Week 7 LaJoya, Texas

Hey Mom,

We are in the McAllen west stake. 

That is sad to hear about Sister Bolden but she is with her husband now so that's good.

Our little corner of the world is doing alright, Elder Shipley and I are trying to make everything work with combining 2 areas but so far so good. We are getting along really well and having a good time through all of the change. It has been pretty crazy though, trying to see all of the people we need to see and do all of the things we need to do. Since we cover the entire ward now we have a lot more less actives and other members to see, along with combining both of our groups of investigators. 

We have lots of meal appointments at least 2 every day, Saturday we had 4, it is a little ridiculous. I like food but this is a little much even for me! Most meals here consist of: a can of coca cola and some kind of grilled meat with rice, tortillas and salsa. That is basically what we are living off of down here.

Quite a bit happened on each day this week so I will go through the highlights day by day:

Tuesday:

Transfers happened, we were at the mission office for most of the day. We had to be there at 9:00 am because Elder Ritchey had a district leader meeting so we went and hung out at the mission office, transfers actually happened at noon. Our whole zone shrunk by quite a bit, we lost 8 missionaries in our zone because they went somewhere else and only got 4 back. Anyway Shipley and I didn't actually leave the mission office until 2:30 because we couldn't find the car we were supposed to take, in fact nobody could find it. So we thought that since maybe it was coming from Laredo it was still on the way, after waiting for 2 hours we were told that the car was actually at the church but nobody realized it. So we got to head back and then we went biking, But on our way back home from a lesson I crashed on my bike, I have no clue how it happened but it did. My arm was scraped up pretty bad but other than that I am doing fine, my pants and shirt are fine so I can't complain. 

Wednesday:

Wednesday was a slow day the only thing that really happened was that we had mutual at 7 where we helped out with family history and that was about it.

Thurdsay:

We did a bunch of following up on referrals we had received, not very many of them were home though. We also went on visits with the high priest group leader Brother Quiroz, we visited a 70 year old in the ward, brother Lopez and we even sang Praise to the Man (Loor al Profeta in Spanish) in honor of President Monson, no clue how it ended up happening but it did.

Friday:

We made our own mini Ward directory on paper so we could find addresses of people we didn't know to try and find more people to meet. We went to Wing-Stop (it is like a Texas version of buffalo wild wings) and had lunch with our ward mission leader Brother Guerrero (he is quite a guy) We then went to the Hernandez's house at around 8 pm to have brother Hernandez (the Elders Quorum President) come with us to a lesson with his neighbor. His neighbor wasn't home so we just went back to the Hernandez's house and they asked us if we had eaten (everybody does that here) we told them we had and then like 15 minutes later Sister Hernandez comes out with 2 plates of food (everybody does that too).

Saturday:

Brother Hernandez (yes the same brother Hernandez that we saw last night) called at like 10:00 am and asked if we could help him paint his brother's shed, we said sure and then he asked us to come to over to his house to eat with his family, so we went over and ate at their house again, we had chicharrones which are cooked pork rinds/ pig skins, they were actually pretty good. Then we went and helped him paint until about 3. At 4 we had an appointment with Sister Hernandez (a different Hernandez) and she fed us a huge meal of cooked chicken and sausages with rice. After that we went and saw a less active who then fed us a bowl of oatmeal. At 6 we went back to the Hernandez's house (the Elders Quorum President) where they fed us again, it was a huge cook out with a whole bunch of meat. So the Hernandez family fed us 3 times in 24 hours going back to Friday night. They are an amazing family.

Sunday:

We went to church and to our surprise we were called to be assistants to the Ward clerk because he is always gone so now our job is to clean up the ward records, because they are a mess. We also do tithing too so that is interesting. We also biked the military highway at 8 pm which is a dirt road about 4 miles up from the border, that was pretty fun.

Pretty crazy week, talk to you guys next week.

Love

Elder Goodbaudy