¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!

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Ryan Mecham	Dec 23 (7 days ago)
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

FAMILIA!

This week was awesome! We have been super busy with a bunch of meetings at the mission office; which is just a 15 minute Gua-Gua ride from our appartment. Gua-Guas are pretty much vans converted into crazy taxi/buses and they just cram as many humans as can fit. The most I have felt like a sardine on my mission so far was in a Gua-Gua full of 26 people, most with packages or bags of some sort, or both. 

The spanish is coming along nicely, although a lady did laugh directly in my face while I was trying to do a contact.

Can´t wait to talk to you on Christmas! I hope the kidlets are there. I want to hear from my favorite sobrinos

Im out of time but i love you all.

Elder Mecham

no subject)

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Ryan Mecham	Dec 16
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

Hola Todos!

This week was great and I love it here! Elder Weinmuller and I are working super hard and teaching a bunch of people -- which in all honesty is he teaches a bunch of people and I just sit there and look pretty, and testify about things. Maybe share the occasional scripture. Pretty much the MTC is there to make you think you learned some Spanish. I love it though! I am learning so much everyday. 

We had a baptism scheduled for this week for Yerilaisis (names in this country :/ ) but her aunt got super sick and she went to the hospital to go visit her. We had to set it for this saturday. I'm not worried though, she is a super awesome investigator and studies everything we give her. She may actually know the lessons better than I do. We are probably going to get at least 2, maybe up to 6 baptisms before I finish my training.

We don't get a lot of referrals which are usually the best investigators, so we have to do a lot of contacting. Contacting in this country is easy but hard at the same time. Let me explain: The people are super nice and almost everybody lets us in. They listen to our message. Invite us to come back.... but nobody keeps commitments to study or pray. So all in all, it's easy to teach lessons and get high numbers but those numbers don't mean a whole lot because not many of the people are progressing. I don't get discouraged though because we are doing all that we can do, which is all that we need to do. I also know that the Spirit can only guide us if we are moving. So that's what we do.

Talk to you all later!

Elder Mecham

Mi primera semana en el campo misional

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Ryan Mecham	Dec 9
to Ali, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Dallan, Isaac, Jake, Kess, me

I love the mission! My trainer is Elder Weinmuller, he is from Texas. He has less than 5 months on the mission, speaks almost perfect spanish and is probably the best trainer in the biz. This week has been really hard. I don't speak very good spanish and wish that I could communicate better with the gente. My area is awesome and we have a bunch of investigators. We keep super busy and I love working, even though I only understand about 60 percent of what is going on. The language is coming along very nicely.

Elder Weinmuller has been having me do as much as I can in the lessons and I have invited 4 people to baptizm. We currently have 2 fechas, baptismal dates, and although I was there to set one of them up, I don't really count either because they both had received all the lessons and were ready for baptism before I even got here. We have one date for the 14th and one for the 28th of december.

This country has a funny tendency not to have power, so finding a place where I could email home was a bit challenging. We have running water in our appartment, which is a huge blessing and I love it! 

Today was my first P day and we went to the park with a bunch of other missionaries, we also went to the mall and Elder Weinmuller and I split a pizza from papa john's. I SO LOVE AMERICAN FOOD!

Well... back to work!

Love you all!

Elder Mecham

PS: I wasn't able to write home last week because I didn't have my P day.

Oh also, my P days are on MONDAYS now, like normal people.

Final Week In the CCM!!!

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Ryan Mecham	Nov 28
to me, Amanda, ashley.mecham, Austin, Ali, Isaac, Kess, Dallan, Jake

Todos,

This week was awesome! We went to the field on Friday on exchanges.
Which was the best! I got to pretty much just tag along with these two
elders. We taught everybody that would listen to us and got
appointments to teach the ones that wouldn't. We went "knocking doors"
(People don't really have doors, you just walk up and yell 'Saludos!')
but ya, there were only a couple of places where there was nobody
home, and everyone here is so nice they will just let you come in and
teach them. We taught 5 lessons and, I am glad to say, I understood
most of what people were talking about. Oh! We also went to someones
baptism! I think there was sort of scheduling conflict because they
don't usually baptize people on fridays. regardless, it was AWESOME!


SIDE NOTE: I sometimes feel like my spanish is good enough to maybe
get my basic point across, then I try to talk to a native speaker that
is not one of the teachers (because the teachers apparently talk to us
like we're children) and I just end up getting maybe 25 percent of
things, because everyone here talks so fast! I can understand
spanish.... I just can't understand the people.


So I Got yelled at by a drunk guy....

It was a dreary Friday afternoon. We were walking from our last
appointment to their appartment (which was super ghetto, in case you
were wondering) they needed to go get their cameras for the baptism so
they could take pictures. ENTONCES, we were walking and some guy
practically pulls one of my companions aside to talk to him. He was
talking super fast and I couldn't understand what he was saying. He
kept motioning at me and I guess he was saying something about how
missionaries keep coming to his house. Not sure. He asked where we
were all from, my companions were from guatemala and peru and he was
totally fine with that. When he found out that I was from the US he
got all upset and started practically yelling at me. I don't know if
you have ever been yelled at in a language you don't understand, but
it's not fun. He was getting mad that missionaries keep trying to
teach him but they can't speak the language. My companions didn't
speak any english so they couldn't explain anything to me. Probably
the most scared and confused I have ever been so far on my mission.

Don't worry I'm fine.

Sorry I'm out of time

Love you all!
Elder Mecham