Staying in Greeley

February 17, 2015

For this next transfer I will be staying in Greeley with Elder De Leon. It should be pretty alright. I think I can describe my relationship with De Leon like this: from January 22 to February 1, he/we used 1000 text messages and approximately 1800 minutes of talking, and I didn't have the phone the majority of the time, if you get my drift. So yeah, he likes talking to people that aren't me a lot, but at least I get to practice listening and understanding Spanish. I've noticed I'm a lot better at eavesdropping now since he probably assumes I don't understand anything. Not entirely true.

I was incredibly frustrated this week with Spanish since no one could explain to me why a certain thing was said the way it was, so after much digging through the internet, I found part of my answer in an online document for a Spanish class. Spanish 406 to be exact. That made me feel a little better, but I'm still frustrated.

The craziness for this week comes from one of the recent converts in our ward hiring a gangster in Mexico to beat up someone who used to bully him. We're still working on that one.

Because of postal problems, write letters and packages to me the same but with "CO Fort Collins Mission" before everything else, so:

Colorado Fort Collins Mission

Elder Kennon Bacon

500 Hillspire Drive

Windsor, CO 80550

I hope you all had a wonderful Single's Awareness Day! Let's just say it was not the best thing for me to go to a ward Valentine's Day party where a lot of quite attractive less actives showed up. Kind of rough with the girl trunkiness and all, but whatever, only like 18 months more. Have a great week!

Haircut by another missionary

February 23, 2015

I don't have a ton of time, so here are the highlights:

The pictures I'm including this week made me laugh so hard.

We did a fast for one of the investigators some other missionaries have, and it was awesome. He is having a hard time quitting smoking, so whenever I thought about how badly I wanted food, I thought of how badly he's going to want a cigarette but that he, like me with food, will have to just fight that desire. It made it a much more powerful fast.

Sometimes agency is frustrating, like when people don't come to church. Or when I slack and don't do a whole lot of finding when we have next to zero investigators. I'll do better this week.

I got a haircut by another missionary, and it was his first time (I have a lot of blind faith or something).  It turned out pretty good given the circumstances.

My (ridiculous) haircut selfie

 Our stereotypical Hispanic family pic.

 Artwork at the Valentine's Party 

Freddy's baptism!

February 9, 2015

First things first: Freddy got baptized! And his mom came! It was a great experience to be a part of. I did the confirmation this last Sunday(of course in Spanish) and it was pretty freaking scary, but it went well. It was at least understandable, and the parts that need to be exact like his name I did correctly.

Freddy and his mom with all of the missionaries

Freddy and I

The problem, however, is that the way Freddy and his mom came to the baptism is that they lied to his dad about where they were going so that they could both go (which I neither mentioned nor recommended). He found out that they weren't actually at dinner with anyone, and then...he split. They aren't sure where he went, but he took is stuff and left. It's kind of a constant drama movie with that family, so we're trying to figure things out with them, like finances and stuff like that.

On a bittersweet moment this week, there was nothing better than being in my warm room chillin in my thermals with a scented candle burning studying the scriptures. That room has become my sanctuary, since the rest of the apartment either smells like death or is freezing since they leave the windows open to kill the scent (which doesn't really work since all of Greeley stinks). I don't know how to tell the other companionship that maybe it stinks because 1) the dishes in the sink (shoutout to my college roommates! :) and 2) they probably shouldn't leave a bloody dish of open meat in the fridge and slightly molding onions on the counter. I'm still debating on how to bring this up.

This week and the last week I was working on memorizing my patriarchal blessing, which has been such a blessing in my life. I love being able to go through that in my head no matter where I am. If I can't fall asleep at night, I just go through it until I fall asleep. If you have your patriarchal blessing and don't have it memorized yet, I'd recommend doing that. 

The last question I have is does anyone other than my companion want to be my valentine? Actually I might already have one. That little girl I was talking about last week, Melody, is pretty much in love with me, and she's the most adorable 3 year old I've ever met. I have pics this time too, so now you can all know what I'm talking about.

 $3.46 of the best Chinese food ever

Melody

Besties for life

Flattering pic of my right arm

Thrift store bargains

February 3, 2015

I don't have a ton of time, so I'll try to keep this short (I failed). This might (will) be all over the place. 

At dinner there were some peppers on the table, and everyone but me had had one. They all said (honestly) that they weren't that spicy and encouraged me to try one. Mine might have registered on the Richter scale. They asked me if I was ok and all I could really say was "I'm ok, please give me some milk right now". It was not a good experience. They all tried a part of mine and agreed that it was a lot hotter than theirs were.

Later that same night, their granddaughter who is about 3 was messing around with me, playing games, jumping on my back, etc. She was standing with one foot on two different chairs at the table, she jumped up, and then fell straight through onto the ground. She wasn't hurt, but she was embarrassed, and so she went under the table and started to cry. We had to go, but I asked her if I could have a hug first. She came out from under the table with red eyes and blotchy cheeks and gave me the cutest hug ever. She is so adorable. I'll take a picture of her next time we're over there. She's basically all the female affection I get, so maybe that was why I liked that hug so much. 

I saw a Lamborghini this week. In Greeley. I've never seen so nice of a car in so ghetto of a city. Unfortunately, it was when we were driving, so I didn't have enough time to take a picture.

We came to the realization this week that the entire world hates Monday the most out of the days of the week except missionaries, which for the most part is their favorite. Just another sign of us being a peculiar people.

There were a lot of highlights this week, but one of them was definitely getting a suit jacket for $.25 and a full suit including a vest for $2.00. I searched the entire store to try and find matching pants for the first suit jacket but to no avail. I'll keep looking in thrift stores for the second piece of my new score and hope that I don't get any diseases from them. I'll definitely be dry cleaning them first.

We found out that the mission boundaries are going to be expanding in April to include Casper and Riverton Wyoming, the furthest of which is a good 7 hours from the mission office, and they do have Spanish work there, so I may be getting banished at some point on my mission.

The work this week was a little difficult. Freddy's family is giving him an incredibly difficult time with getting baptized. At first, his dad said he didn't want him to get baptized. They had a family talk, and his dad said he could if he found out everything about our church first but his mom still couldn't even though she wanted to. Then his dad found out that we teach English class to the Spanish members and nonmembers and said that we don't sound like a "real church", like his church (Catholic), but that we sound like an institution. What kind of church would want to help educate its members and help in the community anyway? Then he said that Freddy could only get baptized, but that was it, he couldn't go to church or anything like that after. If that's not hypocritical, then I don't know what is. If you're going to be in a church, you live it more than one day of your life, more than 1 day in 7, more than a few hours a day. You live it, always. 

After that it changed to he can get baptized but he'll have to "pay the price", which he never went into detail about and just left it up to Freddy's imagination (all of this we have found out through phone calls since when we went over to talk to them as a family only Freddy was home and we haven't seen him in a few days). The final straw was today when Freddy's mom told him that she thought it was a sign from God that his dad was upset and that she wasn't going to go to his baptism. That was incredibly discouraging, to hear her go from wanting to get baptized herself to now not supporting her son and even telling him that she doesn't believe in his decision. We are currently trying to set up a time to have everyone there so that we can just have all of it out in the open and talk about why they hate us and all of that. The language barrier is probably a good thing for me right now, since I would probably just end up telling them how I feel about their irrationality instead of saying what I should to help make everything better and smooth things out.

Well I think I've vented sufficiently about that. Freddy still has a baptismal date for this Saturday at 4, and I'm really hoping that it goes through. I'll keep you all posted.

My two new suits

 Our fail of a jumping pic as a district, going high priest style.

Actual pic as a district.