Zarahemla Week 21

Our District

Family,

He cumplido seis meses en el campo misional. Siento que acabo de llegar aqui! He aprendido muchisimas cosas en estos meses pasados, y estoy muy agradecido por todo lo que he visto. Estoy tan emocionado por los proximos dieciocho meses en este lugar asombroso! This week was super great! We were able to do a ton of cool things, and we saw lots of miracles as always! Anyway, here's what we've been up to in Zarahemla this past week.

Last P-day, after emails, we went to meet Guillermo at a metro station to go to the Biodôme together. When we got there (a little bit late), he wasn't there yet. We would have called him, but of course our phone had to break the day before and we still hadn't gotten a replacement yet. We waited for about 30 minutes, then left. Went to the mission office to get the phone and noticed that Guillermo had left a message. Turned out he got there an hour and a half late and was confused why we weren't there haha! It was such a funny message, he called me "Hermano James Bond" (as he always does) like a million times. It's so funny, and it's been taking time to get used to, but most Latinos have absolutely NO sense of time. They're just so chill all of the time! Which of course is a good thing at time, but not so much when you have other things to do! We had time since we had planned to go to the Biodôme but didn't, so we decided to go to La Banquise again for poutine. Really good as always! After we finished all of our chores for the day, we went to two appointments, that both fell through. We then felt like we should pass by this guy named Alder (not Elder lol) whose address we had received a few days back. We passed by, he was home, and we taught an awesome lesson! The spirit was super strong. He was such a cool guy!

Poutine at La Banquise with Elder Landetta

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, which was awesome as always. They talked a lot about keeping the Sabbath day holy, and all the many blessings that come from doing so. Being in the mission field, I truly have been able to see how doing more meaningful things on the Sabbath can really bless your life. At times it seems like just another rule to keep, but it's really such a major blessing to take one day out of the week to have a rest from the world! I encourage everyone to find a few ways you can make your Sabbath more meaningful. I will promise that as you do, you will be blessed more than you can imagine! Later that night, after Zone conference, we had the opportunity to eat at Eddy's house (one of our investigators whose wife is a member). They fed us some classic Honduran food which was so awesome. They're such a great little family.

Thursday wasn't busy at all, but we did get some good stuff done. We had district meeting in the morning, where we were able to discuss a lot about the things we had learned in zone conference and how to apply them. We set some goals as a district, and recommitted ourselves to old goals. We then went home, and were able to do our weekly planning. After that, we left for some appointments, and had a little miracle! We were going to pass by a former investigator, but for some reason, we weren't thinking and passed our stop on the bus. We got off at the next stop, and walked backwards. On the way, we ran into the former that we were going to pass by! It was so crazy—if we had not passed the stop, we would have gone to his house and he wouldn't have been there. It was a cool little miracle!

Death-Star hard boiled egg

Friday was my 6-month mark. Super crazy! I have some pictures of me burning a tie (little mission tradition apparently), but I'll have to send them next week. We spent a good part of the day contacting, and passed by some old formers who were pretty solid. We passed by one lady named Iris, who was apparently super golden, but sadly she wasn't there. Went to Hermano Sanchez and visited him a little bit, were able to settle some concerns he had about the church. We all have questions sometimes, and sometimes these questions or doubts about the church or the gospel can affect what we have come to believe. However, the solutions to these problems are out there, we just have to look! And sometimes they are difficult to find, but it's important that we always "Doubt [our] doubts before [we] doubt [our] faith!" (Elder Holland) Later on that night, we had another little miracle similar to the one the night before. As we were waiting for a bus, we saw a Hispanic lady and we, of course, talked with her. Turned out, it was Iris who we tried to pass by earlier in the day! It was such a cool miracle again!

Saturday was going to be really busy, but sadly a lot of our appointments fell through. However, we were able to pass by a lot of people, and we found a lot of new investigators as well. We had an appointment with Alder again, who we met last Tuesday, but apparently, he moved to Mexico! It was sad, but Elder Landetta and I laughed about it a little bit. That's the second person who just randomly decided to go to back to their home country! They probably just got fed up with the cold, and if that's the case, I don't blame them!

Sunday was awesome. I've been having troubles with feeling stressed during church meetings. I worry so much about our investigators not coming or, if they did come, their experience at church. However, this Sunday, I made an effort to just enjoy the meetings. When I did, I was truly able to learn from the talks and classes, feel the spirit, and just enjoy a rest from the stresses of the week. It goes back to what we discussed in Zone conference—Sunday really is such an amazing blessing to forget about all the stresses that we have on a day to day basis! It was very refreshing. After church we were able to pass by Hermano Mendoza again, which was an awesome experience as always. Una Hermana in the ward gave us some food to eat when we got home, so we went home and had some dinner which was amazing. We then went and passed by a less active family who Elder Landetta remembers teaching. We passed by and had a little visit with them, and they were so awesome. They still have very strong testimonies of the gospel, they just needed, as many do, an extra push (usually social) to go to church. It's important to notice when a fellow member might be in need of that push, and when we recognize it, be the push that they need!

Monday was fairly chill (as in not busy but also very cold). We spent a good three hours solid outside knocking doors looking for Hispanics. It was another little miracle though, when we were getting super cold after about two hours, I said to Elder Landetta something like, "I want someone to let us in; not so we can share our message, but so that we can be warm for only a few seconds!" The next door we knocked, the guy just let us in saying "just come, in it's too cold to talk to you by the door." It was super funny. Later that night we had dinner with Hermana Guerra from Chile, who is an absolute salvaje. She's super funny, and also cooks amazingly. It was so nice.

It's been an awesome week as you can see. I'm loving my time here, and I'm loving working with Elder Landetta. He's going home very soon, but that hasn't affected him at all! He's teaching me so much, and I'm so happy for everything I've learned and continue to learn. I love you all so much, I hope you have an amazing week!

Elder James

Zarahemla Week 4

Me with Elder Luna

This week was great! We were super busy and got a ton done which was great.

I realized I haven't really defined what a typical day goes like, so I'll do so now. We wake up a little earlier, about 6:10 every day, to go play "Soccer Tennis" at a nearby field. It's essentially tennis, except you play it with a soccer ball. It's a bit hard since I never really played soccer, but it's fun! We then go back and get ready for the day. Since there are 4 people and one bathroom, it sometimes takes a while for everyone to get ready. But we all just eat and workout a little bit when the others are washing up. Then, at around 8:30, we start daily planning. We talk about the meetings and lessons we have and the things we have to do that day. We talk about the needs of our investigators and set general lesson topics and commitments for them. We set goals for how many new investigators we can find and other goals for the day. This planning session usually lasts about half an hour. Then we go on to personal study for an hour, companionship study for an hour and a half (extra 30 minutes since I'm in training), and then we do language study for an hour (which I alternate between Spanish and French each day). Then we have lunch at the apartment and begin our proselyting time. The rest of the day varies greatly day by day, usually we are able to have about two to three lessons or other appointments each day. Since our area is huge (a bit more than the whole east half of the island), we have a ton of travelling time, so we can't do many lessons in a day, but it allows us to do finding for a good chunk of the day. When we get home, usually at 8:00, we make dinner, write in journals and study a bit more (if we want to), and then get to bed by 10:30. It's pretty fun!

Just an alley in southeast that I thought was cool

On Tuesday, we were able to visit a member who has been in the hospital for the past few weeks. We have visited him a couple times before, and he's really nice. His name is Hermano Mendoza, and he has been recovering from a surgery that didn't go super well, so he's been in some pain. We were able to go and read the Book of Mormon with him a little bit, and he loved seeing us. It was awesome to raise his spirits a little bit.

On Wednesday, we had an apartment inspection from a senior couple who is really cool. We had a bit of time since they were running late, and they love spy movies apparently, so we decided to quickly set up a laser (red string) maze from them to have to walk through to inspect our apartment. We took off the smoke detector to activate as an alarm if they tripped any of the strings, which happened since they are pretty old and aren't super flexible. It was stupid but super funny since they played along. We then went to visit an investigator named Mauricio, who is really nice. He has been really enjoying the lessons so far, and convinced his friend Ricardo to take our lessons too! So now we teach both of them at the same time which is awesome.

On Thursday, we didn't have much proselyting time, since we had district meeting (which takes a total of 4 hours including travel time) and weekly planning (which takes about 3 hours by itself). That, on top of our studies, didn't allow us to really have any lessons, so we didn't do much else other than finding. But it was still good! Weekly planning can get boring at times, but it's awesome to talk about each our investigators individually and plan for them as well as set personal and companionship goals on how to improve.

The "taco" poutine at Frite Alors

On Friday through Saturday I was able to go on exchange with another Elder on the west side of the island, Elder Luna. It was really fun, and super helpful to learn different ways to do things. We had a few lessons set up, and it was interesting to teach with a different companion. He is Mexican as well (basically all of the missionaries assigned to Spanish are Hispanic and are already fluent in Spanish), so luckily, I didn't have to be relied on too much. He also took me to ANOTHER Poutine place that he likes. Missionaries DO NOT go out to Poutine that often, he was just excited to show me another place. It was super good though, I learned from my mistake and didn't get as much as I did last time. I've had my fill for Poutine probably for the next two transfers. When I got back with Elder Colunga on Saturday, we headed over to a member named Hermano Sanchez who hadn't been to church in over 40 years. It was actually crazy, we had found him on the metro and found out that he had been baptized in Chile a long time before, but then stopped going because of some fairly superficial reasons. He is SUPER cool though. When he was younger, he was a part of a Rolling Stones tribute band and absolutely loves music. When we went to where he lived, it was a tiny, tiny, one room apartment, except basically 50% of the apartment was filled with music stuff. He also works as a mechanic, and we found out that he had worked as a mechanic for Ferrari's race division! Super crazy. We talked about music and I bonded with him on Classic Rock and cars, and we then had great lesson. It was awesome meeting him!

Fast Sunday was great. We went to a Ward Council meeting, which is when all the leaders in the ward meet with the missionaries and talk about everything that is going on in the ward and the missionaries' investigators. I usually just write down words I don't know since it is hard to understand them sometimes, although I can definitely notice improvement in my comprehension. We then went to church and stayed with Hermano Sanchez and our other investigators who came and helped them with questions and anything they needed. They enjoyed it, and Hermano Sanchez is probably going to become active again! We will be meeting with him over the next few weeks to help him come back. Since we got home the night before really late and ate late, and since we're technically supposed to fast for 24 hours, we didn't end up having any food until about 9:30 at night. I was dying during the day since we were running around a ton! But it was fine, we had a nice dinner at the apartment.

Haitian Griot

Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving! Sadly, though, I can't really say what all the traditions are and how it's different than American thanksgiving, since the only difference for us was that the busses didn't come as often. We didn't celebrate it at all since all of our members and investigators are Latino and don't observe it. But it was still a great day! We had a lesson with Jesus and Yeni, who are the couple I mentioned earlier who are having some challenges out of their control, which was absolutely amazing. The spirit was super strong, and all four of us were in tears at a point during the lesson. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and they were extremely receptive to everything we taught them. It was so amazing, they are so ready for baptism. They just need to wait for now. We were on the other side of our area from our apartment, so we didn't have time to go home to eat, so we went to get Haitian food again which was AMAZING. I got something called Griot which is absolutely delicious pork. The restaurant is super sketchy, as always with great authentic restaurants, but it was so amazing and fairly cheap. We never get to eat out, so it was a good little celebration I guess for Thanksgiving!

My new haircut

Also, I just got a haircut from Elder Colunga, and it's SUPER short, but he doesn't know how to do anything other than use clippers, and we don't have enough time or money to get real haircuts, so it'll have to do for now. It's much shorter than I'm used to, but at least it doesn't look too bad!

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. The mission has been so much fun so far, and I absolutely love being able to serve others all day long. It's such a humbling experience, and I'm so grateful for it. Love you all! Have a good week!

Elder James

Zarahemla Week 3

La Banquise

Thank you so much to everyone for all the birthday wishes! They meant a lot to me.

The day after last P Day was my birthday, and although it was a regular day with lots of work to do, I still got to do a few special things! I decided to actually cook something for breakfast, so I made some German pancakes! The egg shells and off flavor made me miss my mom's cooking, but they were still good! We got to find someone on the metro which was cool, but she was French so we won't be teaching her. We also had dinner with a family in the ward, the Pina Family, which was super good. I didn't tell them it was my birthday though, I didn't want them to do anything crazy. My parents also figured out a way to deliver pizza! There was A TON and we have been using it for lunches almost every day which has been so amazing. All in all it was a pretty great day!

Birthday Pizza!

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, which is when the whole zone gets together for a 8 hour meeting with the President, his wife, and a few other senior couples. It was so cool! It was focused mainly on developing Christ like attributes, and it was super inspiring. We also went to a leadership meeting, since my trainer is a district leader, and it was such a cool meeting! I got a TON of great insights on how to be a good leader that would be very applicable both on and off the mission. It was so cool! After Zone Conference Elder Colunga and I were so pumped to try out some of the things we learned, that after we got home, we went straight to the Metro to do about 2 hours of contacting, and we found 5 new investigators! It was so amazing, we saw so many miracles.

Zone Conference with my Zone

Thursday was the first day it finally started feeling like fall. The rest of the week was really hot and humid, upwards of 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit), but on Thursday it abruptly dropped to about 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). It's starting to get chilly, and hopefully I'll get my winter stuff before the prices rise!

General Conference was such an amazing experience. I was not prepared for amount I would learn in only 10 hours of instruction spaced out in 2 days. I took so many notes, and learned more than I ever have. Being in the missionary mindset truly makes you sensitive and receptive to learning and to the Spirit. It was easily the best Conference I have ever had, and I hope you all got a lot out of it as well.

Le Poutine Reggae

I have to save the best for last. On Friday, I had my first Poutine on my mission. We went to a place called La Banquise, and they had so many different kinds. It was pretty expensive, so missionaries usually only do it once a transfer (period of 6 weeks). Elder Colunga said that I had to get a large size, which could feed a family of 4 for an entire meal. He also said I had to EAT IT ALL. The pictures don't do it justice; it was absolutely massive and weighed about 3 pounds of pure fat. I wasn't planning on finishing, but peer pressure is such a real thing. The one I had was classic Poutine, with TONS of ground beef, tomatoes, guacamole, and peppers. It was super good.

Last bite!

There are many distinct stages of finishing large amounts of poutine (as opposed to just eating it). Let me go over them briefly according to my experience. 1st: Excitement. You look at the pile of fries, cheese, and gravy, and it looks SO good, and you just can't wait to try it. 2nd: Enjoyment. You start eating and it really is good! 3rd: discomfort. You eat probably 3 or 4 bites, and feel a feeling deep in your stomach that just isn't quite right, but you still continue. 4th: Beginning to climb The Wall. You are about 6 bites in, and you start to feel a bit full, and you've only eaten 5% of the Poutine. 5th: The Poutine Sweats. These are so real. Right when you start climbing the wall, your forehead and pits begin to perspire. 6th: Disorientation. This actually happens. Your eyes can't focus. You feel dizzy. Your brain is overwhelmed by the stimuli in your mouth and stomach, that it shuts down your other important functions. 7th: Hot and Cold Flashes. You feel waves of heat and cold emanate from your body, alternating from hot to cold. 8th: Discouragement. You're about 20 bites in, and you should be almost done, right? But no. You're not only half way done (Note: All the previous stages of climbing The Wall continue and just build up upon each other as The Wall is climbed). 9th: Hope. After what seems like hours of shoveling down cement into your throat, you realize that you only have what looks like 5 bites left. You're almost done! 10th: Overcoming The Wall. ALL of the previous ailments go away at the sight of only a few bites left. You feel a little more room miraculously appear in your stomach. You can do this! 11th: Triumph. You finish that last bite, and although your body should refuse it, you accept it gladly and stand amazed at your wonderful accomplishment. You could do this all day! But then, about 15 minutes later, you begin the next stage. 12th: REGRET. This stage lasts for the rest of the day, and into the next. You can hardly stand. You can't breathe. The sight of any food makes you want to die. All you want to do is drop down and pray that the pain is taken away.

I actually can't believe I finished it!

Well, there's the summary of how my Poutine eating experience went. However, later that night, we had a dinner appointment with a family in the ward, and you CANNOT refuse food from Hispanics. So, amazingly, I managed to eat the massive plate of rice, chicken, and vegetables that they so lovingly prepared for us. Although (I hope) they couldn't tell, inside I was dying. I don't think I've ever indulged so many calories in a single day in my entire life. It was probably one of the hardest days of my entire mission (kidding of course). I exaggerate a little bit of course, but ONLY a little bit. It truly was an interesting day.

Anyway, it was such a good week. A little different from the rest of my mission so far, but it was really fun. I'm absolutely loving the opportunity I have to serve others, and I'm so happy to be here. Montréal is growing on my more and more, and I can't wait for the days to come. Love you all so very much, I hope you are all doing great!

Elder James