Zapata

The Missionaries of Zapata

Sorry I haven't been able to talk much lately. I've been too busy IN TEXAS!!

We left the Mexico City MTC at 5:30 in the morning and got to the McAllen mission home at about 3 pm. After sleeping over at the Zone Leader's house and several presentations and safety briefings, I was assigned an area and a trainer. My trainer is Elder Anderson. He's very good at basically everything, fluent in both Spanish and Tex-Mex. He was a District Leader and a Zone Leader for several transfers, and he has twelve weeks left on his mission. I will likely be his last companion. He helps me alot, and I think we will get along great.

I was assigned to the City of Zapata, to work in the North area. Zapata is a pretty small town of one main street, and about 50/50 between suburban houses and trailer parks. We have a car that we share with the South area, it's a big area but we don't bike too much. It's also split 50/50 with English and Spanish speakers. A few of our investigators only speak Spanish, which is when a fluent trainer comes in handy. We have a small building which serves out Branch. This building used to be a funeral home, and the viewing area is not our chapel. I love it. Branches hold a special place in my heart. There isn't a baptismal font though, so we have to go down to Falcon Lake! This is super special, we are the only area in the whole mission that does laketisms. We are part of the Laredo District, and it's called a District because it isn't big enough to be a Stake yet. In the entire United States there are only two Districts, and I was assigned to work in one of them. Our goal right now is to make Laredo a Stake, making a total of five Stakes in the mission. This would be enough for a Temple. Many members down here cannot cross the northers checkpoint to go to the San Antonio Temple because they don't have papers. So that's our goal right now.

Falcon Lake, our baptismal font.

Most houses down here have fences and dogs. So many dogs. Zapata has a dog problem. There are packs of feral dogs that will chase us as we bike through. People just kind of adopt these dogs when they come around. we can usually out-bike the little chihuahuas but the pitbulls and dobermans we usually have to stop and slowly pass them as they bark at us. I'm sure I'll have lots of dog stories. My most intense one so far was watching three dogs tear apart a little kitten. I'm slowly starting to not like dogs anymore.

The Spanish down here is weird. People will switch between English and Spanish almost every sentence. If the Tex-Mex is super strong, they will switch languages between words. "Oh si, I went a la tienda y got frijoles y eggs hacer desayuno el la morning" Man. One Mexican missionary told me his Spanish has degraded since being here. It's still super fun to try and figure out what the heck they are saying. It's like a puzzle.

I better get going. I cannot write even a hundredth part of the things that have happened so far, but I will write more in the future. Plus like 13 of you wrote me and I only have an hour. 

Love you all, 

Elder Gray