I Got Attacked By A Dog

Ok. Alright. Ok. I’ve got to get the heck out of Cuautla. I mean there is almost nothing here. And then BOOM pops up a miracle baptism. Don’t get me wrong, those are really cool! But I want to work for it because it means more. But let’s start off with why there was no email last week. Because this would have been it… “nothing happened. The end.” No lessons and no accepted contacts. Good times. But this week was a little bit better.

We finally have people to teach and the first was on Tuesday. Her name is Ruby and she is 16 years old. She has been to church more than 4 times and told us at the end of the lesson that she wants to change and start over. Well You’ve Come To The Right Place Darlin’! But she doesn’t know if she can, so please add her in your prayers. After this lesson with her, we walked the rest of the day.

Wednesday we found an old couple who have 2 catholic children and one JW. The parents are interested in the Mormons. What the heck happened there, I couldn’t tell you. But the parents can come to church for 2 more weeks. Whatevs, we’ll just keep teaching them until we get ‘em dunked!!!

Thursday, I got attacked by a dog. It came out of nowhere and almost bit my leg off. My comp was ahead of me and I saw no look of help in his eyes whatsoever. So went solo on this one. And by solo, I mean I took off running because I had nothing to throw at it. Once I escaped nothing else happened the rest of the day.

Friday, we went looking for some guy they call, El Muerto, or the dead man. He was baptized a year ago and no one could find him. We looked at all the houses he had lived in for a year and tried to find his daughters, but we got nothing. But when we went to eat with a member this day, we asked if he knew him and said, yeah, he rents a house from me down the road! BOOOOM!!! I felt like some episode of Scooby Doo and we finally found the bad guy! So we left and got to talk with him and his wife and we have another lesson this week!

Today was our semi annual sports day that President Crickmore puts on.  It's so legit!  Elder Searle, Reading and I had these sick black shirts made!  They are a super tight but we loved them!   President Crickmore has shirts made for each missionary.  I can't lie about El Guapo!  It's who I am.  But how about The Beef?  haha  Every time I scored in volleyball Sister Crickmore would yell "Where's the Beef" and I would yell "It's right here".  haha  It was awesome!  Such a fun day!    

Saturday and Sunday not a lot happened. It’s still really slow here and I apologize for not having much to say. But as Jack Sparrow once said, “take what you can and give nothing back.”

Stay Classy

Elder Johns

Elder Searle and Elder Reading

Elder Santos

I got scalped!

I’m in the Hidalgo ward and we go to the stake center which is nice! I ran into our mission leader the other day and he told me some awesome stuff. Do you remember Laura? We had taught her like 4 lessons and she was amazing and then we left. Well she got baptized and he told me Laura, Marcela and Hector all gave talks the other week. Marcela is in YW and Hector is in YM! It’s so freaking awesome!!!!  Sorry no pictures this week.  This computer is messed up but I have tons to send so hopefully next week.  

On Tuesday in the morning we went to talk to the owners of the house who live downstairs. We finished up with them and we went back upstairs. Now there are 2 parts to the stairs. It begins with 5 steps and then turns and goes the rest of the way up. In those five steps there is a bar that I did not see before. As we went up, I racked my head on this thing hard. I was dazed. As I turned around to see who had just hit me with a bat, I saw the bar which wasn’t like other bars in a circle. It was a square and in the corner of the bar I saw hair and a little bit of skin. By some miracle I wasn’t bleeding hardly at all. So we went to the hospital and they told me any deeper I would of had to have had stitches. Right now it is almost 100% healed. That is a miracle that happened to me this week. Other than that no lessons and very little people to teach!

Stay Classy

Elder Johns

New Area Same Place

Hello world. Well I'd like to start off by telling you all what I saw this week. There are many
street performers that perform in front of cars in the middle of the week. But I saw one
that beat the rest by a mile. I'd like to describe it in how I think the conversations might
have gone down in between these 2 guys.

guy 1- alright, I've got an idea on how we can make a quick buck!

guy2- I'm all ears!

1- So the light turns red and we go out into the middle of the street.

2- Obviously.

1- You take your shirt off...

2- Nice.

1- ...And lay on broken glass!

2- I'm liking it so far!

1- And then I stand on your back and juggle golden spheres! What do you think?

2- ....The only thing that I can't figure out is why we're not out there doing this right now!!!

Who knows... it might have been a little different, but who cares... onto the week.

So last week we had changes. Our area before had a pizza hut that was about a mile or 2
down from us. We have now been moved to the same pizza hut, but a mile or 2 up. And I'm
still with elder Santos which is fine! But we don't see it as a change. More of an extension
of our last area.

Tuesday we left with a member in his car and we were in front of our new house in about 7
minutes. We knock on the door and the owner comes out and is a member which is always
good! But then he asked us if we had the keys to the house, which we didn't. We soon figured
out that the missionaries before had taken the keys to the house, and the mission cell phone
for that area, and had not left us our food list. We were completely lost, even though we had
just come from our area 7 minutes away. We got into the house with a spare key, and it was
just destroyed.Like i know (and my mom can testify) that I'm not the cleanest person. but I
never thought I'd see the day a place worse than my room back home. I had an inward struggle
of whether I should applaud or get on my knees and cry.  That was pretty much our first day in
Hidalgo.

Wednesday. Not a lot happened except for looking for people to teach (because the anterior Elder
had dropped all the investigators the week before). But we did find out that we had a baptism on
Saturday. So we looked for the mission leader but he was not home. Then we went for the bishop
and he was working and can't tell us about them.  So it was just another day in the dark lonesome
world of Hidalgo.

Thursday we did nothing but walk the streets and contact people. Easy day of just trying to find
people and learning our new area.

Friday. Well we knew we had a baptism the next day, but we couldn't figure out how to empty and
fill the font. It's a little different here than just flipping a switch. So we start opening up those trap
door looking hatches to see what leads where and what would blow up the church. Then we start
tinkering with the valves. Nothing worked. So we went to the custodians closet and tied some
hand towels together and the last one to a bucket and manually hauled water out of the water
hatches. We had no idea what we were doing... but we had nothing else to do so why not, right?
About two hours of that and you want to kill some one. So we stopped and went to the only lesson
we had this week and it was with the lady and her son who would be baptized! They are awesome!!
Honoraria and Ruben are their names.

Saturday we got the mission leader off his tail and got the fontt cleaned and filled! At 7pm that night,
we baptized Honorata and her Ruben! It was cool seeing them ready for their baptism!

Well, the work goes on here in Mexico! I'm sweatin' buckets and walking more than the people
on the Biggest Loser in their first week! But it's all worth seeing that person who is truly converted
get baptized!  And As Aways!

Stay Classy

Elder Johns