Aquí Linchamos

We received the following email on November 11.

Que tal vatos,
So I realized I haven´t written in a few weeks so I thought I should write everyone just in case someone thought I got lynched or something down here. It´s been a pretty cool few weeks though which is cool.

I don´t think I´ve ever said anything about this on the group email yet cause it´s pretty bad and I didn´t wanna be super negative or anything. But the toilet in our house is absolutely horrible and gets clogged everytime we use it and occasionally overflows. It became pretty infamous in our zone and even in some other parts of the mission as well. The miracle this week is that we finally made it through the bureaucracy of the mission, basically actually convinced the secretary that it was a problem, and they replaced the toilet. So miracles are real, brothers and sisters. That´s been a huge testimony builder for me and through this experience I know that through Jesus Christ we really can overcome all things.

The works been really cool and everything and we have a few people we´re teaching but it´s been pretty hard to get people to actually come to church. There´s been a few unexpected miracles though, like not exactly what we wanted or anything but cool and all. Two weeks ago, we were teaching a family of 3 and it was going super well. At the end of the lesson we asked them to be baptized and the spirit was super strong and the whole family was crying and everything. They said they´d be baptized and then we told them we were super happy for them and began to tell them why that was gonna bless their lives. So yeah super great and everything but then the dad said he had a question. This man tells us their whole family was already baptized 7 years ago in our church and they even had pictures and everything. So he asked us if he could be baptized again. So that was a mixture of super funny and kinda frustrating, but through it we kinda learned that it was actually a huge blessing that we found these guys cause we could get them to come back to church. Not really what we wanted or expected, but that´s just kinda what God does sometimes. In the end we were still doing God´s work so that was cool.

We´ve also had some more Azumiatla adventures. On Saturday the only member family that lives there invited us over for lunch. The problem with that was that Azumiatla is 35 minutes away by bus, kinda expensive, and the only thing we knew about this family was that they lived on "the hill outside the pueblo" and that she works in a tortilleria. So it took about 2 hours to find her but it was actually super cool and one the people we´re teaching helped us find them cause she knows every person in the entire town. We also found out that they´re pretty good friends with each other so that´s another cool miracle.

Day of the Dead also happened but basically if you wanna know what that is just watch Coco cause that movie pretty much nailed it exactly. It was pretty cool though and that might be a tradition I bring home with me. Way better than Halloween in my opinion.

That´s pretty much it though. That was kind of a ton of random thoughts in no particular order and sorry if these are going down in quality haha. Imma try and make them better in the future though and put more thought into it.

I hope you all are doing great,
Elder Olivier

Fotos:

1. Me in Azumiatla walking hasta la goma
2. DeMaso and I in front of the aquí linchamos sign in our area(you can probably guess what that means haha)
3. Us in front of the great cathedral in Puebla
4. Us in front of the Puebla sign overlooking the whole city

dia de los Muertos

We received the following email on November 4.

Hey fam,

Wait so since when were you getting surgery mom? I was eating dinner and watching the Canelo boxing fight with the familia Ocaña and then I got an email from Oma and Opa that said you got surgery and I had no idea and the familia Ocaña thought it was really funny that they told me before you guys did haha.

Day of the Dead was actually super cool but surprisingly really calm like we didnt see too many crazy people on the street but I think that might just have been our area. But yeah the traditions are really cool and we talked a lot about family history this week. It's pretty much exactly the same thing as the movie coco and a bunch of people actually had decorations from that movie so I guess that was super accurate.

DeMaso and I get along super well and we're planning on riding motorcycles all the way to the amazon after the mission but he's been in a dear John process with his girlfriend for the past week or so so he's been a little off and on depressed lately.

Also that's insane that the ravens beat the Patriots. I thought the ravens sucked haha but they must be pretty alright then. What was the score? Also DeMaso's an Eagles fan but idk why cause he's not from philly and he's never been there haha.

Cameron idk if annie got a byu magnet or not haha but that probably means you'll get in lol. What'd you get on your act?

Hope you guys are doing great
Zach


Also here's a picture of Elder DeMaso in front of our unified colony. You can probably guess what that means haha.

¿Que Genial Eh?

We received the following email on October 28.

Que tal vatos,

Sorry for not sending an email last week I know you all missed that a lot and probably cried a little bit. I was kinda busy last monday with the doble dragon again. I think I´ve talked about that before but that´s when you breath fire out of both ends of your body at the same time. So yeah that was fun and I didn´t sleep that much that night. The next day we went to the doctor and he had no idea what was wrong with me cause I´ve already been out here for 4 months now and I´m already adjusted to the food. But whatever it was I´m fine now and everything´s back to normal except for the toilet but that´s always messed up so nothing new there.

But yeah my new comp is Elder DeMaso and he´s pretty cool. We get along super well which is nice. Pretty much our entire zone changed as well so now the zone of missionaries that I´m in is majority from the U.S. so that´s kinda weird and I´m not really sure about it but it´s cool. Now when we walk around together with people from our zone people think we´re tourists and try to talk to us in English. I refuse to respond in English to them though and they´re usually pretty confused or disappointed or impressed or something along those lines that I know their language.

The work was a little rough this week and no one really wants to help us with anything but it´s cool and we´re pushing forward.

That´s pretty much it for the week though, sorry if that was kinda lame. Hopefully this week will be more exciting and I hope you´re all doing fantastic.

Elder Olivier

fotos:

1. Me in Azumiatla
2. Elder DeMaso in Azumiatla preaching the gospel to the only people we could find who would listen(jk that´s a joke)