Its hard to believe that it was only a week ago that i wrote you guys. This week has been soooooo long! Not because its been a bad week or anything, but it´s just gone by really slow. I feel like that usually how it goes when i first get to an area or with a new companion, and then once we get more settled in time starts to fly again.
Well my new, and most likely final area is in a city called Acuña, which is also a border town, and its the farthest point away from the mission home. So actually people tell me that im closer to Dallas than i am to Saltillo (where the mission offices are) haha. I might as well just take a bus home instead of a plane. Haha just kidding. But anywho, so we are in a little branch here called Industrial, and my new hijo´s name is Elder Muñoz!! He is from Arizona and he's bilingual which is cool. Spanish was actually his first language so he speaks it really well, obviously... Haha but he's awesome! He comes with a lot of excitement to do the work and he's a really hard worker. We´re opening area here so we are starting from scratch basically, the last elders left a few investigators but not much, they also left us the electricity bill and water bill... haha gotta love that. But the area is cool! it's also HUGE so we have bikes! It's my first area in my mision entire with bikes. And for one part it´s awesome because we get around a lot faster! And my legs are going to be rock solid by the time i leave here. But we've had a ton of problems with them already, my tire popped so i had to buy a new tire and a new tube, and it's really not that great of a bike either and it's really low to the ground so i hit the concrete a lot. But I guess it's better than walking!!
This week has been A LOT of contacting and just talking to everyone to try to find people to teach, and we've found some really cool people! We found a señora named Gladyss, who was actually the sister of the initial guy we contacted and she just happened to be there the next time we went. She has been to church a couple times before and is passing through a trial right now with her mom who was just diagnosed with cancer. She is one of the most simple and humble people i have met on my mission and really has a true desire to be a good person and to follow Christ, so we have high hopes for her.
But this week is going to filled with having follow up appointments for people we contacted this week so we've got a lot of work this week. And that's a good thing:)
So here there are 4 missionaries in our branch and i have more time than all of them combined, and then doubled... haha. But something i've realized though is that no matter how long i've been in the mission, i keep learning new things. I keep getting put in new situations and learning new things all the time. It doesn't matter if you've been a missionary for 2 weeks, or 20 months or 20 years, i am always learning and being humbled and learning to depend more on the Lord instead of my own knowledge and abilities. There's no such thing as a perfect missionary or a missionary with all the answers, the progressing never stops as long as we put our trust in the Lord and let Him work with us and mold us into the person He wants us to be.
So now it's official, my return date will be the 29th of December, the plane ticket is already bought and everything. So they should be sending me the itinerary in a few weeks so as soon as i have it i will send it to you guys. Kinda crazy thinking i'm entering into my last 10 weeks in the field...
Well the work is moving along here in Acuña, and hopefully next week i'll have more to tell about the investigators we have found this week.
Hope you all have a great week!!! Love you all:)
con mucho amor,
Elder Bird
