The Mini Missionary is the coolest Chapin I have met

It was a fun week this week. Monday was a normal P-Day adventure and like normal we had a District Meeting Tuesday morning, but when we got home, we called to make sure we could still go to appointments and called to make new ones for the ones that fell. right as we finished and were about to head out, the Zone Leaders called us telling us that we had to get down to Reu for a meeting tomorrow. We then called everyone back to cancel and get to Rue as quick as we could. we almost got stuck in Xela over night, but we somehow found a bus (the last bus) that was leaving 20 minutes late because the driver left to buy food or something. We super lucked out though. We stayed the night at the Assistances house with some other missionaries that I knew because they are dying so they went to the temple for the last time with the President. The reunion was for all those who are going to train this change, and me and my companion were asked to train (or at least go to the training meeting). The whole time they were telling us that we MIGHT train, but there were 24 people there and there are 24 new missionaries coming in and we also ended up writing a letter to our kids. So ya, I would say I am training. I am excited to train, kinda.  It just kinda depends on if my kid will want to work and how obedient he will be. We also found a kid this week that wants to get baptized and has accepted a date to do it. Him and his sister (and her boyfriend) went to church too. Their parents are encouraging him to get baptize but they don’t want to take the step themselves, but I got at least six weeks more to bother them about it. The Mini Missionary is the coolest Chapin I have met. He is really funny and really baggy (trunky). It is a good thing he is dying this Wednesday. 

I have decided to lay off the chocolate.

This week we got a call in the morning telling us that me and my companion are going to be split up and that we are going to receive mini missionaries. We spent the morning completely changing the house so two more missionaries could come. Only one showed up and from what I have heard, the other one bailed out, so we only have one mini missionary right now, so we are in a trio. The mini missionaries name is Jared Fuentes, and he lives in Tecunoman, the hottest zone in the mission, so he is dying from the cold at night. He is actually doing better in it that i thought he would. Right now we are focusing on finding new people to teach, so I am excited about that. I have decided to lay off the chocolate. my acne has gotten better but it is not gone and every Latino that has ever gone in the house and has seen my bags of chocolate kisses always tells me that it is the reason why I have acne, and I have been eating kisses and snickers since forever so I am deciding on laying off it a little and seeing if my skin will get better in the meantime. I did divisions this week with an elder ad he told me that his mom is crazy obsessed with a theory that the book of Mormon took place around Ohio and that there were elephants in America (the Book of Mormon proves it) I think I will look up a little about that. I am glad the dog is doing better and it sounds like your Boston trip is awesome.  I wish I could go to the museum of Science sometime.  I would love that.  The experience really was wasted on you.  You should go the museum of books.  Oh right, the bookstore.  You do that all the time. 

So we might be Guatemalan facebook famous by now.

Things are going well, but it was a super strange week this past week. There are a lot of baptisms in my area, but when my new companion came, it all changed because of all the baptisms from this year, only 5 still go to church. The stake made rules that makes it harder to baptize and the president is coming back up this week to talk to our zone. I think he will be really mad because he put a bunch of really good missionaries to get the zone to baptize again (like 18 a month), but we only got 1 this month. Our meeting with the president should be fun. Tuesday this week was an adventure. we went to visit an investigator that we are going to baptize this week, but on the way we saw him on the side of the road, bleeding. Two men were talking to him and when we came to talk to him, the two men left and just told us that he needed help. He had a bandage around his hand and a bunch of dried blood on his hand. We asked if we could see his wound and when he took of the wrap around his hand, he had a giant knife wound that was bleeding. He just told us that some lady in his house did it to him, but he didn’t know how bad it was because he is BLIND. I wrapped the rag around his hand again and we took him to the hospital. While talking to the lady at the hospital, she randomly told us to wait a minute. She then pulled out her phone to check her facebook for a little. Then she told us to continue. Some nurses were also taking pictures of my companion and I while we were there. So we might be Guatemalan facebook famous by now. Our investigator got 7 stiches (he needed at least 8) and then they sent us out. The hospital that we went to was a government hospital so it was all free. The whole time, our investigator was telling us that he NEEDED to go to his friend’s house, so we went. When we got there, it turned out that he just needed to give them some butter. It was a pretty great day.  Christine you would laugh because the people here kind of remind me sometimes of your little students that you would talk about.  They don’t always do things that make sense.

 We also did eat lunch with a returned missionary this week too. He came back to visit his old areas and on the way to Palo Gordo, he asked if he and his family could buy us lunch. We did not reject the offer I was kinda a jerk and went all out getting ice cream too, but I didn’t feel bad after I realized that my entire meal was only $6.

  I am doing a lot more divisions now and it is always cool to go to another missionaries house because they always have funny things inside. Which showed me a quote that I really like. it was a picture of Jesus holding a kid and it says "It is Good to be Important, but it is Important to be Good" (it just said it in Spanish though).  Thanks for everything you do.  

So you asked who writes – you of course and dad and my mom too.  Erika writes a lot and Millie writes to most of my siblings then Jenna and Joey.  My mom’s new baby hasn’t written me once. Wait, Jenna and Neil have Murph?  That truck has been in the Mecham family for many generations.  Neil understands it is to be taken care of and passed down, right? Like he can give it to their children or something. I will drive the bug with Millie when I get back.  I really like the stick.  

I learned a lot of Spanish "sentence enhancers" from him.

This week was super fast and really filled. I am not sure if I already said it, but some missionaries came over to our house last Monday to take showers and the last person who went in broke the hot water. It didn’t matter too much because the next day we used the day to go to Reu for a district leader meeting. It was awesome. I didn’t escape my cold shower though because all the showers in the coast are cold, but that is because it is super hot in the coast. I am starting to get to know a lot more missionaries so it makes big meetings like this a lot more fun because I actually know people. We got back and when I got to my area my companion told me of all the dumb stuff the missionaries did in my area while we were gone (the companions of the district leaders went to my area to work while we left). I then did divisions in Palo Gordo and at night we had tortas because I heard that the best place to get tortas in the mission is Palo Gordo. Fun fact that I just learned. If Joey got back one year from today, we will both come back on the same day because i get home July 20, 2016, a year from today (my mission will be shorter than Joeys by about three weeks or so). My mission time just got shorter, which actually just makes me really sad. Our shower did get fixed though, but it is a new shower head and the water gets shot out in a straight line, but it wags around like a super happy dog. The shower head also looks like a can with a metal cup intop of it. Plus one for Guatemalan technology. We also had a super angry drunk guy follow us around this week for about 30 minutes. I learned a lot of Spanish "sentence enhancers" from him. For all those who don’t know what a sentence enhancer is, it is something that you say in your sentence to enhance it. He eventually fell down and then couldn’t get back up. My companion is really good though, probably my best one so far. We are trying to work a lot with the members but it isn’t going as well as I hoped. We have a lot of references, but it is getting hard to find time when we can visit the investigator in a time that the member can go with us. I will be in the area this week though so I hope we will have a bit more success. My companion also knows a lot about Sponge Bob so we quote it a lot. He is the one who taught me about sentence enhancers; it is a joke from Sponge Bob. I will be sad if I have changes at the end of this change.

Love, Bret

A photo! Finally.

Elder Mecham has been serving in an area in which their Pday letter writing is on a computer that is unable to take his photos. They wrote today from a spot that has a more capable computer, but he did not have his disc with him. This is the one picture he was able to send of himself with a friend from the zone. He promised he will do his best to send me many photos next week. 

I am so glad to see this boy's face after many weeks without photos!

Christine

He ended up burning the shower head, so now there is no hot water in our house. The rest of us had to shower in cold water, which was super fun.

There were changes in Alameda this week, and my companion Elder Alarcón is now gone. He went to Retaluheu and is close to the mission president. My new companion is Elder Cook from California. Yes, I have a gringo companion and he is awesome. I am training him to be a district leader so that means this next change I will probably leave this area (which is really sad, this is one of the best areas in the mission). It also means that my companion is a really good missionary, and he is. The Mission President told us that he is excited to see what we will do in this area. the night before the changes was super insane with my old companion. We didn’t end up leaving the house until 12:00 and he got wet with the phone (because of tonterías) so the phone broke and couldn’t call anyone, or even turn on. He then called out bishop at 1 in the morning to ask him if he could drive us to the park by 4 in the morning. We got home at 1:30ish and my companion still had to pack. My companion kinda left with a bang, but not a good one…haha. The family we had to baptize for this week couldnt get baptised because they did not go to church last week, but there was a fair in my area this week too and the main day was Sunday, so they wanted to go to the fair with their mom and couldn’t go to church. So we will have to wait until the end of the month to baptise them. Even our attendance in the ward dropped from 220 to 180 this week because of the fair. We are working really hard and getting to know all the members, because they all have references. We have all of tomorrow and Wednesday day filled with appointments because of the members. It is really good though, especially because I have another meeting in Reu with all the other district leaders tomorrow and Wednesday. It is good because my companion doesn’t know the area, so he couldn’t work solo, but he knows the members, so he will just go with them. Today, we had other missionaries come to our house so they could shower because they couldn’t go to the zone leaders house like normal because they are in reu for their zone leader meeting. So the first person that showered was in there for like 45 minutes because he took his time because the rest of us were talking. He ended up burning the shower head, so now there is no hot water in our house. The rest of us had to shower in cold water, which was super fun. My companion is also really tall, like 6ft 4in, and he has been in the coast his entire mission so he didn’t have a sweater. We had to find him a sweater, and it was hard because he is really tall, but not at all fat.   Thanks for asking about supplies but you have kept me stocked. As of now I am good. the only thing I would want is m&ms but they are here in my area so I just need to buy them. No one needs to send me them while I am here. We are at a new computer place so I will try to send more pictures. I could just send that one because the missionary took it at the change meeting and emailed it to me by his camera.  I am glad you got to see Joey on your trip too.  I can’t believe he has left the club.  What am I supposed to do now. 

We also got to ride in the back of semis and stuff. It was pretty sweet stuff.

Happy Fourth of July. We had a family all set for baptism this week, which is good because we promised president that we would baptize this week, but the bishop told us that he wants us to wait  two more weeks until we baptize them. So it won’t happen this week. We had a cool service project as a zone this week. We helped move a clinic from one office to another. There were just a bunch of (Guatemala) problems though. For example, we had to move giant desks from up stairs to down stairs, but the stairs were not big enough to bring down the tables. We then had to drop the tables from the second story to the ground to other missionaries, but there were only enough room for two missionaries to lower the desk and for two to catch the desks. It is a good thing that we have had zone gym days almost every day this change. we also got to ride on top of trucks with office supplies stacked on each other so the pile of stuff in the bed of the truck was twice as big as the truck. We also got to ride in the back of semis and stuff. It was pretty sweet stuff. 

 This week is changes, but I have no idea what is going to happen. The mission president called us this week. I answered and he talked to me about normal District Leader/Mission President stuff, then he told me that he wanted to talk to my companion. He then got another call and told me he would call me back to talk to my companion. I waited until 11:30-12:00 in the night and I fell asleep waiting, but he never called us. The next day the zone leaders showed up at our house because the president told them to come for something (they couldn’t tell us why). Later that night, we ate at the Bishops house and his wife told us that the President called our bishop. Our bishop hinted at us that one of us are going to have changes, but my companion doesn’t think that he will have changes, but, we will know tomorrow.

 For the fourth of July, all the Gringos wore they ties that are of the American Flag (I think it is funny that all the gringo missionaries have American flag ties). We didn’t do anything that day though because it was the American cup for soccer and Chile played so we didn’t do anything that day but watch the game (it went into overtime and penales (i dont know what penals are in English, it is when it is just the goalie and someone has to kick the ball in to goal to win the game)). 

It looks like you and the family are having fun.  I am hoping Dad and me and Joey can do another temple trip when I get back.