First Email in the field!

I've had one week to work and so far it has been wonderful. My trainer is Elder Hutchinson. My first area is called El Centro (The Center) in Mercedes, Texas. We live next door to two other elders.

The four of us are the entire district here in Mercedes. El Centro (my area) is the city itself and Indian Hills is all the area around it. I'm currently assigned to bike; it is about half and half between bikes and cars. The winter weather here is great. The first couple days it actually rained and it felt similar to home. However now it has cleared up and especially today it is some of the warmest winter weather I ever experienced. 

The people down here in the Rio Grande Valley are what you would expect. It is about 90 percent hispanic. However, the language is actually about 50% English, 50% Spanish. That is the best part about this mission. It's completely bilingual. Every missionary here is expected to teach in both English and Spanish. A few missionaries are Spanish speakers called to learn English but the majority here are English speakers called to speak Spanish. The northeast part of our mission (Everywhere farther from the border) is nearly all English speaking, but the strip following the Mexico border is Spanish/English. There are two wards here in the area. Mercedes, Donna, Weslaco, and the surrounding areas meet at the same chapel in Weslaco. There is the Weslaco ward (English) and the Mercedes ward (Spanish). We attend both each week with the other missionaries in the area. There are the two sets in Mercedes, one in Donna, and one in Weslaco, with another covering smaller towns to the north. In sum there are 5 mission areas within the ward boundaries. Therefore, we have an impressive 10 missionaries attending the two wards each week. We each have a portion of the ward boundary so members feed the missionaries within their respective areas. 

My favorite part of these two wards is the bishop of the English ward is Mexican and the bishop of the Spanish ward is White, more specifically he is a redhead. Bishop Lyle is the only white guy in the entire ward.

The members here are super active in the missionary work. It is super helpful. The ward missionaries and mission leader are almost always available to help out, especially a wonderful RM named Efrain. I mention him specifically because I'm sure I'll be talking about him a lot. Even those not assigned to work with the full time missionaries are willing to help out when we need it. We get a lot of converts in these wards and the ones who stay active are really strong members.

One of the weird things I've noticed about Mercedes so far is that one of the parallels of streets is named after States. There's Colorado street and Indiana street, etc. There is even a Texas Avenue. You could live at 111 Texas Ave, Mercedes Texas. That's just silly.

Also people really like cars here. Mustangs and Camaros are a normal sight. You can't go a day here without seeing one. We ooh and ah as often as back home, but here they are very, VERY nice cars. "Fancy car" back home is standard here so the fancy ones here you have to imagine are above and beyond.

As for the actual things I've done this week I have been working hard. When we first came to the mission, we nearly missed our second flight because of customs coming from Mexico. Luckily it was delayed so we made it on time. There were actually three other elders going to McAllen with us. They had started their missions before but had to go home and had been reassigned here. All of us met the AP's (Assistants to the President) at the airport and were able to make it to the Mission Office only an hour later then scheduled. We had to assemble bikes to be used later on. Those from CTR bikes were in boxes but the Bicycle World ones were all ready to go (thanks mom and dad!).

We had meals at the President's home, both dinner and breakfast. We had to stay at various missionaries apartments. I actually stayed with the McAllen Zone Leaders so I was excited when I found out I was staying in the McAllen Zone. I'm on the Eastern edge but still McAllen Zone. By noon, after the transfer meeting, we were sent off to our areas. By 4 o clock I was out working.

There was only one investigator family when I arrived but the Arce's are really awesome. They really have a desire to be baptized but there are some things we have to wait for before they can. We're going to work with them as much as we can but we have some other investigators to start working with this week. 

We worked a lot with less actives and recent converts this last week. I'm really loving the people and my Spanish is really coming along. The people here are great and we are working really well. Across the corner from our apartment is a really old LDS church building that is now used as a distribution center. It's way too small to be used for church these days so it has other uses. We use it for Family Home Evenings every Wednesday night. All the members bring food for a potluck and it really helps the Investigators and Less Actives.

We also use the building for district meetings, and sometimes we do our morning exercise there. Our district leader, Elder Pope, plays the guitar so for district meetings and companionship studies, we get to sing hymns with a guitar. It is the coolest thing ever. The hymns sound amazing and it is just wonderful.

My first p-day was great. We went and got my first Whataburger. Whataburger is another fast food restaurant here in Texas and it is pretty good. It is pretty much a mission favorite and they are all over the place here. I believe the first one was in Corpus Christi, so it is a pretty big deal here in southern Texas. 

My first Comp in the field and Trainer, Elder Hutchinson

Meeting the Mission President
President Fernando Maluenda and his wife, Sister Priscila Maluenda