My new Comp!

 Here is a picture the senior couple took of me with a sister from Guatemala. She is super short and has been in my district/zone for more than half of my mission. She is small, but very powerful and funny. 

The height difference is just the funniest part. 

A Busy Week

 Well I have had some of the bustiest weeks of my mission these past few weeks. However all this week the President is in the hospital with his wife and the señior couple that worked the offices in the mission are in California so my comp and I are holding down the fort here in the offices today, which means I have a lot of down time right now. 

This week my companion and I did not have very many work days in our area because of some departing Elders we had to take to the airport. We also went with all of the Elders who arrived with me in the mission to a buffet with the president after going to the temple as a little going away party. That was pretty cool. So even though we did not work in our area very much this week we still had a great week with a lot of new investigators and people coming to church too. We had a lot of miracles happen and I am really feeling good about the investigators that we have right now. I hope all is well at home and have a great week.

 Elder Shumway

Ice Cream Peddlars

Right now we are in the heart of the rain season here in Mexico. Every day it is super hot and sunny in the morning, but right around 5:00pm, huge thunder clouds roll over the Eastern Mountains and it rains cats and dogs! Everyday I have to change my pamphlets because they get super wet in my backpack, but I protect my scriptures with a plastic bag. We also accumulate umbrellas every day that the members and investigators insist we take, but it is a little bit harder to remember to return them. We have 2 in the house right now that we need to take back to their owners. 

The church is very worried about mosquito transferred diseases at this time of year here in mexico ( even though I haven't seen a mosquito in a while). Sister missionaries are encouraged to wear pants instead of skirts, and the Elders can use Cowboy hats and sun glasses like the Jehovah witnesses. We also have to apply repellent 5 times a day.

 In our area we are baptizing pretty constantly, almost every week, and our ward was just divided into a  branch and a ward. We have a new bishop now who is on fire and is going to help this ward a ton. He was our ward mission leader two weeks ago so he also focuses on the missionary work more than other Bishops. Y para terminar una pequeña historia chistosa que nos paso ayer. 

Here in Mexico we normally use a public transport system called Combis. Combis are white Shum vans that have a little sign in the windshield which says the town, colony or place that it is going. So you stand on the side of any street and when the Combi you need passes by you stick out your hand and it stops for you. In the back there are no real seats, just 4 benches that go around the edge and that is where we sit...as many passengers that can fit inside the little van. When you want to get off you have to pass money through a little hole in a wall they put between the driver and the passengers. 

So yesterday we jumped into a super full Combi to come back to our area after reporting with the Elders, but it was not a very good Combi. After about 5 minutes of traveling the driver tried to go over a speed bump (here every street looks like oak street in Ashland, with huge speed bumps every half block to keep people from going fast). Our Combi got stuck with the huge Speed bump in between the two tires! We didn't high center, but the back tires just couldn't push the van over the top! Not wanting to lose his 8 pesos for each passenger in his Combi, the driver wouldn't let us get out!  So there we were, 15 Mexicans and one American in a little van bouncing back and forth trying to get over the speed bump while a huge line of traffic and honking drivers lined up behind us. I was dying with laughter! 

Then a garbage truck that was right behind us moved forward until it touched the van and abruptly pushed us over the top with a loud grinding sound. It made me laugh even harder! But then the driver of our Combi told the truck to please push us a little farther so that he could jump start the Combi because it had died! So there we go again being pushed by a huge garbage truck until the driver could pop the clutch! It was a funny experience but also very normal here in the Mexico City Southeast Mission! Elder Shumway

There is a man in our ward who makes ice cream every day, then sells it in the streets.

 One day he asked us to help him in the morning because his workers couldn't make it. 

 So as a service project we went early to make ice cream and sell it. 

We actually found more less actives this way than any other method I have ever tried on my mission!!!

A Few Famous Friends

Albert Einstein

Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso

Bill Gates

Here is a stained glass depiction of Christ's Baptism.....by sprinkling!

(Apparently the artist hasn't read the scripture version!)

Trash Collection

This is the Mexican trash system. First, a guy runs down the street with a  bell to let everyone know that the trash cart is coming, then when the horses pass by you just give your garbage to the guy on it along with some pesos to make him happy. (But he let us take the picture for free!)

Volcanoes & the Rainy Season

We had a great week this week! The rainy season started  with a huge down pour and it has rained every day since! The sun still comes out sometimes but it is mostly cloudy so my sunburnt nose is doing much better.

 Apparently the volcano right next to my area exploded at night but nothing happened here in Ixtapaluca. All of the ash went eastward to Puebla and Veracruz so nobody here even knew it exploded. (It is always exploding so to see a pillar of smoke rising from it is not anything new here.) The night of the explosion, my comp and I were leaving the district meeting of some Elders and Hermanas in our zone, when President Stutz called me. He was super worried about the missionaries. He asked me if Popocatepetl had exploded. Looking right at the mountain, I said, "I don't think so. It is still there." So while volcanoes were exploding right next to us, we had no idea!

We took our recent convert along with another 25 other converts to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. It was a great experience to be with them and a lot of them even brought their own names! I was working at the name table in the baptismal font, registering names but I lost count of how many personal names we did. 

 This weekend was Stake Conference and we had a family of new investigators come to the night time session. It is a family of 6 that is pretty poor and live far away from the stake center on the side of a hill. So to get to the conference they started walking at 6pm to make it by 7:00pm, but the entire way it was raining. When we ran into them a block before the church they were soaking wet and their 3 littlest boys were tired of walking. To see a family make such a big sacrifice to get to a church that they have never been to, helped me to know that the Spirit of God truly works miracles in every one of our investigators. In total we had 11 investigators at the conference, and 10 of those were attending church for the first time.

 It was a great week and to finish it off, this morning we helped the first counselor make ice cream in ice barrels and metal buckets. He sells home made ice cream for a living and we are getting pretty good at doing it too. It might be a good business to start when I get home.

 Gracias y espero que tengan una muy buena semana. Elder Shumway

Mother's Day 2016

We listened to Tanner the old fashioned way, two people sharing each phone to try and hear his stories. He is happy, working hard, and LOVING his mission!

Photos

CDMX "Ciudad de México" I took this picture in the center of the city today.

My Zone at the Temple

 A family of recent converts. This hermana just gave birth to twin boys a few days ago.

 We let an Elder who doesn't have much experience with baptisms perform the ordinance. 

It was a good day.

New Friends

Here are some photos taken with my good friends Choncho and Cochino.

Hi mom. Tell Miss Daisy that I am fine. Mexico is entering in the rainy season right now which lasts from May until October so I think my nose will get better. Don't worry about sending me sunscreen or anything. I can buy some here, but you know that I don't like that kind of stuff. Plus by the time a package you send gets here I will already be back at home!!! (No, the Easter package has not arrived yet. I might get it as a 4th of July.) 

Sadly, our good friend Lazaro the turkey does not like us very much any more and always attacks us as we try to escape from the yard on our way to work! He is a pretty feisty little turkey! Every time we have to enter into the house or leave the house, one of us has to fight the turkey off while the other opens the rusty door with the rusty keys! 

My comp hates the turkey and is always fighting it off with a broom and talking bad about it. Every time we start getting close to the house, my comp begins getting nervous because the turkey is going to attack us! But I like the turkey, and sometimes I let it into the house when he isn't close by. Then when my comp discovers the turkey in the house, he comes running down stairs and chases it away. It makes me laugh pretty hard! 

This week we baptized an hermana that is super cool. She works in the marines of Mexico and this week she has to return to her base by the U.S. border. She was baptized on Saturday, confirmed yesterday and received her temple recommend so tomorrow we are going to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead with her! It will be a great experience.

This week we held a stake activity where we turned the stake center into a plan of salvation model. We put missionaries in every room to teach the plan of salvation. In the celestial room the 4 Elders were wearing all white to make it special. (The room actually had more white than the real celestial room in the temple! It was pretty awesome. 

Gracias y nos vemos. Elder SHumway

Volcano Eruption!

The volcano on the right is called the Popocatépetl volcano. Tanner currently lives 25 miles from this volcano. A large summit eruption began around 2:15 am local time on Monday April 18th, when ash emissions and individual explosions in the summit crater increased, followed by a strong eruptive phase with continuous lava fountains that lasted over 2 hours.

During its peak around 3 am local time, a rain of incandescent material fell over the upper part of the volcano, to up to 1.6 km distance, and an ash plume rose several kilometers and drifted SE (away from Tanner). Moderate ash fall occurred in areas such as Puebla city, whose airport was shut down. Elder Shumway reported rain most of the day on Monday.

Photos

My Pet Turkey

I have an Ugly turkey living on my front porch!

 Its name is Lazaro (Lazareth) because he died and came back to life once! 

We had another super hot week this week. The sun here in Mexico City is not like the sun in Oregon. Here, the sun hurts when it touches your skin and burns deeply! Sometimes I feel like a roasting chicken.

We also had a lot more success this week in our area. We found a lot of new investigators and we are actually going to baptize this weekend. We found 2 magic investigators that have been to church quite a few times already. They came up to US and asked to be baptized! We had quite a few investigators in church for the first time and hopefully this week they will commit to be baptized.

On Sunday in testimony meeting an old lady stood up to give her testimony about the living prophet. She also told the congregation that her son had heard the Prophet said that in this month there will be a large natural disaster in Mexico! It was one of those moments when you want to cover your investigator's ears. Then the closing prayer was given by a man who prayed asking God not to let Donald Trump win the U.S. Presidential election! Everyone here hates that guy because he is racist against the Mexicans. Pretty funny.

Pues creo que es todo por el dia de hoy pero les amo a todos y nos vemos pronto!

 Elder Shumway

A transfer!

 My new area is pretty awesome; there are a lot of people in the streets, the ward is great and has an extension that is going to be approved as a branch this month but for now it is still just a group that meets in a house on Sundays in a small town near the mountains.

 However the weekend before my comp and I got here the other Elders baptized 7 people and now have left us with zero investigators. Opening or white washing an area means that we don't know anybody, so we did a lot of walking this week and it has been SUPER hot here for the last two weeks. My nose is sooo sunburnt that it is bright red like rudolph and I can peel skin off of it every day. I wouldn't be suprized if I got skin cancer on my nose one of these days. Today we went to the temple as a zone, but because it is super far away it almost took up the entire day. It was well worth it. I did initiatories and a session for the great grandparent of my comp.

My comp is a funny guy. Of the 3 Chileans that have served in my mission, all three of them have been my companions so I think that someday I will have to go visit Chile. My comp is 25 years old because he finished his college studies and is a professional doctor that specializes in pregnancy and baby birthing. It is very interesting to talk to him about his career, and he talks with every pregnant woman that we see in the streets. He is very mature but a little awkward too. Hopefully together we can have a lot of success. 

I am going to work extra hard in the next few weeks to see if we can baptize the investigators we find before I have changes again!! 

Thanks mom for all you and the family do for Miss Daisy and Let her know that I will see her soon!

 Gracias Elder Shumway

I made tamales from scratch! (Then ate them! From whole corn to my belly!)

Quick Switch

We had a tough week this week, cold  & rainy with very few people that let us into their homes all week! However it all payed off with a baptism on Saturday and a successful Sunday! (Sunday is like game day in the mission; everything we do during the week is so the investigators and less actives can keep the Sabbath day holy and receive revelation through church assistance.) The baptism was very spiritual.

 Some funny things that happened this week. I was assigned a home teaching companion in the Elders Quorum and a list of families to visit. So I am an official part of the Izcalli ward. Then the ward mission leader showed up to the baptism in just a white polo. The first counselor told him that he had to have a white shirt and tie so he could direct the baptism. So the mission leader asked me to lend him mine.

 It is probably against the rules but we switched shirts. This hermano is not the strongest member, so sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do so that he doesn't get offended and become inactivate.

 I am enjoying my time here in this ward. The area is very tough and we spend a LOT of time walking around all week but I feel like we are helping the ward wake up in missionary work. We are helping direct ward councils, missionary Sundays and ward activities. 

All is well here in Mexico and have a great week where ever you are! Love Elder Shumway

Life is GOOD!

 Well Mexico is awesome! Everyday I love the food, people and culture more and more! I honestly don't know what I will do at home when there aren't tortillas and salsa at the table when we eat! 
                                   

The secret to enjoying a mission is just loving the people you serve and everything they do!

This week was the best week we have had in this new zone ever since we got here. In our area we had 7 investigators go to church and a ton of less active families that we are also visiting. We have 5 great investigators that are progressing very well towards their baptismal dates and this week we are going to add more. 

The zone is now doing a great job baptizing, finding and committing the people to repent. We asked special permission from the President to hold our zone conference today at a church camp that is on the border of the State of Puebla called the Guarda. It is like an Esther Applegate camp. We went as a zone in a big bus in the morning, played sports all day, had a BBQ and then the Meeting. It was great! The Elders are happy and excited to keep working this week. We are working hard and are finally seeing all of the blessings from our effort!!!! However the spirit does the converting! 

Les amo mucho y cuidense. Elder Shumway

Zone leader Trio

 The visit of the Pope in February actually wasn't a very big deal. In the mission council a few weeks ago we talked about how it might be dangerous and that we shouldn't leave the house, but when he showed up it was all normal. We worked normally and everyone was watching him on the TV, but we never saw him. 

The funniest part is that he just came to pick up all of the money (Diezmos) that the Mexicans have saved up, and he took it all back to Rome! The people where actually pretty angry with him. 

We are still working hard in our area but we are not having very much success. Every week we set baptismal dates with four or five investigators but they always fall because they don't come to church!!!! Our services here are at 8:00 AM, and when it is cold nobody wants to get out of bed, even if we pass by for them in a car! However we have had success with references from the members and we just had an awesome ward missionary activity that we pulled off.

I have two companions, Elder Lopez and Elder Fernandez and they are from Xalapa, Veracruz where Grandpa Shumway lives. One of them is going home soon and he wants to visit Grandpa. My other comp received a picture of his Dad at Stake Conference, standing next to Grandpa Shumway! 

 We took advantage of the fact that we were in a trio and we did divisions every day this week. It was awesome because we did intercambios with every companionship in the zone! I had to sleep on the floor for a lot of days, but it was worth it!

 I love you all and I always think of you. Love Elder Shumway ♥

(Samuel Fernandez with Grandpa Shumway and Abuela on their ranch!!!)

Sickness!

 I heard that the US got a ton of snow this week!

 Well, everything here in Ixtapaluca is moving along pretty well. We found two less active families that are part member families and we have 6 investigators that are progressing toward a baptismal date. But the best part is that it was not super cold this week. 

Yesterday (Monday) we had a normal work day because today we went to the temple as a zone and it was an awesome experience. However, now I am sitting in a hospital room with one of the district leaders in our zone. His name is Elder Keyes and he has been feeling sick for about a week. Yesterday he coughed up blood so he went to the hospital and found out he has pneumonia and bronchitis. So after going to the temple I came here to the hospital to stay with the Elder while his comp goes home with mine to take a shower and get new clothes.

So here I am writing this email on my phone (they gave us i phones as zone leaders in Ixtapaluca because there isn't good phone reception. This phone is the most advanced technology I have ever had and I still don't know how to use it very well.) 

 Everything is awesome here in Mexico and I hope all is well at home. Pray for me so that I don't get this contagious disease and have a great week! Love Elder Shumway

Animals at Church?

        Well this week has been very difficult here in my new area and zone. It has been super cold and rainy all week and it even snowed in the mountains here in Ixtapaluca! (I only brought two jackets on my mission, and I loaned them to two different elders while we where on divisions in my old zone.  Now after all these transfer, who knows where they are at?

        We spent the entire week walking in the street, contacting people and looking for less actives on the list, trying to find someone to teach. We did a ton of walking and very little teaching. There were some days when I honestly didn't want to leave the house because we had no plans for the day and it was raining! But we worked hard and have a tiny bit of hope for 2 or 3 investigators. 
        In sacrament meeting while I was preparing the bread for Sacrament, a medium sized black dog ran through my legs! There was a dog in sacrament meeting! The funniest part is that the members didn't even worry about it, it was normal! We confirmed a little girl that was baptized a few weeks ago, then I gave a talk and they still hadn't taken the dog out! Apparently it belongs to one of the members and sometimes it follows then to church and just doesn't go away. It is funny the stuff I experience here in Mexico. 
        Another funny thing that happened one day while my comp and I were wandering around in the streets looking for less actives in the list is that we were super tired and thirsty so we stopped by one of the million little stores that are on every block to buy a juice or something, but all they sold was Coca Cola! I love Mexican Coke but we do drink a lot of it and I wanted something else. However, all they had were 3 refrigerators with different sized cokes: some in glass bottles, others in cans or in plastic bottles and of every size you can imagine! (That explains Mexico well.) So I bought a coke.

These two Volcanoes are on the border of the state of Mexico and the State of Puebla. The one on the left is named, Iztaccihuatl and the one on the right is Popocatepetl. There is a cool ancient Aztec story behind these two volcanoes. The name of the volcano on the left means "sleeping woman" because it looks like a lady is lying down on top of the mountain with her head on the left and her feet on the right hand side. Popocatepetl means "smoking mountain" and it is the most active volcano in Mexico. Pretty cool.

 Thank you for your thoughts and prayers because I really need them right now to help us find investigators.

 I love you.

 Elder Shumway  

A New Area!

 I had transfers on Wednesday and my new companion is Elder Lopez. My entire mission I have never had a companion from the USA; they have all been latinos and it is awesome! From each comp I get better at Spanish and learn more about the culture. 

My new Zone is called Ixtapaluca. We are all new because we are "white washing" a Stake that was recently added to our mission. My Zone is pretty cool! It is tucked away from the city and it is on the side of a pretty big hill that runs into a huge mountain. We also have two volcanoes overlooking the stake that are called Iztacihuatl and Popocatepetl (which is an active volcano that is always smoking!) There is clean air here and green plants so it is a nice change from the big city. 

My ward is called Izcalli and it is a pretty big ward that has a good members, but does not baptize very much. The mission president had been telling us for a while that we were going to grow as a mission and receive this new stake and that they baptize a lot here. But when we showed up it looked like the Elders here had stopped working because as a zone we only have 6 baptismal dates when the normal is 25 to 35 for a zone. A lot of the Elders in the zone where disappointed when we arrived and realized that we were starting from scratch but we all worked super hard this week, found new investigators and we are working hard to turn the stake around! 

Next week I will send you some pictures but I just want to say thank you for the Christmas package! I had a great Christmas on the 8th of January, I really needed the socks and ties! It was the perfect gift and the pens too! Thank you. Also here in Ixtapaluca it is super cold, so I might take some money out to buy a sweater. I have gone through my entire mission with just one worn out sweater that I bought in the tiangis (like a street market / goodwill thing) at the beginning of my mission but it doesn't do much for warmth. 

Thank you for everything and I love you all. Elder Shumway

New Assignments!

Congrats to Brandon & Kari on new baby Audrey! They will be a super strong influence in the ward for ever! Hey Mom, I pulled 600 pesos out of my bank account to marry a family last week.

Tomorrow I have transfers. I only served here for two transfer cycles but I feel good about the work my companion and I did the past 12 weeks in this area and with the Elders in the zone. When I came here, there were 9 baptismal dates set. This week there are 50. We also had a very successful Christmas open house at our Stake Center. Missionaries stood on the sidewalk, inviting people to come in. Refreshments were served, and each of the auxiliaries had stations set up where they told people about their organizations. From that activity, we also have MANY new referrals!

Other cool news that I keep forgetting to tell you is that the mission is going to be bigger as of tomorrow. A few weeks ago in the mission council, President told us that the mission is going to receive one stake/zone from the bordering mission Chalco. The new stake is called Ixtapaluca and it is a pretty cool zone of city/mountain and village areas. In the stake there is also a church ranch where they take the young single adults camping. The stake is also known for baptising a lot so they call it "bauptizaluca."

In this transfer, there are a ton of Elders that have changes and President says that he wants to send a lot of the zone leaders and district leaders to this new zone to whitewash it with hard work! They are going to drop a lot of leaders to senior comps in Ixtapaluca and call a lot of new leaders throughout the mission. We are going to white wash an entire stake and the mission is going to have a huge makeover. So tomorrow we will see what happens! I don’t know where they are going to send me but I will let you know next week. 

Elder Shumway