February 14, 2022

Elder Blankenbiller’s mission has a mission conference with Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles tomorrow. So he has p-day today instead of tomorrow.

Hello everybody!

Man, I don't even know where to start. This week has been absolutely packed, in all aspects. We've had a ton of meetings, a ton of member visits, and above all, a ton of miracles. And I don't use that word too lightly. This week we've seen people's lives change, we've been able to find some awesome people to teach, and we had a record-breaking seven investigators come to church with us on Sunday! To keep things from going too long, I'll give you the highlight reel:

We've been talking to this guy named Pedro. When I first met him about two months ago, he was not doing too well. His house was a mess, he mostly just laid in bed all day, and had no motivation to do anything. And just the other day, we were at his house again, and seeing the progress he's made is amazing. He told us straight up, "Ever since you guys came that first time, things have started going better." It's been so cool to see his progress, and he came to church with us on Sunday!

Another miracle we've seen is with Carlos, he's been working toward his baptismal date, and trying to quit a cigarette addiction. His motivation and willingness to keep on trying honestly just surprises me every time we meet with him. We're super excited for him, and he can't wait to get baptized either. 

And lastly, we've just had people come up to us in the street and ask to learn more, or come to church, or whatever. It's really cool to see things coming together here in this area, especially since, to be honest, it was pretty difficult at the start. 

And that leads us right to my spiritual thought for this week. Trust in the timing of the Lord. It's really not an easy thing to do. We want our problems fixed now, our prayers answered even sooner. But sometimes, that isn't what's best for us. Sometimes we need to struggle a bit before we can succeed. But if you think about it, it makes the success so much more exciting, and the experiences along the way show us that God values the efforts we've made, even if they don't yield fruits right away. So please, trust Him. He knows what's best for you, and He has promised us that that is all that He will do. So just trust Him!

Anyway. I've got a thing with a guy at a place. So I'll see you all next week! 

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

- Post-apocalyptic cityscape 

- Tacos 

- Floating stairs 

- Floating stairs + Exotic Bird

- Just your friendly neighborhood Gringos 

February 8, 2022

Another week, another email. Wonder when I'll finally run out of steam and miss a week. Then again, I'm sure you'll all remind me very kindly if I ever forget. So I'm not too worried.

Anyway, moving on to this week. Bit of a blur, to be honest, I don't think we've been able to rest since last P-Day. Too many people to visit, too many calls to make, and too much to get done. :P It's good, though. It's nice to be so busy you don't notice time passing until it's time to go to bed. Makes the days go by real fast, that's for sure. Speaking of time, I'm a week away from having a whole year in my mission! 

Moving on, here's a few funny stories from this week. We met this one guy, Gerardo, on the street one day, and he seemed really interested in meeting with us. And then the next three days, we went to visit him, only to have his daughter come out and inform us that he was stone cold drunk. So. Maybe one day we'll find this guy sober. Who knows.

Other news: Carlos is making tons of progress! He got married, and he's down to only 4 cigars a day, when he used to be all the way up to 17-18! We're super proud of him. And if you guys can keep him in your prayers, we're hoping to get him baptized either this month or the next. :)

I think those are the most interesting goings on, everything else would make this email very long. If you want more stories, feel free to shoot me a complaint, and I'll be happy to give you the long version. ;)

Hope you all have a great week! 

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

- A cool car, rare for these parts

- We discovered the literal spawn of Satan

- Me

- Kronos the Dog, Reaper of Souls, Devourer of Children

- The end of the Metro 

February 1, 2022

Hey everybody! How's it going? 

It's February today, for anyone who didn't realize. I started my mission a year ago in February. I'm only two weeks or so away from a year! Kinda makes me feel old. :P Then again, I've still got a month left of being a teenager, so I'll enjoy it while I can. 

Anyways. Stories from this week... I sort of skipped Friday. I woke up at two in the morning with stomach pain, and probably had to use the bathroom once every fifteen minutes or so until seven or eight, at which point I had become super dehydrated. So I spent the whole day just trying to rehydrate, not die while we walked around, and then fell asleep between lessons in the afternoon. Not the most fun day, but I'm back to normal now. 

Other than that... I don't know that anything too crazy happened. Just normal missionary stuff. Taught lots of lessons, did our best to involve the members more in the work, met new people to teach, all that good stuff. And yeah. That's honestly about all I can think of. Just a good week, honestly. So I think I'll leave it there. Until next week!

- Elder Blankenbiller

Photos:

- Two white guys on a bridge 

- Air pollution 

- More air pollution

- Imitation American food

- Edgy anime pig

- Cheesecake 

- Space Jam 

January 25, 2022

 Hi everybody! 

Another week already, would you look at that. This week definitely went by in a flash for me, probably because we did so much stuff. We easily walked somewhere between 8-10 miles every day, between appointments with investigators, meetings with members, and various other going ons. Quite the full week, to keep things simple. And I actually took pictures this time, aren't you proud of me? ;)

My companion had a baptism lined up on Saturday in his old area, a lady that he found, saw all the way through teaching, and then got transferred away from the week before her baptism. Not to be discouraged, we nagged President until he gave us permission to go, so we got to go to her baptism on Saturday, and my companion got to baptize her! Pretty cool stuff.

And as for our area, we're still working on reactivating the ward, but we're making good progress. And we finally got all of the plans done with Carlos to help him prepare for baptism! Send lots of prayers his way, if you can, he's going to need all the help he can get. He's got three weeks to go from smoking two packs a day to completely clean. And we know he can do it! But prayer still helps. :)

Other than that, I don't know that I've got too much to say... I've resumed my studies of the Old Testament after taking a brief mental health break. :P But now I'm in Ezekiel, so I don't exactly know if my situation has improved all that much. If you want a lecture about wheels full of eyes, and four headed beasts that don't turn when they fly, shoot me an email. If you'd rather be able to sleep at night, maybe don't. ;)

Hope you're all having a great week! And I will see you in the next one!

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

- Elder Bird is too strong for our poor refrigerator 

- Aracnis Deathacus 

- Baptism in my companion's previous area that we got to go to

- Just two white guys in Mexico. Not the most common thing in the world, thought I'd share 

January 18, 2022

 Hey everybody! 

Coming to you unscathed after the most chaotic transfers I've ever seen, it's me again, with another weekly email. (Someone told me I should start putting titles on these. I told them maybe after I hit my year mark.) Either way, we had transfers yesterday. But the story doesn't start there, oh no, we have to go all the way back to Saturday to begin our tale. 

Saturday night, we're doing what we normally do while waiting for transfers to arrive: poking fun at the Zone Leaders for telling us to be in our apartments by 8:30 to receive the transfer call when we all know they won't arrive until after 10:00. So there we are, eating some tacos at 8:45, when lo and behold, we get a phone call from the Zone Leaders. Who did, in fact, have our transfers, and weren't just looking to make us nervous. We wrote down the info, and then finished eating tacos. 

(Side note, as we were about to leave, a drunk guy and his friends come out of nowhere and start talking to us. We shared a message with them, and the drunk guy thought it was hilarious that a white guy was speaking Spanish and living in Mexico, so he bought me another round of tacos. No complaints from me. I suppose if I bothered titling emails, this one would be called "Tacos Borachos".)

Anyway, Sunday morning, we're trying to coordinate all the moving pieces of getting my old companion to his new area, and my new companion here, and then we get a call back from my old companion's new companion, informing us that my old companion's new companion's current companion had Covid, and they had to quarantine. (Make sense? ;)

So we spent all day nervously waiting for a call from President (who must have been overworked beyond all belief figuring out how to make temporary transfers. Apparently a lot of people were sick.), and at 10:30 that night, the AP's gave us a call, and told us that my old companion would be going to a different area for a week or so until he could go with his new companion, and that my new companion was good to go for arrival the next morning. 

Long story short, everything was confusing for everyone, but we got it figured out in the end. And my new companion is... (drumroll please)... Elder Bird! For those of you who only skim these emails (first of all, why, I'm hilarious), he and I lived in the same house for three months back at the beginning of my mission. So that's cool. I think we're going to get along just fine, if you ask me. 

Anyway, to avoid going over my word limit and your attention span, let's wrap this one up, shall we? I hope you all have a fantastic week, and that you forgive me for not taking photos. I kind of forgot to. 😅

Until next time!

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

- Gonna be honest, I didn't take a single one. My apologies. 😝

January 11, 2022

Hello again everybody! 

Not a ton to report on this week, it's still been kind of slow as people recover from their holiday hangovers. But! There are still some fun things to share, so here we go.

First up, we celebrated Reyes on the sixth. (That's when the Three Wise Men come visit and leave presents for everybody. It's like Christmas again, but with different food.) Speaking of the food, I got to try Rosca de Reyes, which is sort of like a massive bread ring, where they hide a doll inside, and whoever finds the doll has to pay for tamales on Valentine's Day. If you're confused, welcome to the club. :P All I know is, the food tasted great, and I'll probably be stealing the recipes so I can make it when I get home. 

Other things. I was looking at a calendar the other day, and realized that I will be twenty in two months. This should not have been that much of a shock, I know how time works, but still, I was hoping to get a little bit more out of my teenage years. Oh well. 20, here we come. 

To explain the photo of things on fire... We live in a big apartment complex, but right behind us is a smaller one that has a reputation for not being the safest part of town. We have a very large red spot on our map that says "Don't go there. Just don't". So you probably get the picture of what goes on back there. Anyway. We're coming back from an appointment one day, and we look over, and there's just a pillar of smoke. Shortly followed by firetrucks and police cars racing down the street. Good times. We have no idea how it happened, because we as missionaries abstain from being informed about absolutely anything that goes on in the real world. :P

Anyway, enough of crazy Mexico things. Let's wrap it up with a nice Spiritual Thought, how's that sound? This one is one I'm stealing from my mom, so credit to her. This last week in Come Follow Me, we read about the process of the Creation, specifically, about how it *was* a process. God didn't simply snap His fingers and say 'Alright, looks good'. He allowed it to grow, step by step, day by day. And all the way through, it was 'good'. The same is true for us. We all go through a process of becoming, and when we follow the plan the Lord has for us, we are also 'good' the whole way through. I really liked that idea. And if you want to hear more, bug my mom, I'm sure she has lots of time on her hands these days, not having to deal with me. ;) 

Have a great week everyone!

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

- I have obtained plant

- The slums are on fire

- And the son of one of our investigators is Batman

January 4, 2022

 Hi everybody, welcome to 2022!

I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve celebration, that you ate some good food, enjoyed some good company, and went to bed at a reasonable time. ;) Our New Year's went about the same as our Christmas, so I'm going to avoid mentioning it further, and hope that this year makes up for it. 

Things that have happened this week: On Wednesday, I went and got the first dose of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. (It took forever, being a foreign citizen is complicated sometimes) It honestly wasn't too bad. I was a little sore the next day, and then it had mostly burned off the day after that. So that's good news. 

The bad news is, while I was away getting my vaccine, my companion was with another companionship, and they had contact with someone who they're pretty sure has Covid. So they're all going to get tested, just in case. Hopefully that comes back negative, because I already spent a good eight months of my mission in quarantine, and I'd rather not repeat it. :P 

But other than a potentially ill companion, not too much has happened this week. We've got a couple of people we're working with who have to either get married or stop living with their partner before they can get baptized, which is always a complicated situation. They're progressing well, but its still tricky to work around, so your prayers on behalf of Patricia and Carlos would be greatly appreciated. 

And last but not least, a quick spiritual thought. To avoid making this too long, I'll go with a simple one. If you have not yet read the Family Proclamation, I invite you to do so! Read it, study it, pray about it, and apply it's principles to your own life. It is a powerful document that I have seen change lives down here. And it's not even that long! :)

Anyway, that's all I've got for this new year so far. Take care of yourselves, and Happy New Year!

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

• The Zone 

• A meme for all my Spanish speaking readers

• We found Jesus! (It wasn't hard, he's everywhere)