posted at: 19:37 | permanent link to this entry
April 7, 2014
I'm glad your party turned out a success. And the
show, too. Also that Dad has a job. What will he be doing: dealing
blackjack? Or managing machines that electronically steal your money (a
Mexican ATM ate my mission debit card last week; it made me think of Las
Vegas).
Here in Mexico, a major method of construction is
filling PVC pipe with concrete. I'm glad Dad is keeping up with the
times. I didn't even know the hot tub was broken. But that makes me
glad, too.
I haven't had any desire to sit in a hot tub as
we've been at forty degrees (celsius) these last couple weeks with the
promise of higher temperatures in the near future.
Conference here was a disaster. Nobody from the
branch presidency showed up on Saturday to open the building; as a
result, we, the missionaries, ran around a whole bunch under the burning
sun looking for keys only to, in the end, not find anything and not be
able to see the morning session. The afternoon session was slightly
better, but nobody showed up to see it except us. The priesthood session
was excellent. Sunday, again, nobody came to see conference. I'm
looking forward to reading it in the Liahona (if it ever gets here; we
still haven't got our Liahona from the last conference).
Also, I seem to have lost my Preach my Gospel at
our zone conference last week. I've already asked the zone leaders to
check in the building for it, but, seeing as our zone hardly ever gets
together, even if they find it, I won't see it for another month. It
wasn't really a very good week. I hope that next week is better.
Te amo y espero que Dios te bendiga.
posted at: 19:34 | permanent link to this entry
March 24, 2014
My new area is a lot like my first area, just a lot smaller. There
aren't that many members, but they fill the house of worship (probably
because it's pretty small too). We need to be careful not to baptize too
many because there's just not space for them. My new companion is a
Poblano named Elder Rivera. He's been on his mission the same time as I
have. He's not that into working, but we'll get things done anyway. I've
only had enchiladas once on my mission. The food they call enchiladas
here is actually called 'enmoladas' (and we eat those from time to
time), but actual enchiladas are pretty rare. We do eat quite a bit of
rice, but it's just plain white rice. The most common dish they give us
is chicken in broth with white rice on the side. And tortillas. In any
given week we'll eat that three or four times. Tacos we don't eat very
often. These people generally don't make tacos at home, and we don't eat
out much.
I'm glad spring has been treating you well. Spring
doesn't exist here. We're well into the hot season here. In fact, in
this new area we don't have fans. The last few nights have been
unbearable. The mission secretaries finally sent us money to buy fans,
so we'll buy them today, and sleep better in this next week. I don't
remember complaining that our observation of brassica arapa was boring,
just that the format was poorly done and pointless. I hope you and your
class enjoy your gardening experience and that there are no sudden
plagues to spoil your fun (like there has been here; a plague struck the
Mexican lime crop and limes, which they serve with everything here, have become extremely expensive).
We
put in very few service hours here. People generally tell us no when we
ask if we can help them, and often get offended. We still offer, but
it's really difficult to find things to do.
posted at: 19:32 | permanent link to this entry
March 10, 2014
I never said that I wouldn't write this week: just that I wasn't
sure if I would have time or not so that you wouldn't worry if you
didn't hear from me. But here I am. We did travel in bus to the mission
office, and from there to immigration. It's about a three and a half
hour bus ride. The buses are pretty comfortable, even if it gets a bit
boring traveling for so long. On the trip out, it stretched out a bit
because the bus arrived to pick us up an hour and a half late, and
returning it did the same because the bus driver got lost. Which isn't
something you generally expect from a major bus line, but that's what
happened. And it's just fingerprints and a signature. Nothing too fancy.
We've been hearing a lot about improving our
teaching skills here, too. They say that if we want to see different
results, we need to do things differently. This is the mission with the
greatest number of missionaries in all of Mexico, and also the lowest
baptizing. So . . . hope you can change things up at your school.
Haven't seen any hummingbirds in Mexico. Or much of
anything alive. It's mostly concrete and sand. And coconut trees. And
stray dogs. And more sand.
We don't change our clocks until April (if it's a nasty habit in the U.S., imagine what it's like in the tropics).
posted at: 19:29 | permanent link to this entry
March 3, 2014
I did sprain my ankle, and last Monday it hurt plenty; the doctoor
told me I would be out of things for two days. But, I woke up on Tuesday
and it didn't hurt anymore, and it never did swell or change colors or
anything, so I just lost a couple hours Monday evening. We hardly ever
play soccer because there's really not time to do it. Mondays are our
busiest days. In fact, it's possible that I won't be able to write you
next week because I'm going to travel to renew my visa (they've never
done it on Monday before, but there was a new announcement that that's
how it's going to be from here on) and I have no idea if I'll get back
in time to write (and while I will probably be able to write the next
week, it's the week of transfers and there exists a remote chance that I
won't be able to then either).
I'm looking
forward to getting back to first world problems. Second and third world
problems are depressing and worse when you're in the middle of them.
Pretty much the only birds here are pigeons,
pelicans and seagulls. I've seen a few terns and once I saw a frigate
bird. That's it. They don't sing, though. And the pelicans have the
nasty habit of dropping fish bombs that stink to high heaven.
This week we received a visit from Elder Valenzuela
of the first quorum of the seventy, and he gave us some instructions and
corrections about things. It's been really hot. That's about it.
posted at: 19:26 | permanent link to this entry
February 24, 2014
I didn't write much because I felt a little pressed
for time, and I wasn't feeling too great. I did read your blog, though. Thank you for
writing me. Everything was pretty good until I sprained my ankle playing
soccer this morning. The doctor says to stay off it for two days, and
then it should be fine. But those are two days of work lost this week.
Oh, well.
We had lots of investigators at church yesterday,
and that's always a good thing. You know that two-thirds of my mission
have already passed? The time really flies. I love you lots.
posted at: 19:22 | permanent link to this entry
February 17, 2014
Estoy muy excelente, si con un poco (mucho) de calor. Estamos a 35
grados. Y a penas se está empezando la temporada de calor. Te quiero
muchísimo. He pasado una semana sin mucho de acontecimientos. Pero me
siento bien.
posted at: 19:19 | permanent link to this entry
February 10, 2014
I had a good week with a few minor setbacks. One of our investigators
disappeared and another ended up in the hospital, but in the whole,
everything went well. We had seven investigators at sacrament meeting,
which made me happy.
posted at: 19:17 | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 03 Feb 2014
February 3, 2014
I don't get any of the news, so I know nothing about
the drought, but there's always a drought there. We've got water here.
It's so contaminated as to be practically unusable, but we've got it. We
also have a well. With a bucket and a pulley and everything.
Everything's
good here. The weather has been between really hot and really windy.
They announced the transfers today, and I'll be staying right here.
An
investigator with whom we've been working on and off for six months
surprised us this week when she told us that she was going to get
baptized. At first we didn't believe her, but then she explained to us
how she had had an experience the night before that showed her the Book
of Mormon was true. And yesterday she went to church for the first time.
It definitely made my week.
We
also had stake conference this week. Our mission president was there. I
really enjoyed the stake presidencies messages. On Sunday we were able
to watch from our own chapel because they webcast the conference. Aside
from a few technical difficulties, it was a good experience.
posted at: 21:22 | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 14 Jan 2014
January 13, 2014
Hi, Mom. Don't worry about Christmas. I'll be home for the next one, and
we'll do a super-awesome extra-special one. And that you gave Thomas a
phone clarifies Dad's commentaries about Thomas' cell phone going
through the wash. When you say your old phone, are you talking about the
blue one that's fifteen years old? Or have you gotten a new new phone
to replace your Android? See, these are the little things that nobody
ever gets around to tell me.
Anyway, I hope the week wasn't too stressful for you. A short
observation is that taking a little time to read the scriptures every
day will help you maintain your sanity and balance the rest of
your time better. Also: the employers here in Mexico are so much worse
than the employers in the U.S. for work/home balance. The average
Mexican works ten hours a day, seven days a week with an occasional
rotating day off (which is never Sunday which is especially frustrating
for us as missionaries). And they work that schedule not because they're
desperately poor but because that's what the employers demand.
As far as the mission schedule goes, it's not as simple as you
paint it. Sometimes there are meetings and things in the morning when we
ought to be studying. And sometimes our companions aren't interested in
studying. And sometimes we have church at eight in the morning.
Sometimes we get back to the house late and we have to decide if we're
going to plan or go to bed on time. Sometimes lots of things happen. But
if we decide that studying is important to us, we get it done.
To stay warm I've been going out to work with my fleece on and my
raincoat on top (the cold comes with rain and high winds). And today
it's in the high eighties and really sunny. The locals say that another
storm is supposed to come in tomorrow, but the weather report that we
get from the mission says it'll stay sunny and hot all week. We'll see.
Today
we went to the escolleras (breakwater) in my area and saw some pretty
cool stuff. I took pictures that someday I will send to you. I saw a
frigate bird and a puffer fish (there were people fishing and they'd
just caught it) and terns and gulls and oil tankers and giant concrete
tetrahedrons that had to have served some kind of purpose but were
pretty incomprehensible and a skin diver spear fishing. I also got kind
of sunburned, but It was a good trip.
This week we were looking for this
one inactive member who we didn't know in this one part of the city
where we'd never been, and, after looking for her for an hour, crossing
the colony from one side to another, we gave up and headed back; right
then we saw a couple women struggling with corrugated metal roofings,
and stopped to help them put them on top of their house. So we're up on
the roof and the neighbour comes out of her house to ask us to put a
pause on the roofwork because she was going to shower (her bathroom
doesn't have a roof and we were up high to see inside). And it turned
out that she was the person we were looking for! And then after some
more talking, we found out that the woman we were helping was the
ex-wife of one of our members whose daughters we were also looking for.
So it was interesting how that happened.
Amor,
Bryan
posted at: 21:47 | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 05 Jan 2014
December 9, 2013
Hello,
Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak in sacrament
meeting. I spoke about missionary work. It was a bit different. I've
spoken a lot here; my memory is that the missionaries hardly ever spoke
at home, but that doesn't really matter. And then we got to watch the
Christmas devotional. That was nice. It's been a pretty good week. The
weather won't make up its mind about whether to be cold or hot. If it's
not careful, I'll spew it forth from my mouth. But, it really has been
pleasant. It's my companion's last week in the mission, so we'll try to
make it special by working extra hard (and we have a baptism planned for
Saturday). That's really about everything.
Love,
Elder Bryan Hall
posted at: 21:10 | permanent link to this entry
December 23, 2013
Hello,
Merry Christmas. It's been a good week, but a little
stressful. I got my new companion on Tuesday, and I've spent the week
teaching him the area. He's Elder Soler from Honduras. On Friday we had a
Christmas dinner with President Morales in Minatitlan (which is about
an hour away from Coatzacoalcos and two hours from our area). Then, on
Sunday, we had a stake devotional where we sang "Oh Holy Night" to the
members. It was a good experience. Be excellent to each other, and have a
very merry Christmas.
Love,
Elder Bryan Hall
posted at: 20:58 | permanent link to this entry
December 2, 2013
Hello,
Happy
Monday. We're still in the rainy season, but we've had a few days of
clear weather, so the storm water is receding (and there are fewer
puddles in the streets). Thanksgiving is a non-existent holiday in
Mexico, so there were really no celebrations. I did go out and bought a
little pie thing which tasted almost, but not quite, completely unlike
pie. And the other American who lives with us joined me in singing the
Thanksgiving hymns from the hymnal.
We
did a lot of walking this week, but didn't see many people. But we're
going to continue working. I hope you all have a great week.
Love,
Elder Bryan Hall
posted at: 20:56 | permanent link to this entry
Bryan Elliot Hall
St. Peters, Missouri
Page created: 09 November 2008
Page modified: 09 December 2017
