So Sorry!

Dear Readers,

This post as you will notice, will be addressed to everyone who reads. First and formost, I would like to apologize for the very horrible and negative things that have been posted on my blog in the past little bit. I have been notified about how uppsetting some of the things that I wrote were to some of you. How sad that it took someone else telling me to realize how horrible I have been. I´m sure if none of you knew any better, you would not think these things coming from a missionary, even less a representative of our Savior.

I am very ashamed and disappointed in myself for having written those things, and would not blame any of you for thinking poorly of me. I would especially like to apologize to the parents of the missionaries, and the missionaries, for what I have said about some of them. The adversary has clearly been working very hard on me to see what things he could make me do, without me really realizing who I was hurting. I have let him get the best of me, along with the negative frustration and stress of being a missionary. How absolutely unacceptable it is that I chose to take it out on others. I cannot apologize enough.

I want you to know that I love every single one of the missionaries that I have had as companions. They have each impacted me in a different way, each one making me a better missionary. I am glad that you, as the readers, have brought these things to my attention. You will no longer see content like that in my blog anymore. Please understand that I truly am sorry, to each and every person who I have and have not offended.

Sincerely,
Elder Scott Donner

Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head...

Hi Family,

So I actually ended up staying here in this area and my companion got transferred. My new companion is Elder Martinez. Wouldn´t you like to know that I am greeny breaking him? He actually doesn´t seem that bad. I just kinda wish I would receive a companion that I didn´t have to help learn everything that his companion before didn´t teach him. I´m hoping he actually knows alot. As you can tell I am actually super stressed lately. Not sure why. It could be that I still don´t sleep very well. It could be a lot of things. I think I´m going to talk to President because its starting to affect me alot.

Anyways, we are still pushing this freaking family to get married. Its funny because they come to church and the activities like they are already members, they´re just not married. Who knows when its gonna happen. I think the mission could help if they absolutely couldn´t pay for it, but the fact is that they have stated (mom and dad) that they could pay for them to get married. Not sure what the hold-up is. We are just working really hard with them right now.

It´s been raining really bad this past week. It literally makes it almost impossible to leave the house. 2 missionaries actually got trapped on top of a car for 3 hours because it flooded here. So work has kinda been really slow. Its a joke when we go to knock doors or stuff like that, because people just tell us its raining and to go away. What joy.

I have more pictures of the rain this week than anything. Ok just kidding. My camera isn´t connecting at all. So I will send them next week I guess. Hopefully I have some better news this next week.

Anyways, I know my emails have been short recently. Its just cuz there really isn´t that much going on lately.

Love,

Elder Scott Donner

Still More Rain....

Me and Ailyn
Azul after painting herself.

Azul and her daddy after painting him.

The best shot I could get of the rain before it got dangerous.

Hi dur Family!

A lot has been going on this week, especially rain. I never thought it could rain so much in my entire life. I can now officially say that I 'm glad it doesn't rain so much in Arizona, because it is a very unpleasant experience to be stuck doing nothing because everything is flooding outside and you literally cannot walk. I really wish I had taken some fotos and video of it, but I didn't. I was actually kinda scared because you know, being from Arizona, I haven't seen so much water in my entire life (jaja, I make joke).

Anyways, there really hasn't been much progression with any of our investigators this week. It's been the same old with them. They need to get married to be baptized. One of them pushed is off, we spiritually tell them off, they feel guilty, then find another reason why no to get married. And thus has been my life for a month jaja! We visit them with members, take them to church, have family home eveing with them, and they now hold it themselves. It just seems to be our rotten luck to have investigators that aren't married.

Changes are in a week. We kinda get the feeling I'm leaving, but who knows. This are has kinda just made me a very angry grumpy person. I have alos learned a lot. Like...

• 
  
  The top bunk is better than the bottom bunk because chances are that your companion is going to throw his dirty clothes on the bottom bunk and forget about them.


• 
  
  There are actually 42 different types of tamales.


• 
  
  The feathers from a chicken do not digest in your stomach sometimes.


• 
  
  In Mexico, they think that lemon mixed with Coke will cure any problem that you are having with you tummy.


• 
  
  Body piercings are mor heard of and common here that in the US, but almost NOBODY has tattoos.

Love ya!

Elder Scott Donner

Rainy Days Ahead

Family,

So this week was quite interesting and let me tell you why. Rain season is finally here, but in Mexico, it is a worlds difference than it is in Arizona. Rainy season here means it rains everyday here for about 3 to 4 hours more than it would in Arizona and it can ruin your day because nobody wants to let you in our come out to see who you are because of the rain. I don't thing I've ever seen so much rain in my life. I think I would enjoy it if I wasn't a missionary and rain meant that contacting people would be hard. But other than the rain, it's been a pretty decent week.

We have been working with a certain family for about a month now. The mom, Argelia (remember to pronounce it like you would in Spanish mmkay?), used to go to the LDS church as a kid. Now she really wants to get baptized but doesn't want to do it until the rest of the family is on the sam boat. We just me her husband and taught him. He is one of those people that will make a joke out of anything you say. It's fun trying to teach him. They can't get baptized until they are married. Neither can 2 of their kids, because they aren't married either. Fun stuff right? The only one who right now could technically get baptized is her 8 year-old son. It cost $870 pesos to get married. That's like $80 bucks. Already a pain jaja! But I'm not complaining, because it if were easy, where would be the fun in that right? We're going to continue to work with them though.

We really don't have anyone else that we are working with seriously. Seems like the poeple here are really stubborn. We find people, but they just don't understand the intensity of the message we share.

Anyways, things are going better with the comp. This week he started to let me know more things wrong. Although he still thinks that the best time to start a conversation with me is when I'm reading or indulged in something else. Even when I try to ignore him, he talks even more jaja! I laugh now, but in the moment I'm just kinda like, "you do realize I'm doing something right now, which is not talking?"

Anyways, I got videos this week.

Hopefully you enjoy them.

Love,

Elder Scott Donner

Que Sera, Sera.

Hi family,

I´m not sure what happened to my email from last week. It actually doesn´t even exist in the sent mail folder. Sorry. Otherwise I would resend it.

This past week was an ok week. We baptized 3 people but it was a super struggle to do so and I wanted to murder myself. So one of the investigators (the mom) had to go through a second interview because she was being stubborn and didn´t want to quit coffee. Excuse after excuse. But her daughters definatley wanted to get baptized. So we were fighting with her forever. We finally got her to agree. So we had the baptism. Yay. But our goal is 8 and things are not looking so hot for this weekend.

Anyways, we're now halfway through this transfer. Everyone kinda gets the feeling that I will be moved, and I kinda hope so. Sharing a ward with another set of elders is ridiculously hard. Especially when the others keep coming into your area to teach people they have contacted instead of passing along the referral. You can say that Im pretty much at my last straw.

It was really hard to find people to teach this week. We just couldn´t get anyone to let us in their house. Try as we might, everyone would always say no. I don't think I've ever struggled so much doing anything in my entire life. My companion started to give up hope and I had to slap him. He is starting to get easily discouraged now. Its a difficult time right now, even after the baptism. I think its because our zone leaders put a lot of pressure on us. They should though, but it's not helping.

Anyways, I´m going to be sending pictures this week becuase I took some jaja!

First picture is of a little girl with a butcher knife. She is the daughter of one of our investigators.

Second one is of the Baptism.

BTW my pants don´t fit me anymore and they fall all the time jaja!

Anyways, not much more to talk about.

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Patience Is A Virtue; frustration is not.

Hello Family,
It really seems like my Pdays get shorter and shorter.... I blame my companion.... because I can jaja!!! It was actually because we were playing sports all morning and basically are just now getting to doing things like emailing. This week was a really interesting one for us. We had a really hard time with lessons and things like that, and I´m pretty sure I thought to myself like 8 times (who knows why I chose 8) that I was going to kill my companion. Just little things he does I was letting get to me. Like sometimes when we´re walking, he seems to think we need to walk as if our shoulders are glued together. I don´t know why that would bug me, but it did. There was alot of stress this week. The baptism we were going to have ended up falling through because we could find him for the interview. Turns out that he was at the church while we were out and about looking for him. What a joke. So his baptism got postponed to this Wednesday. Its all good though, he´s still down for it.
When we were meeting with another one of our investigators that we have on date, we found out he´s not married to his wife, and his wife doesn´t want to get baptized or listen to us anymore. He talked to his wife about getting married but we forgot to ask him about it. He is supposed to get baptized this weekend, but now who knows.... We are still working with him hard though. Its funny though because he called and told his work that he can´t work Sundays because he has to go to his church, and they told him to come in after church, so now he´s looking for a new job so he can quit. This is Guillermo we´re talking about with his family that is Luz del Mundo.
We put another family on date for baptism though, minus the dad. It's funny because when we tried putting her on doubt, the mom, Esther, told us that there was a huge problem and couldn´t. When we asked her what it was, she told us that she is afraid of water. She kept trying to tell us that she was afraid of the water. Another part of the story is that her daughters family had come for 2 appointments when we taught them and wanted us to come to their house, but its not in our area. So we passed them on the the other elders, who put them on date. So we told Esther that her daughters family would be getting baptized, and she told us she would do it if we could do it with them. So this weekend we will probably baptize them.
I´m really sorry, but I don´t have any videos or pictures this week. It was a stressful week, so I didn´t exactly remember any of that until today.
Mom, I received your package. Good news, the shirts fit better. BUT, they are still just a little big jaja! I am losing weight like crazy and it scares me. Its kinda gross too because I can see flab on my arms where fat used to fill it in. I think I´m going to start "6 months of sexy" when I hit a year.
Love ya!
Elder Scott Donner

Better Days...

Hello Family,

So we blanked this transfer. Or in other words we didn´t baptize. Ya its kinda depressing. We were really tried, but it didn´t happen. But like I said, the good news is that now we have a ton of people set up for this next transfer that we can baptize. Not going to lie, this transfer has been a hard one for me, and President is leaving both me and Elder Cervantes here. We´re glad, and also glad that President put more white people in the zone (I was the only one last transfer). I´m not racist or anything, but I´m going to forget english altogether if I´m not able to speak it every once in a while. Its horrible because my companion is learning english, but I´m teaching things incorrectly because I think of how sentences are structured in spanish and not english.

Anyways, I love how bold the people are here in Mexico. A guy had approached us the other week (thats normal), and start talking to us about god (also normal), and drugs (completely normal still), and then asked us for money (still normal). The bold part that I am talking about, is that when I told him we didn´t have any (we always say that), he told us that originally, he was going to rob us, but decided not to after he had seen how big I was up close. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and said he was going to use it, but was afraid that I was like Superman or something, and the knife would do nothing, and then I would just break his neck. I kinda wanted to laugh at that, but I wasn´t sure what this guy was going to do, so we continued to tell him we had nothing. He said that all white people have money, so I pulled 1 peso out of my pocket and gave it to him, and told him that was all I had (still lying). When I pulled my hand out of my pocket, the pocket dropped and the money in my pocket made a noise. He then got angry, and tried to start selling me things on his person, like the knife and lighter that he had. It was super funny until he started swinging the knife around. He fell on the floor (because he was high) and we booked it down the street as fast as we could. When we got tired, we sat down and hid behind a car, but somehow, the idiot ended up coming down the street we were on to search for us. Luckily he didn´t see us, and me and Elder Cervantes got up and ran back up the way we came. We were laughing afterwards.

Anyways, this week we were finally able to put people on date for baptism. We realized that there are a ton of things that we could be doing better, that I just kinda took for granted with Elder Moss, because where he lacked, I made up for it, and where I lacked, he made up for it. Thats definately not the situation with Elder Cervantes, so we have to figure things out this transfer, and change alot. But anyways, the people we have put on date are super solid. They grew up never knowing religion. When we knocked on their door, Guillermo (investigator) told us he origanally wasn´t going to open the door but something told him that he needed to. So he did. When we taught him, we could feel the spirit right away, so we went through the process of putting him on date for baptism, along with his wife and sister. At our 3rd visit with him, he told us that the night before we had come, he had dreamed about two people coming to his door and it changed his life. He then woke up that morning at 4:00 and couldn´t go back to sleep. He realized that if he hadn´t let us in, he might have lost the opportunity forever. Its funny because the ones in his family that are on date now still have never been to church. The rest of his family are now part of a religion called "Luz del Mundo". I´ll let you look that one up, but it only exists here in Mexico. It was created by an ex-missionary of the LDS church who got mad at the church. Quite interesting, but we weren´t about to tell them that jaja!

I finally received a ton of the letters you sent Mom, but still no package with the shirts.

I´m sleeping fine still, but I think suffering from headaches and migranes will just be something that I have to endure. I imagine it comes with the stress of being a missionary.

We are always climbing mountains, because thats all our area is. We are either going up or down jaja!

Video of this week, we had contacted an old man and asked him what he felt for Jesus Christ. He told us "GOOD". And when we asked again, he said the same thing. So we did a reinactment of it jaja! We are such losers! (Couldn't get it to load...will try later)