We also found someone who has a pet monkey

Elder Mecham Had Changes This Week... to Chamac. I don’t know if you guys remember the story of Chamac, but the missionaries where taken out and it was added to San Antonio. They then put missionaries in Chamac now, which are me and my companion Elder Zuniga, a Honduran from San Pedro-Sula. So, more or less my area got cut in half and I have one half and my old companion has the other. we got to hang out with all the missionaries that were going to train or had changes the night before in the Zone Leaders house though. I also went to my first change meeting too. We have found some pretty positive people really fast though. The only problem is that all our progressing investigators need to get married and they feel as though they are not ready to get married (even though they have at least 2 kids and have been living together for at least 7 years. We also found someone who has a pet monkey! I took pictures, but the monkey is dark and it was dark outside and no matter what I did the picture would not come out well. Also a returned missionary came back to the mission to visit his converts and the members this week in Chamac. He brought his cousin and she brought her 1 and 6 year old sons (no idea why, none of them know Spanish). They just kinda smiled and said sí whenever someone said something to them. I am also going to start contacting by chess. i ask people now if there is anyone we could visit or that likes to play chess. I figured that it talking about God won’t get us in the door with their intention to really listen to us, maybe and game of chess (win or lose) might gain some of their confidence.

You asked if I am ok and if things are going well.  Right now it is hard getting  over discouragement and always working. You can have a nice day planned out but it could end up just being a day closed doors, fallen appointments, digressing investigators, and by 5:00, you are just ready to go home and call it a day, but you have to keep working. there is a lot of discouragement in the mission, but it is the one thing that happened two days ago when you had a really good lesson, found someone who gave you hope, or read/heard something that gave you what you needed to keep you going. There is a lot of failure in the mission, but it is the one success that you had that makes it all worth it and gets you going again.

You also asked about food.  The grossest thing I have eaten so far is innards. it is not that gross (counting my blessings) but I would say it is the grossest thing I have eaten. It is a bit worse now that I have had it just plain and not in a soup or something. Also, yesterday I had something (it really wasn’t bad, but my mentality of it made it bad). It looked like wet dog food and tasted like it too (well at least what I imagine what wet dog food would taste like). We ate it with the RM that came back to visit people from the mission and he ended up puking. I figured I would too if I have not grown accustom to the food here. There is also this type of meat (it is like a Guatemalan Meatball) that I puke after every time I eat it.

I don’t mind platanos now. They remind me of apple sauce (don’t know why), so I just think of apple sauce and I can eat as many as are put in front of me. But I am still the biggest fan of eggs and beans with tortillas.