One evening at the MTC some missionaries were arm wrestling and there was a missionary from Armenia who was beating everyone. A couple of Elders came and got me to arm-wrestle him. When I got there, he had just finished a match with his right arm so we wrestled with our left arms and I won. But then we wrestled again with our right arms and he beat me.
Push-ups in the MTC
(Later in my mission when I was in Tlalnepantla, the 2nd time, Elder Nelson, who as I recollect is Merrill and Karen Nelson’s nephew, was serving with my previous companion, Elder Galvez. We arm-wrestled one night and he beat me with both arms, to my surprise and chagrin).
When I first arrived in the field, we all went to a chapel somewhere (all the missionaries who were going to a new area or getting a new companion). I left with my first companion (Elder Inda) and we took a taxi to my first area. I think we were traveling with our Zone Leader (Elder Nielsen), who maybe had also gotten a new companion. I don’t remember for sure. But our first stop was at Elder Nielsen’s apartment. We got there and he pulled out a guitar he’d purchased in the mission field and started playing “Hotel California.” I remember thinking, “what is happening?”
Eventually, we left and went to my first living quarters. It was a house and we lived there with another companionship (two American missionaries when I arrived there, Elder Davidson and Elder Jackson). When I first arrived there, the boiler in the house didn’t work and we also didn’t have a pump to get water up to the 2nd story of the house where the shower was. So we’d fill a 5-gallon bucket with water, plug in an old, broken iron that we had, and drop the iron into the bucket. Then we’d wait for the water to get hot, carry it up to the shower, and wash ourselves with the warm water. I remember telling JaNae about this when she and Sunnie came to visit, and she was quite sure I was pulling her leg. But it was the truth. Eventually a member in our area fixed both our boiler and our pump and we were able to take more normal showers.
The infamous boiler
The pump could still be finicky though. I remember Elder Fletcher came and stayed at our place one night (probably after we had gone to watch the BYU-Utah game at Benemerito with Sunnie and JaNae) and when he went to take a shower there wasn’t any water. I remember him standing in the bathroom in a towel while I ran downstairs and tried to get the pump working. I think eventually I did.
Speaking of Elder Fletcher, not long after I arrived in the field, he baptized a man who wanted to be baptized in a river, like Jesus. Not many members were going to be there so several of the missionaries went. I recall having to get up very early and it being a 2-3 hour combi (a Volkswagen van) ride. My comment on it which I did record in my journal was “I guess it was pretty cool, but it definitely was not worth the trip.” (I'm sure Elder Fletcher felt otherwise).
Elder Fletcher, Elder Diaz, and I
One night when I was with Elder Hope, he was bitten by a dog. There were wild dogs all over in Mexico but somehow we determined that this dog belonged to someone and knocked at their gate. A woman came out and I informed her that her dog had bitten my companion. She didn’t seem overly concerned but produced a paper that supposedly showed that the dog had had its shots. Elder Hope thought it was a list of people the dog had bitten.
Elder Hope and I (and my crooked tie)
In that area we ate our meals with the Perez family. They were a relatively wealthy family and had a business where they manufactured drill bits or something (at least that’s what I remember, I was never entirely sure). They lived in a tiny apartment above their shop where the manufacturing occurred. She made excellent meals and always a lot of food. When Elder Gakvez became my companion that area, before we ate our first meal together, he told me he was a pretty big eater. After we ate our first meal together, he learned what a big eater really was and never made that claim again. On one occasion, Hna Perez told me as she served the first plate that there wasn’t anymore on this occasion, and then turning to Elder Galvez, said “No lo lleno.” (I can’t fill him up).
The Perez Family with Elder Lozano and I
In this same area, Elder Hope and I had started teaching a larger woman by the name of Imelda. When Elder Galvez took Elder Hope’s place and he had visited her a few times, he told me that he thought Imelda was more interested in me than in the Church. I dismissed what he said until one day we showed up to teach a discussion and she had hired a photographer to come and take our picture. I’m not sure why, but I allowed the picture to happen. But then we left and stopped visiting. Some time later, she called our apartment and when I answered she said “No te puedo olvidar.” (I can’t forget you). She even showed up at the chapel at one point and told the Ward Mission Leader that she had been planning to be baptized but that Elder Galvez had turned me against her or something like that. She had a nephew who was probably 8 or 9 who was always there when we visited. A friend of ours from the area (Carlos Gomez(?)) would tease me that the nephew would call me “Tio (Uncle) Mouritsten.”
Elder Galvez and I
I was in Linda Vista in 1997 when the Jazz were playing the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Finals. On the evening of Game 6, four of us missionaries who lived together were back at the little cafe where we had our meals at the time and the game was on. I was trying hard not to watch but the other missionaries had already decided to watch. With about five minutes left, I suddenly said “what am I doing?” and went and sat down and watched. I saw the comeback and Stockton’s final shot to send the Jazz to the Finals. I ended up seeing at least part of most of the games in the Finals as well. We were teaching a man whose family had recently been baptized and we’d go and teach him a discussion (probably as quickly as we could), say the closing prayer, and immediately turn on the game. I remember watching the Game 6 loss and being disappointed and the man who we were teaching me telling me that they had played very well. My companion at the time (Elder Hurtado) was a Bulls fan so that didn’t help.
Elder Hurtado, me, and the man (Hno Blanquel) we taught during the 1997 NBA Finals
He got baptized, we got to watch the Finals. It was a win, win.
The following Christmas Eve I was in Arbolillo with Elder Zepeda. We went over to a member family’s house and spent the evening with them. They had a computer and we played games on it that night. I guess I kind of hogged the computer. When we returned to our apartment, I could tell Elder Zepeda was bugged. When I asked what was wrong, he said that he didn’t think the computer-playing time had been very equal.
Another night it was dark and a drunk guy started chasing us with a knife. He was pretty drunk and I don’t remember feeling too scared because he couldn’t move very well, but Elder Zepeda sprinted past him and told him to “vayase a la goma” (go to hell?).
In Arbolillo we lived with the Espinoza family, probably my favorite family from the mission. They had four younger daughters: Alicia (12 at the time), Betzabe (10), Barbara (8) and Andrea (5?). Hno and Hna Espinoza were supposedly very strict but they loved the missionaries a lot. I cried the day I was moved from that area.
The Espinoza Family (they get two pictures since they were my faves)
When I was in Arbolillo, I met Elder Zimmerman and Elder Maravilla who each had a hilarious sense of humor. Elder Zimmerman was a convert and on one occasion told us how in an Institute class he had taken after joining the Church, they’d told him how some of the early Brethren would stand on a chair to put their garments on so the garment wouldn’t touch the floor. That turned into an improv of Brother Brigham walking in on Brother Joseph while Joseph was standing on a chair putting his garments on. Probably a bit irreverent, but definitely funny.
Elder Maravilla supposedly had the entire script of Dumb and Dumber memorized and would often throw those quotes out. I remember on one occasion a missionary telling another missionary he couldn’t do something and Elder Maravilla immediately chiming in, “You can’t triple-stamp a double-stamp!”
But the funniest was that Elder Maravilla would then cite a specific talk from General Conference and say this General Aurhority had called him to repentance when he said something like, “If you’re filling your head with movie quotes and song lyrics instead of the scriptures, you need to repent.”
My last area (Xalpa) was the only time in my mission I was on a bicycle (the rest of the time I walked, like pioneer children). When I arrived in the area, my companion (Elder Morales) and his previous companion had been riding out to these tiny towns and mapping out the streets. We lived in Xalpa and the chapel was in Xalpa so I suggested we instead focus our work in Xalpa. “We’re missionaries, not cartographers,” I told him (pretty clever, huh?). He responded that all the doors in Xalpa had already been knocked. I challenged that and we started knocking the doors in town, usually doors close to members in the ward. I don’t remember ever knocking on a door where they knew who we were.
My bike
If you’re still reading this, thank you. This can’t be that interesting to anyone but me, but I wanted to get a record of some more of my memories from the mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment