My new companion is Elder Juan Bautista. That's right; I'm with John the
Baptist! It's crazy! He's about that awesome too. He's from Salt Lake City
Utah, but he was born in Tapachula, Chiapas! He's got perfect Spanish AND
English, and he's ridiculously good at missionary work. He just walked up and
handled business with the very first person we saw outside our apartment!
Another cool fact about him is that his older sister AND younger brother are all
serving missions right now. It's gonna be a sweet transfer.
Our assignment here is a bit crazy; I noticed you asked if we were still
spanish speaking, and the answer is yes. We are on a secret mission to start a
Spanish Unit!!! (It's not actually secret) Although, when President Castro
pulled me aside to "debrief" me at transfers on what we're actually doing here,
it felt like it! There's a lot of balancing to do between the three wards and
the stake, so it's kinda like walking on eggshells. At this stage, we have only
one native spanish speaker in the ward (who speaks perfect English and is
married to a guy who doesn't speak spanish at all) and NO TRANSLATION
EQUIPMENT! So that's our first objective: 1: find equipment, 2: find members,
and above all, find investigators! We had two but one's out of town for the
next 3 weeks, and the other dropped us on the door. So we'll be doing a LOT of
tracting. It's also been tough because I had to wait 'till this morning for my
wallet to catch up to me. XP oops! So we've been on foot for a while, but we
should get rolling just nice now!
Transfer meeting was the most amazing meeting ever. Elder Buckmiller
finished his mission and returned in honor!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!! I love
that Elder so much; he's a HUGE part of the change I've made this past year. It
was a very emotional parting; but I can't wait to see him later (And married
too; she waited!!!) Elder Mortimer and Elder Lewis are training! Elder Jenkins
is my Zone Leader!!!!! WOOHOO! And one of the best parts was that the morrow
family from Taft came to see Elder Buckmiller off, so I got to see Samantha,
who's heading off to BYU Idaho in a bit, Travis, who's turned in his papers and
is expecting a mission call, Cami who's looking just great with JACKSON!!! SHE
HAD HER BABY AND HE'S SOO DARN CUTE!!!!! I was so happy to see them all, it was
a huge moral boost! Taft's also got SIX MISSIONARIES in it! I was like;
NANI!!?!?!!?!!? (Ask Brittney if you don't know what I just said) (Danielle says this means "What?" in Japanese.)
We've got ten missionaries here in the five cities; and they're all
awesome. Sorry I didn't e-mail yesterday, We couldn't work it out. I love you
all, and hope everything is going awesome. keep up the good work; pray and seek
missionary oportunities! I'm seeing the importance of that now!!!
Love,
Elder Matthew David Clough
