The Heroes, Tecamac!

Hellllooooooo! La La La...

Hey Family! This is your favorite missionary Elder J. A. Budge...checking in from Los Heroes, Tecamac! Yep, I had changes (transfers..) last tuesday and now I'm with my new companion. A bunch has happened this week so get ready--this email is going to be pretty sweet! And maybe a little long.

So on Tuesday Elder Escobar and I headed to Aragon (the temple) with my bags packed and my shoes tied to receive our new companions. I got transferred to a SWEET area with a SWEET companion, whose name is Elder Sammy Soza. It's not really Sammy Soza...just Elder Soza, but that's what I call him. He's awesome--has three months in the mission and his green energy is super contagious. When I sat next to him at the changes meeting, he turned to another Elder and starting speaking English! I said, "Whoa! My first american companion?!" And he said "nope, I'm mexican! I thought you were my first mexican companion!" It was pretty funny. Turns out he's from Casas Grandes (Colonia Juarez) Chiuahua, but has lived in the U.S. as well...he went back forth a lot. I still don't know the whole story there so I'll let yall know as soon as I know. But he speaks english really well so it's been a blast...we speak a TON of Spanglish during the day.

So we got to the area and started working right away. This is the NICEST area I've been in so far--not a single dirt road! The area reminds me a lot of Southern California, so I feel right at home. We live in a section called "La Sexta" (the sixth) and every single house is exactly the same, like a huge, gigantic group of condos. It makes it a little confusing for me to learn how to get around...but I'm getting there. The Bishoprick here is EXCELLENT and really really willing to help us out in anyway they can (the first counselor offered to buy me some new shoes...mine are pretty torn up from my last two areas) and sometimes they buy us boxes of cereal and stuff like that. It's sweeeeet.

So this past week we decided to figure out what we could do to baptize our first week together. Turned out that my companion and his Dad had a lot of investigators that had more than enough times at Church to be baptized, so we decided to round them up and get them in Baptismal Interviews. On Wednesday and Friday we had 5 baptismal interviews...but to no avail. The people passed their interviews...but flaked out at the last second. It was kind of a bummer, but we did find a new family, and they have their baptism scheduled for this coming Sunday. Their names are Adriana, Oswaldo, and Valeria. They're SWEET, so we'll continue to teach them, have their interview set up for this week and have their baptism on Sunday.

Saturday night we had an interesting experience...at one AM, we heard our doorbell buzzing and someone was shouting at our front door. My companion went downstairs (yes...we live in an AWESOME two-story house...que fresa...) and one of his old comanion's recent converts had gotten our first door open and was trying to get into our house! He said he needed "help" and that he had already gone to the bishop's house but they didn't open the door to him either. My companion told him to leave and he just sat there at our front door and eventually left. It was kind of crazy.

But anyway...that's all I really have to report. Mom, I received the package you sent, THANK YOU family for all the things you sent (including my "new" ties) but Panda, you said you sent your school picture but it wasn't there. Geez.

Hasta luego!

Elder Budge