Hey everyone! This week was pretty calm but the work moves forward, even if it feels like my Spanish isn’t, haha. But each day surely is something new and different!
Earthquake Season This week there was an earthquake that took place a few Mexican states over, but was still felt in Oaxaca. It was a 7.1, but fortunately we were far enough away from the epicenter. But it was quite a surprise! We had just gotten back to our apartment and the emergency missionary chat started going off and then we just felt the ground shaking a little and headed outside with everyone else on our street. The telephone wires swayed and the ground shook for a few minutes, but it wasn’t serious enough to cause any damage. The funny thing is my companion said September to December is “earthquake season” in Oaxaca, and with the number of memes I saw the day after I believe it!
The Tough Decisions Since COVID is still going on down here, we still have the order by the mission president to not eat in members’ homes and to only stop by to pick up the food and leave. We have been doing this for a few weeks and it isn’t great but we are making the best out of a bad situation. However, there is a less-active family who we still pick up food from time to time, but they live crazy far away so we stop and take a break in their house for a little while each time. The visits to their house are always crazy because this Brother loves to read and study the strange and difficult questions in the Gospel, and always asks us about them while we wait for the food to be prepared. And through broken Spanish and a not-to-perfect knowledge of everything in the Gospel, they are tough conversations. However, the answers either end up being easily found on the Church website, or are “angel questions”, or questions to ask if an angel ever appears to you in the middle of the night, because they literally don’t have an answer on this earth right now, haha.
So anyways, this week we went to their house, talked with this Brother for a while, and then we were ready to leave but it turns out the they had set the entire table and were ready for us to eat there. And the Brother began to reason that they were less-active members and one time won’t hurt and actually made a pretty good argument, but my companion and I weren’t feeling too great about the situation. In the end, we decided to just pack up the food and eat at our apartment. It probably offended them, but a huge part of missions is obedience and I probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep well that night if I went against the mission president in such a direct way. However, afterwards we asked President for permission to eat there, and through some very specific instructions, today we were able to eat there and have a great time. I think it was a huge lesson and huge blessing to follow the Lord, and in the end, everything worked out alright, so I believe we made the right decision.
The Work This week was pretty exciting in terms of the work because a lot of people we have been teaching finally made some progress and are getting closer to baptism. The main difficulty we are having is getting them to read the Book of Mormon because we haven’t even been to nearly all of these peoples’ houses. Partly this is due to COVID, partly due to our area being massive, and is a problem we are working on solving. Just because of COVID, everything keeps flipping back and forth with communication over the internet (phone calls, zoom meetings, text) and communication in-person. There is no set standard and this is what makes it hard for us to work and our investigators to understand what the “normal” is supposed to be. But despite all this, there is progress being made because the Lord’s work will continue onward!
Pictures! 1. We ordered the best food (Tlayudas) and best drink (Tejate) I’ve had here in Oaxaca 2-4: Spiders! 5: District Photo
-Elder Ord
