Las Hermanas están bien chafa. Pero la Navidad es la mejor

Wowzers what a week. Ill just jump right into it. 

 Tuesday : Started out good with a bucket shower and then we had a solid study sesh and killed our first two lessons with a member. They were awaseome i invited both to be baptised and they both said yes. Miracles do happen. Then we went to teach armando again. Tómala. Malo idea. I should have walked right past his house. He started bashing us right away and started saying stuff like joseph smith needs to repent because he is a sinner and is going to go to hell and then he took the book of mormon that we gave him earlier and said "el libro del mormon es basura" and threw it on the ground. Too far man. We picked up the book, put it in my bag and then told him he was being incredibly rude and then we left. Oh well ill go pray for him.

Wednesday : Got some good estudiar time this morning and then headed out to teach. We taught a bunch of decent lessons and then went to one of our inveestigators houses to eat empanadas and take some swings at a piñata. Then we shared some scrips and headed home.

Thursday : Christmas and it was awesome!!! Talking to the family for a chunk of the day, Hearing that my best friend got her mission call and didnt tell me but then did a different opening sort of thing for me! SWEET! I am so stoked for you and i know you are going to do amazing things in Chicago!!! 

Friday : Curveball! So Elder taufa was shipped off to Comitan along with elder Mena becasue some sisters there were being harrassed. Crazy. Sweet. So the other part which is not cool is that we got two hermanas. They are aright. Idk. Hopefully they dont keep us from having fun.

Saturday. We did some home improvement with my comp and we installed a mcguyvered water heater for hot showers and we fixed the water and wow awesome. He was the district leader from the other area and he is now my comp. Sweet. He is super hard working and he is a white dude from Chihuahua. 

Sunday : We got a million and a half lessons because we are only teaching 30 min lessons now and we got 40 contacts to finish off the 200.

Scripture of the week 1 Nephi 4:13 Read it. Ponder it. Pray about it. Act upon what you discover.

 13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.

Con amor
  

Elder Runyan

Pics will be coming in a later email becuase this cyber is chafa.

1 Transfer Down 14 To Go!

Well this week absolutely flew by! i am super stoked and now I have completed 1/8th of my mission. Woah... Slow down...

Sweet week though!

Tuesday : Woke up and Elder Bradshaw and Elder Mena came over to practice taking initiative in lessons. Its a really hard thing to do when you dont know spanish, and i guess its hard to do when you know spanish too. I cant imagine how hard this would be if i hadnt studied the scriptures like i did in the MTC.... Then we went out and taught a lesson to Hno. Armando and i took the initiative like crazy! KILLED THAD SPIDE. (homis shoutout) and then we went and taught Hna Flor which went really well, and we helped her decorate her christmas tree with her grandkids. I really needed that! Thats a shoutout to you grandma! Then we taught a couple other lessons to a few new investigators, and one we just taught sitting on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere... Then one of our investigators brought a friend to the noche hogar and they both said they really liked it when they left!!!

Wednesday : REUNIÓN DE LA ZONA! Headed out early to zone conf in Chahuites. what a fun time that was!!! So we are doign this whole worldwide thing called "el es la Dádiva" or "He is the gift" as you might know it there. All the way through january 18th we will be focusing on this message of how christ was a gift to us and the biggest gift we will ever recieve. The goal is to strengthen peoples testimonies of Jesus Christ and to ultimately share it with everyone in the entire world. Also from what we have heard, The church has purchased the most expensive billboard real estate in history to display this message throughout the duration of this campaign. I would like to challenge each of you to go visitwww.mormon.org/christmas and find out what it means to you. Its a little hard here becasue the people arent very bright, and they dont even know what  the word Dádiva means. So yeah. But our mission goal is 400 baptisims in that time period. Well I have a surprize for that one in one of the other days... and then we got choco bananas again. (shoutout to the crew) and i got two packages! One from Holly Gardner, and one from Greta Anderson. None others yet... :( I hope they get here in time for the reunion in ariaga. Also we bought these goat hove whips for $5. that was cool. 

Thursday : Got up early to do my laundry and Hno. Armando was out shoveling gravel so i went and helped him for a good half hour while lopez slept becasue his skuliosys or however you spell that was hurting really bad. It sucks typing here becasue all of the computers try to correct it into spanish... andyway, It felt super good doing service. Then we practiced contacting with "la dádiva" and a few other things. Super cool.Then i went on splits with elder mena for the day. It went pretty decent. We went to reforma and tried for some appointments pero nadie fue esta... So we went back to ixhuatan and had a couple of pretty chill appointments. Then we had a noche hogar con hno victor y hna alejandra and all of thier familia. It was super cool. We learned how to speak a bunch of zapoteco and also learned how to pray in zapoteco. Its nuts... There are so many languages here... Zapoteco legit sounds like a mix of french and doctor suess... CRAZY!

Friday : Slept in for a while becasue i was up, double dragoning for a solid half hour at 3 am. fun. I was also so exhausted that I didnt wash out my mouth and nose very well, and the dragon breath (shoutout to drag) just sat and brewed in my nostrils and lingered for the rest of the day. That stuff is stronger than altoids. Then we had breakfast kinda with hno Armando and it was tamales with iguana... Strrangely good. Maybe the weirdest thing that i have eaten thus far... It was like super chewy( like hard gum) meat that came as a full package with the head and parts of the tail including the vertebrae and the skin. Like scales. Tough to chew but not half bad. THen we went to go teach one of our investigators and she answered the door topless... So needless to say she went and put some clothes on... People these days.. Dirty spides... Then we got rejected about a million times by people because "Oh no. Somos catholicos." It doesnt matter. Thats not the point. We are trying to help you come closer to christ... Then we taught the guitar class and that was fun as always but hard becasue people here arent musically talented at all. They cant carry a tune in a camelback.... That pretty friggen eazy. Overall super difficult day with a bad stomach ache, crazy headache, heat flashes, sucking up a runny nose that tastes like vomit, walking for over 5 hours straight, in 100+ degree weather, and getting yelled at and getting doors slammed in our faces. But thats not what makes a day good or bad. Its your attitude. You can let it drag you down as the dust of the earth or you can keep a good attitude and remember that as you do this you are standing shoulder to shoulder with Jesus. Let god give you strenght and he will. Let him in. I am still happy as can be at the end of this day. Remember that.

Saturday : well not much happened other than we had 3 BAPTISIMS TODAY!!! Two twins and thier grandma!!! And Elder Bradshaw and I did a musical number which cosited of the flute, guitar, and singing in two languages. Absolutely killer. Then we staed after for a while and i was just messing around playing stuff that i wrote and stuff that i know and a crowd gathered. People are absolutely in awe here. I dont think i am really that good though... 

Sunday : Started off with church which is always good, and i bore my testimony this time but way better. Neato. Well we caught, killed and ate an armadillo. Its the second time i have eaten it. It is good but the process is a little weird... Then we went to the church for ever and tried to watch the Christmas devo from the conference center and it didnt work super well becasue the internet here is slower than snail snot. Then came home and konked out. 

Today : Got a call from the assistants to the prez and recieved news about transfers!

I am not getting transferred and niether is Elder Mena, but Lopez and Bradshaw are and My new comp starting tomorrow at about 3 is going to be Elder Taufa who is a tongan who lives in arizona!!! #stoked!!!!! Also sad for lopez to leave, but life is life. It was fun, and a memory i will never forget.

Scripture of the week : Isaiah 43:1-5 Read it. Pray about it. Ponder it. Act upon what you discover.

1 But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

 2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

 3 For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

 4 Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.

 5 Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;

Te amo todo!

I might be on for a lil while today, so HMU!!!

WHASS GOOD CUH

Well this week wasnt very interesting.

Ill spare you some of the boring details.

Tuesday : One of those really hard mission days. We had 2 short lessons with people that we werent planning on teaching because nobody was home. We literally walked the streets for 7 hours. What a killer that is in the heat....

Wednesday : Sort of a roller coaster day. Felt super wiped all day, and it was probably from all the walking the day before. The district meeting topic was things that have helped you on your mission. We all shared some scriptures which were super helpful, and then we watched a video called the obra de salvación. It was super cool, and everything helped a ton. It all put me in such a good mood. Here is the link.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd30i48a3do) Its in english. Then we taught some really quality lessons and then had dinner at Hno. Pacos house and then shared a frikin killer spiritual thought.

Thursday : Thanksgiving! kinda. Well we had some pretty good appointments this morning and then we hustled all over the place getting stuff ready for the Tuxtla trip and we ran into one of our investigators in the street who had been evading us at all costs. I went and talked to her, and she agreed to meet with us and to come to church. She said she was scared of us. hmm. Well then we took a taxi to Tapana at night. There we stayed at the other elders house and had a Thanksgiving feast in the style of broke missionaries. Egg salad sandwhiches. Sweet. Then we konked out early because it had been a long day.

Friday : TUXTLA!!!

I have never been more excited to go to wallmart in my life.

Well we got up early to catch the 6:30 bus from Tapanatapec to Tuxtla, (3 hours) and then got there, got our visa stuff done, and headed to wallmart. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE. We walked in and it was like i was back home. I had literally forgotten what the real world was like... So we went crazy. I spent a grundle of money on food that is impossible to get anywhere else in the mission like nutella, peanut butter, real oatmeal, and butter among other things. You dont know how much you miss peanutbutter until you cant have it... Then i loaded up on christmas stuff. What a blast that was! A small Christmas tree for 30 pesos ($2.50) and some ornaments for 8 pesos(about 50 cents) and then we got some christmas gifts and stockings to put it all in. FUNNN! Then it was time to leave so we packed up and headed out to the mission office to wait for the others that were heading back. They gave us the packages that we had. I only got the one that was from amazon. Thats it. Ill keep you all informed just in case, but idk if im going to get them in time. Also i didnt get your letter yet Mads... Im dissapointed at this whole mail thing to and from Mexico. Then we came back and stayed the night in Tapanatapec.

Saturday : Craziness. On the way back from Tapanatapec, we passed through one of the immagration stops, and they wouldnt take my copy of my passport anymore because of no particular reason so they took me off the bus, and into the temporary jail room. Albeit scary but fun. We then called some people and got it figured out and took the next bus. we got back home and I finally got sick. Sounds like Elder Hondy Mac and I are on the same page. Double dragon for most of the morning. It was brutal. When it finally calmed down long enough to breathe, I took one of those cipr pills (SHOUTOUT TO RICH INGERBRETSEN FOR THE CIPRO PILLS) and it plugged me right up. Then we had 2 lessons and then came back and slept because exhaustion.

Sunday : Well Sunday. It was good. Like sundays usually are. We had sacrament, and then we taught the Gospel principals class, and then our comida appointment fell through so we played the piano for a while and then we went to one of our lessons. We were just sitting ther etalking like civilized people and then the lady started talking about her cousin who was deported from america and started yelling at me and telling me how much she hated america and i just sat there and took it. That was hard. Im not going to go more into it or what my thoughts are on the topic, but that was hard. THen we went to the church with Juan and Amalia to help them do thier family history which is awesome becasue i dont know how to do family history. So i basically played piano for another hour and a half. I have learned how to play most of the hymns on piano as well as on guitar. Then i started my video journal. SICK. I am going to record a short video entry every night along with my written. So there you go! Thats my week in a nutshell!

I wont be on for long today. Sorry..

Scripture of the week : Jacob 4:10 Read it. Ponder it. Pray about it. Act upon what you discover.

Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that he counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all his works.

I love you all, Always forever

Near and far, Closer together

Everywhere I will be with you

Everything I will do for you.

Siempre con amor,

    Elder Runyan