This Week's Word is Parangaricutirimicuaro

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!!

Alright so I will answer questions first.

We get around by walking if we finish a lesson late we will take a taxi for saftey reasons but other than that just walking.  Or if we go into the center we take a bus that costs four pesos to take us anywhere we want.

We email from a little cyber internet thing and so there are like eight computers here so that's how we do that.

We set up to facetime home (for Christmas) with someone in Elder Lund's old area so I will be able to just facetime you off of their Ipads.

NO christmas tree and we are not going to buy one.

I have not shopped at Walmart, no.

Alright so this week was pretty slow too!!  All of our fechas (dates...I am assuming he is talking about baptism dates) fell through and so the soonest we could have one (a baptism) would be the fourth of January.  It is really hard for us because they have to come for five weeks to church before they can get baptized.  We found three new investigators this week and so hopefully we can get them to progress!!  We are still just waiting for that golden investigator.  We are hoping that it will be this week!!  Things are basically going kind of slow right now!!  Nothing cool happened this week so I only have pictures because of my birthday and even then I only have two!!  Yeah a few people here knew but for the most part we didn't do much to celebrate!

I see the tienguies all the time.  Those are the stores you can buy watches and stuff!  I think I will probably buy a watch and maybe some shoes with my birthday money!!  Thank you by the way!!  I went and bought this really good looking sweater this morning so tell Grandma and Grandpa thanks for that!

Yes, I actually eat a lot of vegetables thank you very much!!  We eat a lot of them because they are cheap.  I even eat onions now!

Alright so this week nothing really cool happened like I had previously mentioned!!  I went on divisions with one of the zone leaders one day and so I got to practice my Spanish a little more that day!!  We found some lady that was basically crazy and then when we talked to the relief society president about her she warned us and said to not go into her house because she would probably yell rape and then we would get in trouble so we just aren´t going to go back to her house!!  There was a cool guy that we just gave a prayer card to the shows the steps of praying a few weeks ago and we saw him again today!!  His name is Javier and when we saw him he basically bore his testimony about how it really works and he has seen so many blessings since he started praying that way!!  So we used it as an entrance and gave him a restoration pamphlet!!  Hopefully we can see him again soon and see where this goes!!

We went to go get pizza on my birthay because our food cancelled on us again!!  It was funny though because we were sitting there for like ten minutes and people just kept walking by and we kept saying buenos dias, buenos dias.  Well finally this guy comes up and says, "Speakes spanish va?"  and we were like, "yeah we speak Spanish".  Then he turned to the other workers and was like I told you they spoke Spanish!!  They literally wouldn´t come talk to us because there was four Americans and they were scared that we didn´t speak Spanish!!  Well then the waiter comes over and in decent English just was like its okay I can speak English to you!  It was all really weird and funny all at the same time.  We at least got a good laugh out of it!!  

Then the next day we were walking down the street and some guy was like ¨hello brothers¨ so we said hello and just kept walking because everyone abuses us for being white.  Well he then was like what ...you aren´t even going to come and talk to me? So we went back and it turns out he lived in New York for 20 years and spoke really good English.  He wants us to keep passing by and so we left him some stuff to read and when we go by again hopefullly he will have read! 

Another funny story from this week we took an investigator to church this week and he is ten years old.  They aren´t progressing but this kid really likes us so we take him(this is also the family I am in the picture with, with the birthday cake) Well Elder Lund jokingly said "hey you should bare your testimony" and the kid was like yeah okay!  Well he talks about how he saw the image of God one day in his closet after he woke up and it was cool what he said and he did a good job!!  Well then we went over to their house a little later and were talking with his grandma and she was like yeah one day Jordie came in and told my mom I saw the virgin in my closet!!  Me and Elder Lund just looked at each other and were grateful he didn't say that in church!!

Also I forgot I am going to start doing a word of the week so this week's word is parangaricutirimicuaro definition unknown. It is what all the kids would try and tell us to say to make fun of our accents but we now have it memorized and can say it good.

Alright well this week is going to be a lot less successful and lots less lessons because we have two days that we aren´t working this week!  We have a mission Christmas party on Wednesday and then Friday is Virgin Day (Public celebrations, or fiestas, are held in honor of Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe, on December 12. Catholics from across Mexico and other countries pay pilgrimage to see an image of Mary (Virgen Morena), believed to be authentic, in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Children are dressed in traditional costumes and are blessed in churches. Thousands of people come to church to pray.) so it is too dangerous for us to be out working so we just stay inside all day!  Our exact email from President Stutznegger was something along the lines of, We love you guys and because we love you all missionaries need to stay in the house on Virgin Day!  We also go home at 7 the night before at the latest so pretty excited for that!!  I will write you guys all again next week.  I love you!!

Love,

Elder Orchard

(Elder Orchard got on the computer later and sent the following.  They had meetings to go to so he finished emailing after that.)

We had a cita and it was awesome!  Actually it was honestly a miracle!  We went for our district meeting and there was a guy outside the church and so Elder Norr, our district leader, was talking to him when we showed up!  Turns out he lives in our area!  Well we started to get to know him and he has had a crappy life so far!  Well he decided that he was going to kill himself and so he has been struggling a lot with that and he still is!!  Well we got done teaching him a little bit and then he asked if we could meet again tomorrow at six at the church!  Well obviously we said yes and then we said the prayer and he straight up asked,"If I apply myself and do everything you tell me do you think I could be ready to get baptized in a month?" and we said, "sure we could baptize you on the fourth of January if you would like" and he said yeah!! So That was really cool hopefully we will have more to report on that next week!!  I love you guys and hope you have a good week!! 

Love,

Elder Orchard