Lost Blanket

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Ryan Mecham	Aug 11 (8 days ago)
to me

Well folks, it´s that time of the week again. Yup, you guessed it: LETTER TIME!

Okay so this week was basically a rollercoaster ride. Some of the ups: Cruz and her kids, Alejandro and Amalia, are preparing to get baptized in September. German (another investigator) has started coming to the Book of Mormon class on Wednesday nights. Santa Fe and Las Colinas will finally be changing houses soon. We have been having some amazing object lessons and family home evenings with the members and investigators. Some of the downs would be that... Catalina didn´t come to church on Sunday, we will have to move her baptism back. And.... IM LEAVING!

Yup, I´m going back to the capital(ish). The Lord has called me to serve in Sabana Perdida, which FYI directly translates to ´lost blanket´. So ya the downs for this week are that I won´t be able to live in the new house, but even worse, I won´t be able to go to any of our baptisms! I´m okay with it though, as long as they get baptized it doesn´t really matter if I am there.

But wait! there is more ups! Quite the roller coaster in deed! It turns out that a change of areas is also a huge up. I love how much a new area makes me really focus on getting to know and helping the people. GREAT NEWS: I get to go look for even newer and better things to learn and people to love and teach. 

The grand opportunity that change brings is just that - change. As our circumstances are alterred, comfort zones left behind and challenges met, it gives us the opportunity to rely even more on the Lord; and let Him change us. That is why I love the mission. I learn more and more every day that the only thing I have to do is be obedient to what the Lord asks, and ´feed his sheep´.

Hope y´all get on lookin for some sheep to feed.

Elder Mecham

Milagros means Miracles

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Ryan Mecham	Aug 4
to Ali, Amanda, Ashley, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

This week was pretty much great. It is always a good week when I eat a lot of mangos. I love mangos, I´m gonna miss them when I am forced to leave. There is so much fruit here. It´s the best. The other day we were just walking down the street and a mango fell from a tree, after almost hitting a motorist it just sat there. Well, not for long because Elder Cardoso ran up and snatched it. Im pretty sure he would run in the street for a mango any day.

I hope you all remember Catalina, the lady who flagged us down a few weeks ago. Ya, well we are now teaching her daughter-in-law and her kids (Catalina´s Grand-kids). They are superb, we started teaching her mom and the first day we passed by Amalia, her daughter, was super sick. We gave her a blessing. We passed by the following day and found her up and running, with a huge smile on her face. I love miracles.

We had been planning a movie night with the branch for the last few weeks. Well, Saturday rolls around and the whole day there are huge black storm clouds. cultural note: people here don´t go anywhere in the rain (not even a sweet movie night) so we passed the whole day praying it wouldn´t rain. It didn´t rain. Well it started raining right as the movie started, it rained a lot. It stopped raining right after the movie stopped. And started raining about 45 minutes later (presumably when everyone got home). Milagro numero 2.

So ya this week was pretty great.

I know that this church is true and I know that more every day, every time I teach these people, every time I testify of God´s love for his children.

GODSPEED!

Elder Mecham

(no subject)

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Ryan Mecham	Jul 28
to Ali, Amanda, Ashley, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

Let me just start by saying that I love being a missionary. These past few weeks have been busy... Like really busy. We don´t have an hour open in our planners until Saturday. I love it. It is so much easier to lose yourself in the work when you are really busy.

This week was so amazing! So many miracles! We are teaching so many people that have just been prepared and waiting to hear us. Catalina (from last week) went with us to a baptism of some of the other missionaries. It was super cool because a family got baptized, along with a few other people (11 in total). Catalina told us that she would have been baptized too if we had only told her earlier. Let me remind you we have known her for less than two weeks. She has even started to share with her family what we teach her. We have been teaching two of her grand-kids as well, they came to the baptism too.

We are trying so hard to help the branch understand their responsabilities in this work as well and they have started to help us a ton. We have been receiving more references than we have time to contact. I love being busy helping people come to christ. 

I am super short on time, but hey I have pictures!

1 - Spanish word of the day: Lagarto, it means lizzard. These things are everywhere.

2 - I made ´´welcome to Santa Fe´´ tacos for my companion. Chipotle!

Elder Mecham

  

sorry, I haven't figured out how to transfer pictures.

Well Well Well

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Ryan Mecham	Jul 21
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

I would like to start off with a big HAHA to my big sis for no longer being able to serve the Lord as a full time missionary. Also I would like to congradulate her and thank her for the awesome example she has been for me.

Well this week has been amazing and I have so many things I want to write all of you. BUT... I don´t have time.

However I will tell you this one story:

It is a Monday. Last Monday actually. We had just finished emailing the family and what not, and were determined to find somebody to teach while we waited for a family home evening to start in half an hour. We started to walk down a long dusty street. A street we had never been down. Feeling determined to teach and contact we walk... nobody talks with us. We continue to walk down the street, with newfound resolve to find somebody. Well, let me just tell you something: the Lord works in mysterious ways. As we jaunted along at a somewhat determined pace, a lady sweeping her porch flags us down. Odd. I think to myself ´hope she doesn´t want to kill me and eat me´. Not really, I didn´t think that. But that really does never happen so I was a little bit intruiged. We get to know Catalina. Well, after assuring that we are ´The Mormons´ she tells us she wants to know how to congregate herself with us. Upon her insistence we place an appointment to pass by her house the following morning.

This is where it gets good.

We pass by her house and teach the restauration of the Gospel. She accepts what we teach with open arms. We focus a lot on the invitation to pray. She accepts.

We pass by the next day because we were in the area and wanted to see how she was. We find out she can´t see well enough to read the pamphlets but, nevertheless, has gotten her grandaughter to read her the part that talks about how we should pray. She writes it down in bigger letters so she can review it later. We teach her how to pray.

We pass by a few days later. We leave her a book of mormon and a booklet for lesson 3, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She tells us she prayed. She knows our church is true. She accepts to get baptized in August.

We pass by the following Saturday and teach about faith and repentance. She tells us she will do everything humanly possible to go to church but has to care for her dad (96 years old). She gets mad at her sisters for not doing their share in caring for her father, because it is keeping her from going to church.

She does not go to church. We pass by her house. She just about makes us cry as she tells us how she knows the church is true because she has felt answers to her prayers and has been able to sleep better at night since we started passing by. She tells us she wants to endure to the end with all her heart, we make a plan for her to look for reading glasses.

Well, I know that if we keep ourselves worthy and working hard, the Lord prepares people for us to teach and help. (and they look for us!)

Love ya!

Keep on saying your prayers!

Elder Mecham

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Personal/Ryan's mission

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Ryan Mecham <ryan.mecham@myldsmail.net>	Jul 14
to me

Real  short email this week.

I finally got my new companion. His name is Elder Cardoso, he is from Provo, Ut. I knew him before when I was in my old zone, so that is pretty cool. We get along really good and he has a ton of excitement to work hard and teach everyone. I LOVE IT. We are lightin up the missionary work out here and I am out of time...

I know that the church is true more and more every single day. I am so grateful for all the blessings the Lord has given me and I hope to be able to bring the gospel to every single Dominican I meet. Oh ya, and the Germans that we are teaching too. (they speak spanish)

Love you all,

Elder Mecham

Los Tres Mosqueteros

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Ryan Mecham	Jul 7 (4 days ago)
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

I don´t know if I have ever told you that I love working in trios (I do... a lot). I have learned so much this week it is just about almost believable. One of the greatest blessings I have enjoyed on my mission is the constant opportunity to serve others. And now I have twice the ability to serve my companion... because there´s two of them! I made tacos for them on Sunday with a not so secret ingredient... you guessed it.... CHIPOTLE!!! Well too be honest I think I used a little bit much of the secret ingredient (or maybe they were just really tastey) because Elder Amador started to cry while eating them (I really love chipotle).

Well this week was the best week I have ever had on my mission. Which is not really a suprise because they seem to just keep getting better and better. This week we worked almost exclusively in Las Colinas. That originally made me really nervous, because I know what it´s like to leave an area untended for a week (Cue flashbacks of sick companions and Dengue). Nevertheless, I had faith in the Lord and that all would turn out allright. In fact, one of the things I learned this week is that it really doesn´t matter where I work, because where ever it is I am doing the Lord´s work. One cool way I learned that was that we were teaching a new investigator named German. He is really smart and super interested in the church and prays and reads and keeps almost all his commitments and works on Sundays :( and.... we found out... lives in SANTA FE!!! Yup thats right, new investigator for when I return to work in my area.

Thats all the time I got folks, Love Ya.

Elder Mecham

Hey Y´all!

Personal/Ryan's mission

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Ryan Mecham	Jun 30 (11 days ago)
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

Well this weeks email comes with a surprise!

My companion, Elder Teves got a call from the AP´s and will be flying to Curaçao tomorrow. Ya... well I will have the opportunity to work in a trio again! I will be working with the Elders in Las Colinas (the area next to our area). It is only temporary, 5 days or something until I receive my new companion. Well goodbye Elder Teves. 

Well this week went quite well. We went on companion exchanges with the Zone Leaders because one of them is sick. I ate a coconut bigger than my head... delicious. We all had them and we only broke one of the kitchen knives we tried to use to open them. :)

We tried to contact in one part of our area that we don´t normally visit because it is really far and not a lot of people live there. We had to explain to every person we talked to that we DON¨T worship Joseph Smith, and that we use the Bible just like everyone else. It is not that odd to have to explain these types of things to people, being it is one of the most common misconceptions of our religion here. The part that was odd is that we taught an entire neighborhood of people that had the exact same doubt and expressed it with the exact same words. I think there is a local pastor or something that clearly hasn´t had the opportunity to speak with the missionaries before, we shall find and speak with him.

Did I mention that my companion is leaving tomorrow by surprise and that it feels really weird.

Well I know that I am here on the Lord´s errand, serving with someone the Lord wants me to serve, and serve with. I am reminded every day that ´my thoughts are not his thoughts´ and that I do not know all things that are to come. But I do know how to prepare for the unknown. That is after all, my dear friends, one of the purposes fundamental in this life: to establish a foundation of Faith in Jesus Christ and to follow His gospel.

Well I don´t have much time this week, and I was going to send some pictures... but I forgot my card reader in the house :)

Until Next Time!

Elder Mecham

Next Week On: ´The Emails from Elder Mecham´

How do you make tacos and trios work in the Dominican Republic...

(spoiler alert -- it involves a lot of chipotle)