E-mail 09/30/2013

Familia,

Well not much has happened this week, we had a zone meeting with the mission pres. Thursday.  The mission pres. wife chastised us about eating better and better hygiene, so me and my companion worked on buying better food. If you do it right, it costs about the same, amazing isn´t it.  Oh if you´re wondering how my language is coming, well if I compare it with another Elder here that has been here the same time in the mission as me, well he's already fluent, so that would put my Spanish at bad, but he learned some Spanish before the mission.  But after the meeting with the Mission pres. I was chatting with him and he asked how much time I had in the field, so I told him about four and a half months, he had a shocked look on his face and said that I spoke really well for such a short time.  Other then that it´s really hard to tell progress because it comes over time.  I can say I can speak Spanish, but it´s still a strain to say what I want.  Well for example I gave a talk in sacrament meeting this week about obra misional (missionary work) but when I asked a member if they understood what I said, well she said she understood a little, but part of the problem was their mic wasn´t made for someone tall, so it wasn´t picking up my voice really well and she had to deal with two of her boys. My companion said he understood the beginning but then stopped listening after about half way through, so he wasn´t much help. Maybe some of the people sitting in the front rows got something out of my talk.

I hope you all are exited for General Conference because I am, although I might not be able to watch it in English, maybe next time :(

I thought I might explain a little about the buses here.  So their are two different types of buses here, one is called a ''autobus'' but it is pronounced different then English, (just ask the missionary from Mexico how to say it).  And the other is ''camion''.  So a camion is a bus for a city, it just drives around picking up people, there´s no bus stops you just raise your hand as it passes by to get on, it costs seis pasos to ride (about 50 cents).  There's about 50 routes in Aguascalientes, here in Río Grande there are about 5 routes.  As for the Autobus, it is a bus I like a lot better, it goes though cities, so when their is a chance, we take these buses to get to our area, but since our meetings for the district and zone are in Fresnillo we have to take this bus to get there. It costs about 70 pesos to get to Fresnillo, but the seats are really nice, they are like the airplane seats that lean back, so I like to take this time to sleep, but when I can´t sleep I´ll read something, because it takes an hour to get to Fresnillo.

Love you all!

Elder Durrant

I asked him:
So are you in a city or a town?  Are you on foot or on a bike?

Well they call it a colony but I would say a city, I´d say it is about the size of Manti.

As for the bikes, well we talked with the zone leaders and they said that we could either have bikes or bring in another set of missionaries.  If we chose the bikes we still might not get them, so we chose to bring in more missionaries.  We are preparing the area and when the next changes comes in 4 weeks they will come too.

E-mail 09/23/2013

 Familia

Well this week has been exiting, Rio Grande may be a small place but it´s never dull. We got like maybe three lessons in this week in total. Last Monday after I finished emailing, well I had no idea the adventure I was about to have that would affect the entire week and still is effecting us.

So last week I mentioned the rain we have been having. Well I didn´t think that much of it, so we headed to teach one of our recent converts, but before we started the lesson we got a text from the Elders Quorum Pres. asking for help, something about water in their house, so we hurried over to his house. Well as we got closer to his house the traffic got heavy loading with people, I thought it was because of the Independence party they were having that day. But as I started to see them loading more then just people but fridges, mattresses, and other stuff, I started to get an idea of what was going on, an evacuation. As we got closer and closer to his house, we saw water in the street about two inches, so we had to walk in it to get to the house. When we got to his house the water was up to our knees. Mexico has tall sidewalks but this was pushing it. So we helped him move as much as we could to the second floor and put the couches on stuff so they were up high. When we finished and headed out the water was up to our lower thighs. so we try to help as many people as possible do the same. After about two hours of this, with it raining hard, and it was dark out and the firefighters and police men had arrived, we decided to head home. We were completely soaked, all I had was my slacks and a short sleeved white shirt. We left our backpacks at a members house on the way, so they didn´t get soaked. It was sad to see peoples stuff be destroyed but I have to say it was good fun to help others.

We were sore the next day from trying to walk though waist deep water, but in the morning we left for Fresnillo for the district meeting, as we went though Centro, it´s calm in the morning, but there was an uneasy calm about this morning. As we got closer to the river we saw where all the people were taking pics of the river. The bridge is about two-three stories high, but their was about two feet above the water. It was flowing down a street further down the road. We have a pic of a basketball court covered in water about 3/4 of a mile away from the river. What happen in the part of the city with the flooding, is the water presser was so high that it, pushed up through the manholes, but it only took a couple days for the water to fall back down, and now the hard work has started. When we were over there last, they were spraying stuff to keep the mosquito population down, and they have pulled in military and the police from Fresnillo. Tomorrow all the missionaries in our zone are coming to have a service project.

Well the other exciting thing that happened this week is I got a call from the sec. to print out an email and sign it and get it sent to him that day. So we had to go to Fresnillo to get it to the zone leaders and then they would send it to the sec. Well as we were walking we talked to a member who was going to be passing Fresnillo so he offered us a ride, so we waited for him to finish what he was doing and then we headed off but then the car kept on turning off, well it was a rental so we rushed to the bus station. Well to make a long story short, after running and worrying we made it just in time for the zone leaders to send it that same day, the place that they sent it though closed the doors after we finish, that´s how close it was. The papers had to do with my visa so if I didn't get it sent I would be going to Texas for a little while till they could fix the problems.

So this has been an exiting week, but I´m still alive, oh and my house is on a hill so you don´t have to worry Mom.

Love you all!!

Elder Durrant

Here is the CdeO
(Casa de Oración or House of Prayer)

My house is right above my companions head

E-mail 09/16/2013

Familia,

Well this week has been slow, their have been highlights like finding a scorpion, well actually an alacran (scorpion) in our house. It´s been raining here almost every day and it has force some of the more interesting animals/bugs out of their cubbys. We found a tarantula in the road, well as far as tarantula go it was a small one. Another interesting thing is, well when I first got here I saw a big area for a river and only a small flow of water, and because this place is called Rio Grande or big river and so I thought well that´s a small thing for a big river. But after all the rain it filled up about a fifth of the space, but a big storm hit yesterday, we had to cross about three small rivers on our way home and this morning when I saw the river it filled up all the base, but it still has high banks so we will see how big it will get. But other then that it was my companions birthday Saturday.

Well as for the baptisms last week what happened is, well we decided that it wasn´t necessary to cure our investigators of leprosy so we didn´t do it in the river. We went and talked to the owner of a water park to see if we could do it in the pool.  Every thing went fine I baptized Hna. Concepcion and my companion did the other two. I went first and well her knees came up out of the water so I had to do it again. Other then that everything went well finished up and left then a few hours later we were taking a quick bathroom break and when I got out of the bathroom my companion said that the baptisms aren´t valid.  I wasn´t sure if I heard him right so I said "what". So he said I raised the left hand and not the right, so I thought about which one I used and well it was one of those moments where you want to bang your head against the wall. Well we just paused for a moment just pondering how we could have made such a mistake, I did worked in the baptistry of the temple so it wasn´t the first time I did a baptism and it wasn´t just me, my companion did the same after me and no one else caught it, not even the witnesses. So after the moment of pondering we started to try and figure out what we could do. We called the branch president and explained what happened and he said that he had a meeting the next day in Fresnillo so we could just take them with and do it in a font. Well the next day when we got to the stake center and started to fill the font, well because the water turns off sometimes during the day and their wasn´t enough backup water to fill the font. So we started to think of what else we could do, then someone told use that they had a baptism the other day in another chapel and that it still had water. So we drove over there and most of the water leaked out but it had flowing water. So we just waited for it to fill. My companion just did all three and we made sure this time it was the right hand raised. So needless to say we won´t be making that mistake again.

Love you all!!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 09/10/2013

Well you may be wondering why I didn´t email yesterday. Well it´s because I was with the president all day.  My zone and the other zone in Zacatecas [sah-kah-te-kahs] went on a trip hosted by the president, to an Aztec fort.  But I don´t have time to email a lot, the president said to email only our families. So this week I´ll wright it down and send it. Plus I took about 260 photos, so their is no way I will send them all thorough email, but I´ll get them to you. It was amazing! Oh and we had two baptisms this week, oh and that is a story in of itself but not until next week.

Love you all

E-mail 09/02/2013

Familia

Sorry this will be a short one, but we should have two baptisms this week, a Hermana (Sister) who I am completely confident that she will stay active the rest of her life.  One time we taught her the law of tithing and she told us how she had already gained a testimony of paying tithing.  The other is the one we have been trying to get baptized ever since I got here, but for one reason or another it has been delayed.  He is pretty solid too.  Saturday night we planned on teaching him keeping the sabbath day holy, and he told us that he was behind on rent (he pays on a daily bases) and because of his health in the past couple of weeks, the land lord told him he had to pay Sunday or he had to leave.  So he said that he wouldn´t be able to make it to church because he had to work Sunday to make up the difference, so we asked him to have faith and the Lord would bless him, and there he was the next day, and he managed to stay.

Well this week has been an interesting experience, well with food that is.  First my companion told me that it was ok to drink a certain type of milk here, so I tried it, bad idea, two days later I was on the toilet, luckily it only lasted a couple of days. So I just give up on milk while I´m here, it´s just not worth the pain.

I also ate pig nose and pig intestine this week, you may ask how I did it, well the trick is, don´t ask what it is tell your done, it´s as simple as that.  For the most part you can´t really tell what it is, like the pig nose was chopped up and it actually tasted pretty good, but after words I was expecting to hear pig intestine, but he said pig nose and that´s when my stomach churned.

As for the word of the week. Oracion, it means prayer but it also means sentence, so that has been a bit of a confusion.

Love you all!

Elder Durrant