We are in a City Called Iztapalapa

A little mom commentary:  In posts past I have taken the emails Doug has written home and fixed spelling, punctuation, run on sentences and such.  I have taken pieces of Dad's, and parts of Mom's and bits of Stockton's to make sure we got as much information as possible.  This week is different.  Our email didn't arrive until almost 4:00 in the afternoon but when it did it was beautiful.  It came from a happy servant of our Heavenly Father who, I believe, sat down and frantically wrote trying to share as much as he could in the time he had.  While he wouldn't get high marks in school for a paper of this nature I do believe the content speaks volumes of the change that is taking place in this boy's heart.  

I already answered stuff to dad and didn't have time to copy them over so hopefully you guys can come up with something!!  our apartment is pretty bad I will have a video tour for you guys next week hopefully!!  WE usually have water but sometimes we have to go turn on the pump.  We have hot water when we have gas but it isn´t too bad!! really small but thats okay!!  We teach a lot usually to less actives just because we have a lot of those!!  we do knock doors but it isn´t very much and isn´t very successful all of our citas have fallen through so far so we are going to look for better ways to do it!!  We are in a city called iztapalapa ward paraiso so it is pretty alright!!  we eat with the members every day and they usually give us some good stuff!!  we eat a lot of spagetti and it is basically two meals in one so we will have a huge plate of spaghettti and then we will also have something else usually with tortillas.  All in all everything is going good my companion is cool and I was glad I got an american!!  we work with two other elders and all of us are american and so we get called names a lot walking through town.  Guerros or fair skinned people is what that is.  warner brothers  americanos all sorts of great stuff!!  THings are going good though.  The mission home the first night was kind of lame because we basically just got there and slept the stutzneggers are really cool though and very nice!!  The other morning president called just to see how I was doing so that was pretty cool of him!!  Things are good here though 

Love you guys!

Love, Elder Orchard

My companion, Elder Lund

Alright so I traveled with everyone from the mtc and yes we spent the first night in the mission home.  They didn´t say much more than thanks for the candybars but they had kind of a lot going on at that time.  (President and Sister Stutznegger) Elder Lund is from provo and has been out for 15 months.  He is a really cool guy and knows a lot of spanish!!  We are currently in paraiso 1 and are in ward paraiso.  There are four elders assigned to our ward which is unreal!!Each ward in our mission has at least four!  Some of the bigger areas have up to 8 I think.  WE had a stake conference this week and had at least twenty missionaries i would say we had almost as much missionaries as other people at the priesthood meeting!  things have been pretty good for the most part just trying to actually learn the language!  We are knocking doors now because we have hardly any investigators!!  we work a lot with menos activos (less active) members and trying to get them to come to church!!  our apartment is a dump but that was to be expected we at least have hot water!!  today we went into the center and that was really cool!!  usually i will email earlier than this but we had a lunch appointment that didnt end until right now!!  mainly because she wasn´t ready for us.  all in all everything is going great here!!  The picture of me with the two kids i am putting up is pretty cool.  his name is javier and he has 12 years.  He is really awesome!!  he is kind of an investigator but kind of a member.  his parents won´t let him get baptized but other than that he is totally a member!!  he goes to church by himself and knows all the scripture masteries for all four years after like two months of seminary!!  it is awesome he is one of the coolest kids ever!!  his family is super poor and they littarally have nothing except beds for everyone and some kitchen supplies!!  no tv no couch no anything!!  it is amazing to see how little everyone here has!!WE are truly blessed more than we know!!

Love you lots!

Elder orchard

Javier is on my left, your right

More commentary:  It's important to note that President and Sister Stutznegger are AWESOME!  The day of transfers they put the pictures up of Elder Orchard and his companion.  They thanked me for the gifts we sent and Sister S sent a message Sunday night just letting me know that they had spoken with my son and he liked what he was doing better than the MTC (his words:)) and that he would be fine.  How grateful I am for their communication and love!  I love how they use Facebook as a tool to communicate with families back home.  I appreciate everything they have done so far and love them dearly!