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