Lots of teaching and missing the food already

Update from Monday, January 9, 2017

Hey Mom, 

This week was pretty awesome. This is the year that I spend one entire year in the mission.  Kinda weird. Tuesday we didn't have anything so we just basically contacted like 30 people.

Wednesday was awesome!  There is this family that we reactivated that has a daughter who is married and a son who are inactive.  We visited them Wednesday.  Their son is 9.  We taught them and put a baptism date with him!  It's awesome, two birds with one stone.  We are reactivating this family and getting the son ready for baptism.   I think the plan is to get the dad ready so he can baptize his son. That would be best. The C family who contains like 50 people in it, well we have been visiting them. We haven't been able to get a set set appointment with them so we haven't really been able to get all of the numbers from them.  It takes a little work to build up their trust and desires to meet with us. One of the little boys is having open heart surgery so they are struggling there.  We have been helping them with whatever we can.   We are going to give a blessing to their son.  We have been working hard and planing with the ward to get them to come back to church and to baptize the husbands and some of the kids who haven't been baptized.  There is lots of work but it takes a while to pry them open.  I'm sad because I will probably leave before anything happens with this family.  We also visited another less active elderly couple.  It turns out they haven't come to church because he has really bad health issues.  We gave him a blessing and after he was crying. It was actually a pretty spiritual experience for all of us.  

I don't really tell you weird or crazy stories because there are crazy things that happen everyday so I'm kind of used to them and they don't stand out to me.  I will try to be better about sharing those because they will get good laughs out of you guys.  

Something awesome...B was selling at the tiangis and she was reading her Book of Mormon and a lady said that she felt like she should talk to her.  Beatriz talked about The Book of Mormon and gave her a tarjeta with our number and everything.  She basically got us a new investigator.  It was funny because that day we had to be home by 7 and so I told her earlier that she had to contact like 30 people for us. 

We have finally gotten to visit O and B.  They are from Mexico City.  They are super super awesome. They sell carnitas and they are super good.  The have been in teaching for like 2 years.  We will see if wee can get them to progress. We were visiting them Sunday and another missionary in our zone called us so I answered it and stepped away to talk with them.  They told us that there was someone in the hospital in our area from their ward that wanted a blessing.  He wasn't doing too good.  It was kind of cool, O and B offered to take us so we went.  I hope everything is going ok.  Something that I have  learned a lot is that we are here to serve first.  We gave the family our number and told them if there is anything they need to call us, we tell that to anyone we contact as well.  It's weird, I have given more blessings in Spanish than in English.  It's cool giving a blessing.  It really is a good reminder of the priesthood duty I have.   It's pretty awesome. 

I think that is pretty much it.  Love you, Mom.


Update from Monday, January 16, 2017

Hey Mom,

I'm doing pretty good.  It's been awesome. I don't remember what I have told you.  These last few weeks have been weird emailing that's probably why you haven't updated the blog.  It's been awesome!  So we had changes and I'm staying here in Consti with Elder Romero.  I'm happy I can celebrate my Birthday here in a comfortable place with Elder Romero.  We are happy. 

We went to Costco today and to a store and bought new sweaters and ties.  It's been blazing hot.  It only gets a little chilly at night and in the morning. I don't know if you know, but we have a baptism date for February.  It's a less active family and the son isn't baptized, he's almost 10.  It's been cool to reactivate the family and teach the son.  His name is J.  He is super cool,  He reminds me of Dillon haha.  

Lots of our investigators have problems with alcohol so that has been funny haha. Also B has, well I don't know what to call him, but he's the son of her ex husband.  She has been taking care of him because he was in a super bad motorcycle accident.  It's been cool.  We have been teaching him and some cool things have been happening. Before he lost his faith he got into drinking and stuff really bad and lost sight of god.   His life went down hill and when he heard of us missionaries he thought we were something weird.  Well I guess we are, but still.  When he heard of "los hermanos" that teach B he thought it was something crazy.  The first day we visited him we were ourselves.  Elder Romero and I are goof balls and we became friends with him.  He found that interesting and so he listened to us and he is really interested.  He thinks his accident wasn't a coincidence and that he is here listening to us.  It's been really cool.  He even came to church yesterday. 

We have been working with the C family which is the ginormous family with investigators and menos activos.  Our visit last week with them was cool, we talked about everything.  We are going to teach them Wednesday.  I think we will be able to baptize the husband and activate everyone else.  It's been cool.  They really like the Elders, they are just super sensitive. It's been fun.  Contacting is always interesting and we have a pretty solid teaching pool.  It's been a little hard to get people to church, but here in Mexico it takes time haha.  We have reactivated multiple families and it's been super cool to see.  It's weird how much bigger the congregation is. 

I'm going to miss carnitas.  We have investigators that have a carnitas stand.  They always give us carnitas, sometimes in tacos and other times in tortas.  The food here is super super good!  You know me, I love food, so I'm already sad.

I love you guys so much!

Love Elder Bush


Last Monday when we heard from Hayden the first thing he did was ask what we were up to.  We sent him this:

I felt terrible but wasn't going to pretend like we were just "hanging out."  We went on a 4 day cruise and were able to spend a day in Mexico.  It was so fun for us, especially his brothers, to get a glimpse of what Hayden is experiencing (sort of haha) and what Mexico is like.  It was weird to think that for a day we were in the same country.  We love you, Hayden!!!

Eating tacos on the street.

The street shopping.

Mexico life.