Dear Family & Friends,
Well the work here in Mexio City is underway. There are a bunch of wards & stakes here. I'm serving in a ward right now. There are quite a few members. It's so cool to be able to fit right in to a group of people and know how things are run already. Such is the Church I guess.
Last Tuesday, we set up a table/booth in los tianguis (it's kind of like a flea market). Everyone who wants to sell stuff sets up a booth in the streets and lines the streets and packs it tight. They set out thier stuff and start bartering with the passersby. It's awesome. They have everything you could ever imagine. It's like a walmart on steroids. We setup a table and put out Books of Mormon, videos, pictures, proclamations of the family, all for free, and we took down names and addresses for references. In about 4 hours, we collected some 12-15 references. Pretty good for that amount of time. Those that are ready are attracted and those who aren't ready just ignore us. It really helps us save time (tracting is a last resort here).
One night we were contacting some old investigators in the area book and we came across one that we felt impressed to visit. We went and knocked on the door. It turns out that the investigator was the mother of this woman who answered the door and she had died a year ago. We talked with her a little, and she said she wasn't really interested in church/religion, etc. Her son did have a few questions because he just went through his first comunion in the catholic church, so we set up an appointment for later in the week to talk to him. We left and got about 3 blocks away when we heard a shout. The son was running after us and told us that the mom wanted us to come in the house and talk now, so we did. It turns out that she thinks that her grandmother sent missionaries one time for a purpose, and this woman was looking for some peace and tranquiltiy to fill the vacancy of her mother's death. We talked for about 1.5 hours and set up a return appointment. We will talk about the plan of salvation next time. She said she also invited us in because her son has lots of questions that she doesn't want to make up answers to. She said she'd like us to answer them. Questions like "if God created Jesus, who created God?" and a few other good ones.
The work is good here anyhow. There are lots of religions with missionaries out here too. JW's, catholics, pentecostals, evangelical christians, etc. They all have some pretty peculiar beliefs too. But we don't ask people to believe us. Rather, we help them build a relationship with God, and to ask Him if what we say is true or not. We don't convince anyone of anthing. The Spirit does the touching, reminding, inspiring, answering, and converting. We just try to create an environment in which the spirit will enter.
Well we got permission to leave the mission to go to the Centro today. It's like a big mall, but HUGE. We can't really buy the things we need here so we got permission to go. The best part is, it's a bartering system too. Nothing is really a fixed price. That's one of the biggest differences that I've seen between these two countries. I'll try to take some pictures around the city, but it's not really advisable to carry a camera. I haven't had any problems yet, but I hope there won't be any. I feel really safe in my area during our proselyting time. It's when it's dark and late when there are few people on the streets that it's risky. I've found that as long as I'm friendly, people don't really harass me as an american here. Sure, some shout 'How are you' with a heavy accent, but it's not really bothersome. The members like to try their english with me too. We might do an english class, but in order to come, the people have to bring a non-member too.
That's about it for now. We opened this area, so we started with 2 investigators from before. We are helping them progress, but we found another new investigator and he is getting baptized on 5 Feb. He's really a great guy. We have another woman who wants to get baptized on Sunday, but she still has lots to learn so we'll have to teach a lot this week.
I love you all and hope things are great!
Elder Bunker
