Working Hard!

This week was an awesome week as a missionary. My comp and I have been working hard to constantly find new investigators and we have actually had a lot of success working with the lists of less actives. However, the best part of this week was that we set 6 baptismal goals with investigators, and all of them came to church on sunday and stayed the three hours! And were participating!

The one little catch about the church here in Mexico is that every time you go, someone says some weird doctrine or apostate comment in their talks that have nothing to do with the topic. This week one of the speakers went off about not eating meat, which made all of the investigators look at us with worried looks. So this week we will have to repair the damage from church.

 The class of Gospel principles in also pretty interesting because the teacher is a convert of about 5 months and is an awesome convert.... but because the topics in the class right now are about the spirit world, the millennium and deep doctrine topics like that, the class gets way out of hand. There is a lot of false doctrine and strange comments that happen. But the good part about that class is that we can step in and control the discussion a little bit to help the investigators. But in the end, yesterday was a successful day at church. My comp and I don't have changes so we will be working together another cycle and we hope to have quite a few baptisms. Thanks for everything Mom and tell the family I say hi. 

Elder Shumway

Grandpa Shumway & Abuela

I had a surprise visit from Grandpa Shumway and Abuela. After hearing the news about Grandma Clark, they were worried about me.

Isaiah 52:7

7 How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace,
Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims salvation,
Who says to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”

My Mission Scripture

Isaiah 28:20 pretty well sums up my mission:

"The bed is too short on which to stretch out, And the blanket is too small to wrap oneself in."

A Great Week!

Hola Mom!
 This week has been one of the best of my mission, with new shirts, socks and shoes it is a LOT easier to work! We baptized this week, and had a lot of investigators at church. I am actually very satisfied right now with my mission and my life. You really don't have to send me anything. The shoes were enough. I have everything I could need.
 Tomorrow are the transfers and I will be leaving my area. I only had one cycle here and it is agreat ward, but I am excited for another change in my mission. I will let you know where I am next week.

 Gracias y te amo. Elder Shumway

Hot Water Anyone?

Hola Mama! General Conference this week was pretty awesome wasn’t it! Ponderize in Spanish is meditizar. (I was also wondering what it was in English.) Meditizar is the combination of Meditate, Meditar and Memorize, Memorizar. Right now I am about to teach in the zone meeting about studying and this Meditizar thing.

I received both packages yesterday with the new shoes and shirts. Thank you very much. I love you! Today is the first time in 6 months that I have not walked in shoes that are too small for me, or with my feet touching the rocks through the holes in my shoes! I put the shoes on last night and they fit perfectly.

Also mom, I just want to say thank you for everything you do. After the talk by Jeffery R Holland, “Behold Thy Mother,”  I felt homesick for the first time in my mission. Well not homesick, but I felt like I should tell you thanks for being my Mom. I love you and appreciate everything you do for me!

This week some old Catholic guy on the street asked me if I was one of the sons of Jose Smith. I thought it was pretty funny! The old guy just wanted to tell us that our church is false and the Book of Mormon would be a good Walt Disney movie. But hey the bible has also produced some good movies of Noah and Moses!

Last week someone broke into the church and stole the TV from the sec office and the stove from the kitchen! We had a baptism on Sunday, and in order to heat up the water we use a gas powered boiler. The stove also uses gas and the robbers broke the gas pipe when they stole it so we couldn't heat up the water! The baptism was for a little girl and I did not want to baptize her in cold water, so I ran home during church with my comps and we brought 2 extension cords and 3 clothes irons to heat up the water. Sadly the irons over powered the cords and they started to melt so we just put one of the irons in the water, but it didn’t heat up the water fast enough. So we baptized in cold water!

Pues gracias for everything! Tell Jojo thanks for the letters and that I will start writing her back.

Elder Shumway

A Giant

A little while ago I had to go to the Southern part of the city to renew my green card and visa in order to stay here in Mexico. While we were in the metro on our way back home, we ran into the famous piano stairs of Mexico. They are stairs painted like a piano, and when you step on each stair it actually makes the sound of that note! It was awesome and fun to play on for a minute. (Listen to them on YouTube!)

 Sometimes I feel like I am in a movie because there are always riot police in the metro in the mornings that form lines for crowd control. It looks pretty scary. Sometimes with so many people trying to get on the Metro, it looks like a cow herding factory. 

There is this funny little girl who lives in an apartment building that we teach at. Every time we walk in, she is playing at the door. When she sees me she always says, "Grandote!" Which means giant. Then she looks at my comp and says in a cute voice, "Chiquito" or little one. So my comp and I are now known as the giant and the little guy.

 Sadly, I had my camera stolen this week. Tell Danielle thanks for buying it for me, but I won't worry about buying a new one. There isn't very much to take pictures of here in the City. Other than that, every thing is great. Tell the family I say hi. 

Love Elder Shumway

New Area

Well my new area is small (I'm back in the crowded city)... but the ward is great. The Elders quorum is made up of pure solid returned missionaries and the classes are actually super interesting and full of stories from their missions. Like all wards, there are problems, but this is the strongest ward I have served in so far. It is also the first ward that has someone who can play the piano for sacrament meeting!

I am the district leader of a companionship of Elders and of two companionships of Sisters, which is different but fun. The two senior sisters are also the sister training leaders for the mission and right now they are training two new sisters from the states who are still learning Spanish.

In my house I have been showering with cold water for the past two weeks because my comp said that his trainer told him the boiler doesn’t work. But I hate taking showers in cold water so I bought a little wrench and fixed the boiler and also bought gas...but now I don’t have money. However I can now shower with hot water!

We have also have a big problem of bed bugs in our house. The members say that the Elders have had bed bugs for almost a year now, even though they have gotten new mattresses and changed apartments, they haven’t been able to get rid of them. I am going to keep trying to kill them because they are eating me alive!!!!!

Right now we are teaching a lot of little kids that are from a member family, but we have also had quite a bit of luck in contacting people at home or on the street. We are teaching a few mas o menos investigadores right now. But the work is progressing and we are having a pretty good time still.

My first day in this new area we went to go visit a recent convert in his home. Two of the little boys that live in their house when they saw me they said, "WOW are you for real?" they just kept staring at saw me and looking at my white skin and touching my arms. It was pretty funny!

The food here is also a lot better than the food in texcoco. Here they eat more enchiladas and chilaquiles and all of the best mexican food! However, the other day someone made me eat a salsa of larva,.... it wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t good either.

Yesterday we rededicated the temple in Mexico City with Elders Eyring and Holland. It was a very spiritual experience. The cultural event on Saturday was pretty cool and to top it off we are reading the Book of Mormon as a mission! I have actually seen a lot of changes in the Elders and in the lessons as a result.

Elder Shumway

Tightwad!

In Spanish,"codo" means elbow but it also means tightwad or cheapskate, (someone who doesn't want to spend money on anything.) Well it looks like I'm so codo that you can actually see my codo!

(Tanner should be receiving a box with new shirts in about 3 weeks.)

Object Lesson

We taught the young men about missionary work and then we read D&C 4 about “the field is white and ready to harvest.”  Afterwards, we took them out behind the church where there is a little white field and shared our testimonies. They liked it.

Water Issues

This week was very interesting here in Mexico. On Sunday, the people voted for new political leaders. (The last 3 months have been pretty contentions while the political parties hash it out. In Mexico they don’t just have two political parties; there are more than 14! There are also a lot of people who  are against voting so on Saturday in almost 6 states, they burned the voting offices so nobody could vote. Saturday afternoon Pres Stutz got a call from the general authority who said that all the missionaries had to go home and that they could only leave their apartments for the church service on Sunday. So we spent the afternoon and most of Sunday in our house catching up on sleep.

We had a baptism here, and this is what the water looked like when we filled the font: Que asco!

But after buying a magic toilet brown water pill it looked like this! The baptism smelled like a bathroom with the toilet pill we put in there but hey, it looks great and didn’t stain the white clothes!

It rained super hard during our baptismal service and the church began to flood. (They don’t build anything very secure here so the water from the street just started pouring in under the door and under the sides of the building.) We spent 30 minutes fighting back the water that poured in. This was kinda funny because the baptism was originally planned for the weekend before, but when we showed up at the church last Sunday there wasn’t ANY water in the building! So we postponed the baptism a week and then we had an abundance of water!

Well everything is good here and I hope with you too. I love you and will send more pictures next week.

Elder Shumway

June 1, 2015

Tell Madi Feliz cumpleaños! When is she going to take her permit test?  Well tell her happy birthday and to be careful driving because everyone drives like they want to kill you! (Or maybe that’s just here in Mexico.) I’ve got some more funny stories for you.

The other day we were walking through a parking lot of some apartment buildings and we saw a police car pull in and drive around slowly in the lot. Then they stopped. One of them got out of his car and stole a hub cap off of one of the nicer cars in the lot because they were missing one! Then they drove off, very content to have a good looking car again. At first I was shocked that the cops would do that,... but then I just laughed because 

...I’m in Mexico!

Monday night we were up near the mountains walking home around 9:00 and over one of the mountains that is called Hill of the Promise we saw a bunch of lights flashing in a huge storm of clouds. It looked like a war was happening on the mountain, then I thought it was the volcano Popocatepetl exploding because it has been actively smoking for a few weeks. Finally I realized it was an electric storm. It was a normal storm but with 100X more lightning!  There was never a moment without lightning!

The following day we got stuck in a similar storm and lightning was hitting the ground everywhere! Because the city of Mexico is built in a lake bed, there is nowhere for the water to go! So all of the streets become rivers that are unpassable, and when the cars speed by they soak you!  

One day we went to a food appointment, but the sister didn’t have gas to cook the food, so my boy scout skills came in handy! We made a fire on the roof in the rain to cook our food. It was quite a delicious meal... but the meat was not completely cooked so my comp and I bought a Coca Cola afterwards to kill whatever was in our stomach. We haven’t gotten sick yet so I guess it works!

Everything here is great now because we just received some money on our cards, so don’t worry about me starving anymore. I also have money saved up to buy gas tomorrow so we can shower with hot water instead of bathing with buckets of water heated up with the iron. So life is going to be good again!

Te Amo,

Elder Shumway

Pictures

We were asked to cut someone's lawn using these tools!

Mexican Celebration

Ancient Ruins

The Lord's Cheeps!

I just got your package. Thank you very much for the pens and everything. My comp didn’t like the dried pears but he did love the huge chocolate bar! It was a good taste of home. Thanks.

I paid for the wedding of one of our investigators.

They didn’t have any money and the ward didn’t want to pay for it. My comp and I pooled our money to pay for the wedding. (I also pulled some money out of my US account because we have been without money for a week and I was just dying of hunger! We need money to be able to work this week.)

I am learning a lot from my time in this area.

1. I actually know how it feels to not have a single peso and to be so hungry that you can hardly sleep

2. I know that god answers prayers fast!. One morning this week we were walking in a colony called San Miguel Tlaixpan up in the mountains. I was super hungry and without energy. I only had enough money to take a combi back down to the valley after we were done there, but I didn’t even have the energy to keep working. In my heart I told the lord that I needed to eat something. I was explaining that I was going to buy something in a little store and hope that he would provide a way for us to get home. Right as I was thinking about this a huge truck,of Sabritos, or in english I think its lays like the chip brand, pulled up in front of us and the driver was  the husband of a recent convert that I did the baptismal interview for. I worked with he and his family when I was on divisions. After chatting, he gave us each a free little bag of Doritos! It wasn’t very much to eat but enough to break my 24 hour fast and keep on working. They literally were “the Lord’s chips.” (A quote from Nacho Libre) God answers my prayers with Nacho Libre Humor!

Later we visited some members that gave us breakfast. Pretty awesome.

    I also want to explain to you some of the food we eat here regularly because it is pretty funny. One of the most common dishes here that all of the gringo missionaries hate is called chicharon en salsa verde.

It is slices of pig hide in spicy green salsa with little squares of cactus. The salsa and cactus are pretty good but the pig hide is one of the grossest things ever!  The only way to eat it is with a lot of tortilla.

Some other foods that are interesting but that I don’t like are chicken foot soup, cow intestine tacos and cow brain quesadillas (nasty but durable.)

Danielle would hate it here because they eat crema with everything. Crema here is like sour cream but not sour, just cream and they put it on everything! We eat it on tacos, enchiladas, soup….. and then after the meal they take everything away and just leave the cream to put it on your dessert of jello, fruit or whatever else they bring out. The cream with fruit is actually pretty good, but the first time I saw them put the same taco cream on fruit it scared me because I thought it was sour cream.

They also have this awesome fruit that I have never seen in my life but it is called a lichi. Mango used to be my favorite fruit until i tried this one and now it is this.

The lichi is a little ball that had a red shell with little spikes on the outside but when you open it up it is super white and glowing. On the outside it looks like the fruit from the tree of good and evil but inside it is like the tree of life! And its taste is unlike anything else!

Praying in a Puddle

We were given a referral to give a Book of Mormon to a woman who lives in a little mountain village. My comp and I rode a combi to the village. The woman had told us to get off at the Salad Shop, then to phone her and she would have her son come down to show us the way to her home.

The weather here has been very hot and dry, but during our ride, it began to rain extremely hard! When we exited the combi, we were quickly soaked! Our cell phone didn’t have reception so we couldn’t connect with the woman and her son.

In a COLD, heavy rain, we were quickly soaked to the skin! We knocked on stores and little huts, but no one would let us in. We even lied and said my comp had to use the bathroom….still no one would let us in out of the rain!

After 20 minutes of being rained on, we didn’t know what else to do. We knelt in a puddle and prayed to God that he would stop the rain so we could do His work. Within 5 minutes, the storm stopped. 10 minutes later, the sun came out, and we were able to find the woman’s house.  It was truly a miracle.

(Elder Shumway in Action....my comp likes to take pictures).

Feeling like a REAL Mexican!

Photos

The Elders from my district did 50 contacts, so we went and had desayuno. We are eating pastes.

We spend a LOT of time on buses, or combis (vans), so I try to take advantage of the siesta time.

(One time I woke up to find that I was leaning on a girl!)

Today we went up in the mountains with one of our investigators to see some lakes. The sun is incredibly strong here because the elevation is at 8,000 feet, so I sun burn a lot! I am now the tall RED guy!

Something else amazing is that in all of the fields they plow to plant corn & other crops in, you can walk and in 5 minutes easily find some sort of Aztec ruin! Every time the farmers go over the field with their tractor they stir up broken pots and figures from the Aztecs! That makes farming pretty sweet! I also found some cool stuff in the fields that I will bring home.

This new house that I live in is infested with cockroaches and a bunch of other weird bugs that I have never seen. The cockroaches come out in the dark so every night we kill a bunch.

In this new area, it isn’t uncommon to be walking down the street and run into a herd of cows or sheep. I like those times because it always makes things fun.

A Giant in the Land

Loving the Lord's work!

Being a district leader is a lot of responsibility. However, the missionaries in my district are pretty obedient. I am really blessed to be a leader here in the farthest part of the mission because when there is space between the elders there is less apostasy. I will use the “Three Legged Stool” Dad taught us in my district meeting. We are working hard to lift the district, zone and mission.

Last Sunday I was presented to the ward during church. Again the Bishop destroyed my name. I don’t know why they can’t pronounce my name---it is pretty funny. So here in el Barrio Chapingo, I am Elder “Chuay”. Some of them call me Elder Samuel. But its alright because I love this area.

I went to visit some of the Aztec ruins last week called Teotihuacan. It was my second time going there but this time I understood more of the tour.Teotihuacan is pretty awesome. However, there  are also ancient ruins from before the Spaniards. We work all around them.

The area is pretty dead which means there is nobody to teach right now but little by little we are finding some. When I showed up here there were not any investigators  because the previous companion didn't like to contact people. 

We have been working hard and we found 3 new investigators in our area this week. We hope to see them progress in the coming weeks.

We take showers with buckets of water and walk a lot in the rain but it is fun.Everything is great here in Mexico. It rains a lot and we often get stuck super far from home in the afternoon in a heavy rain without jackets….but the memories are great.

I ate a quesadilla of cow brains this week ... it was not too bad.

A cool experience that happened this week is that we went to search for a less active family that lives way up in the mountains in a village called Santa Catarina (my comp doesn't have a very good memory or sense of direction, so we were lost for a time but we eventually did find them. I already know the area better than him). But this family is super poor and doesn't have money to come to the church. They live in a one room hut and they have chickens and dogs that just wander in and out of the house as they like. The Mother shared an experience where her son was attacked by a dog and died a bunch of times. the kid still remembers his life after death experience and can describe what he saw in heaven. He has huge scars all over his neck and back, but he is healthy and can run and play. It is amazing to see how happy and content the little kids of this family are even though they don’t own anything. I found it sobering to see such poverty,  but I loved visiting them because it just proves that people can have abundance in their live and still not be happy, yet these little kids live in the dirt without beds, and are the happiest kids I have ever met.

Gracias por todo mama y te quiero mucho. Siempre estan en misoraciones y espero que todo esta bien con la familia y miss Daisy. Elder Shumway

Elder Shumway

2nd Area

I had transfers Monday and I am now serving in the Barrio Chappingo (Chappingo Ward). My area is enormous! I am the district leader of four companionships, but the distance of my district is so huge that I still haven't met my elders in person. My companion is from Torreon Coahuila and his name is Elder Hernandez. He also doesn't speak any English and we have been on our missions for the same time. 

You would not believe how big my area is (22 Miles long). I think I went from the smallest area to the biggest in the mission (new and old areas outlined in yellow. Tanner’s new area is ⅓ of the whole mission area. The Red outlines are the Missions in Mexico City).

It’s pretty funny because my first day we went to work and I asked my companion a little about the boundaries. He said, ¨Look where ever you want, to the mountains and everything, that is all yours and more. Just go where you want and baptize because it is all your area.´´
On Thursday we walked for an hour to eat dinner with members, and then we walked an hour back to where there are actually people to teach. We wasted three hours just for food, but we did get to know each other pretty well. My comp has a horrible memory so he doesn't remember anybody he has met, or any of the little pueblos (towns) in our area. We are doing a lot of asking around but in one week I've gotten to know the area pretty well. (Actually only 5% OF THE AREA BECAUSE I HAVEN'T SEEN THE OTHER 95%!)

We spend most of our day either walking or in a combi (a combi is a little van that does circles in a route) and we take these to go to little pueblos or towns in the mountains. I love it here! I can go where ever I want in the mountains to look for people to teach,... but its also very expensive to pay for all of the combi rides. We are also learning how to work with strategy. We can’t just plan lessons wherever we want because it’s an hour to each pueblo, so we work in one little city or two each day depending on where we are going to eat that day.

The area is super cool because there are springs of water in the mountains and a lot of history about the king of the Texcocans, Nezahualcoyotl. When I get home I can tell you all about who he is.

Mt Tlalok

The streets are almost all cobblestone, resembling little walkways in the mountains. However, there is also a huge plaza three blocks from my house with McDonalds and Walmart. The only problem is that we are super pobre (poor) because we use all of our money in the combis.

This week I will take some pictures and send them to you so you can see where I am living right now. It is awesome. In this ward they are strong and the converts are awesome and there is even an active ward mission leader so I am excited to work here.

Love,

Elder Shumway

1st Transfer

I just found out last night that I have transfers tomorrow morning so I packed my bags and sadly,  the trio will come to an end tomorrow. The people here have become my little Mexican family. In my little branch here we didn't have very much success but I do have one convert who is super strong and her family is also starting to show interest in the church. Her name is Veronica and she just got baptized last month but yesterday in church she signed up to feed the missionaries this week. I will miss it here.  

After 6 months of hard work, this area is just starting to progress. We set 9 baptismal dates in the last 2 weeks and the investigadores are muy potentes, (i don't know what potente is in english so you will have to google translate it - potente is powerful or strong) It is a little sad to leave the converts and investigators that you come to love, but the Lord needs me in another part of the mission right now.

Meet the Mormons just came out in Spanish. We gathered at a Zone Conference to watch it. It's a pretty good movie!

Enjoy the fresh air and green mountains for me.

Love Elder Shumway

p.s. the photo is of us cooking a type of taco called carnitas or tacos of every part of the pig that you can imagine. It kinda looks like garbage in the picture but it all tastes pretty good.... except for the pig ear, pig skin and nipples. But the nose is absolutely the worst part! One day I’ll cook carnitas for thanksgiving so you can try it. :)