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)

December 28, 2021

 Hey everybody! 

Christmas has come and gone, and by the time you hear from me again, it'll be a new year. Pretty neat, huh? Anyway. Hope uou all had a fantastic Christmas - spent time with family, ate some good food, got to sleep in, all that good stuff. Christmas here was a bit crazy. Mexico likes to party, so we had plenty of conversations with drunk people. And the streets were empty all day on the 25th. Too much partying, I suppose.

The rest of the week... was more or less the same. Everybody had places to be, and things to do, other than listen to us, that is. :P So perhaps not the best week we've ever had. But hey, we'll give it another shot next week, and see what happens. 

So, since I've not much else to say, a Spiritual Thought. Christmas was last week, but New Year's is this week, so we'll go with that for our theme. And since the new year is all about new beginnings, that sounds like a good place to start. You know what one of my favorite things about the gospel is? New beginnings. We can have as many of them as we choose too. Every time we fall, we can pick ourselves back up, and try again. Every single time. And I'm indescribably grateful for it. So my advice? Use it as often as you need to. :)

Other than that, honestly, not too much to say about this week. So I guess I'll see you all next year! 

- Elder Blankenbiller

Photos: 

- Christmas card picture

- Sees Candies 😊

December 21, 2021

 Merry Christmas everyone! 

It's certainly a wonderful time of year, especially down here, apparently, where everyone has been partying nonstop since Sunday night. And since we live in a big apartment complex, there's always somebody blasting music, laughing, and having a good time. It's also the perfect time to be out on the streets, because so is everyone else. And wouldn't you know it, they're usually more than happy to have someone to talk to while they stand in long lines to make Christmas purchases. So that's been convenient, to say the least.

Other fun things, we had Zone Conferences this week, which were, of course, Christmas themed. We even got some presents from the mission president and his wife. We also bashed open some piñatas, which is, funnily enough, the first time I've done that here in Mexico. Go figure.

As far as the work is concerned, we keep doing our best, and that's about all we can do. The area I'm in now isn't exactly very big, so finding new people to teach who actually belong to us is kind of difficult. But we're working on it. :P

And yeah, Christmas is in like four days! Pretty neat. I, for one, am very excited. And I hope you all are too! I also hope you've all been enjoying Christmas traditions, seeing family, and for those of you fortunate enough to be on the list, a plate of my mom's Christmas baking. Mmm. I miss that stuff. But all that aside, happy holidays, and have a great week!

- Elder Blankenbiller 

Photos:

Ice slides and late night tacos 

December 14, 2021

Hello everybody! 

First, a moment to congratulate all of you who have stuck with me for this long. It's been quite a while now! Nearly ten months. Pretty cool stuff. Anyways. Back to me. ;)

This week... hasn't exactly been the greatest week I've had. Figuring out a new area is always an interesting experience. But this area has a few more challenges than other areas I've been in. It's pretty small, so it's kinda tricky to find people to teach who actually live here. We do have the airport, so that could be interesting, but again, those people most likely don't live here either. So we'll see how we manage that one. :P

In other news, my luck finally ran out, and I got sick. :/ Starting Sunday afternoon, I was just really nauseous, and had a headache, which quickly transformed into a fever, and had me throwing up every hour or so. Yesterday wasn't much better, and although I tried to keep working, it took a lot out of me. I'm feeling a bit better today, but not quite back at 100%, so we'll see how the rest of the day plays out.

Anyway, given my current situation, I figure it's an opportune time to share a spiritual thought about adversity. Because I mean, who doesn't have a little adversity to face every now and again? So. The most important thing to remember about our trials and struggles is that they have a purpose. They are there to help us grow. Like a tree that grows in a windy place, our trials help us put down deeper roots, and become stronger in our testimonies. But only if we let them! The choice is ours. :)

Alrighty, that's all from me. No pictures this week either, because... I don't know. I'm bad at taking pictures, okay? :P

- Elder Blankenbiller