the prongs stayed in the outlet. Dying of an electrical fire here is very likely. 

Adios

Elder Warburton

P.S. The Last Jedi comes out this week and I would appreciate it very much if nobody sent me any spoilers. Thank you.

Tacos

Hola. This week was the week of tacos. We had tacos everyday except for Tuesday and I can easily say they are much better here than they are in the states. 

Everything is also really cheap here too. I try not to think about the conversion rate and just go by pesos. When something is $20 pesos I usually think that its expensive, but then I realize it is only a little more than a dollar in US currency. I got a pair of fake ray-bans for a little more than $3 US dollars, so now the streets of Morelos will see how good I look in sunglasses.

This week we had a really cool experience with an investigator. We were knocking doors and we knocked the door of a man name Roberto Martinez and he said he was busy, so we kept knocking doors on that street. About three minutes later he came outside and called us back to his house. He said that when he sat down after opening the door and rejecting us he heard a voice say "Escuche" or "Listen." So, he called us back and we shared the first lesson with him and the Light the World video and he accepted it all. We invited him to baptism and he didn't say yes, because he wants to learn more first. 

This week we had intercambios, so I went to a different area that was even colder than mine, so now in the mornings I don't complain as much.

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This week we also performed our play we have been working on. I don't know if i've said anything about this, but we've been practicing a play for members and investigators since I got here and this week we finally performed it. I had the part of Jehovah and luckily it was only one set of lines.

I also gave my first full priesthood blessing that wasn't an anointing with oil. It was about as good as it gets with a little under two months of Spanish training. There was another member there with us and she started crying so I'm going to think it was because she felt the spirit and not because I was talking complete gibberish.

I also had my first encounter with a drunk guy this week who was trying to follow us home, but luckily we walk so fast its impossible to keep up with us even if you're not inebriated.

P.S. I also heard some really good classic music throughout this week, so God really does bless us.

Adios

Elder Warburton