August 15, 2016 Craziest Experience So Far

Sorry that I wasn't able to write the last week! We didn't have much time to write. I am now in an area called Los Olivos. It is in Chimalhuacán. I am also now the District Leader. The other areas in my District are Atlicpac and La Paz. Atlicpac was one of the areas that Nick had in his mission. It is pretty neat because I have met a couple people in my ward that knew him!
We had a crazy week! One of the craziest experiences so far on my mission I think. My companion and I put an appointment with a guy that said he had a group of guys that he wanted us to preach to. We passed by that day and he let us in the front door. When we entered he shut the door and put like 5 locks on the door. There were like 4 guys outside working. We shook hands with them all and walked into the house, it was a little room where they washed dishes and there were four guys in there. When we entered they shut the door and locked it again! I was starting to freak out a little bit. We entered into another room which was the kitchen and we met two other guys in there. When they shut the door... the same. They put a padlock on the door. Then there were some wooden doors and the guy took off the lock and opened it and told us Be careful!  When we walked in I saw a guy dressed in white kneeling down like he was worshiping us. The first thing I thought was I am going to get killed or abused or something bad! hahah We walked in and there were three rows of seats and guys sitting in them. They were all just waiting for us to come in and teach them. We said a prayer and taught them all. It went pretty well. It was a group of drug addicts. They were locked in because they are in rehab and can't leave. We passed around a paper so they could put their names on it for us to pray for them. When we got he paper back they had written their entire families and wanted us to pray that they were more united! It was an amazing experience. I don't know if we will go back or what. It was pretty uncomfortable.
We had two companionships in our ward, but our President decided to take one out and now we are in charge of the whole ward. It will be a pretty busy week for us! Right now is the carnival in our area and it is crazy! The rides that they have here are super cool! Too bad we cant get on them. They look so dangerous! It was a pretty good week all in all. I am excited to see how this week goes!
Right now we are headed to the church where I will be giving my first capacitation to the other Elders! Hope all goes well! Hope everyone had a great week!
Love Elder Ivie

August 1, 2016

This week we had an activity on Saturday and it was based on the Iron Rod. We invited everyone that was in our area and all the members. We didn't want this activity to end up like the last one where nobody came. What we did is we started out with a relay race. There were three groups and they started out having to do 20 pushups, then they had to eat 3 giant marshmallows and say conejitos esponjaditos. After that they had to eat a doughnut off of a string. Then they had to run over to a chair and pop a balloon that was taped to the chair. This was all just to determine what team would start out on the Iron Rod.... or the string that was tied all the way around and throughout the church. The people were then blindfolded and we chose one person from each group to be the voice of the spirit. Humberto was the voice for the first group and then his dad was the voice for the second. They started out in the soccer field and walked around the back of the church where we had tires in the way that they had to walk through. They then entered into the church and walked through a disco room. They had music blasting and the young women were in charge of persuading them to take off the blindfold. They then left the church again and then entered into another room that was filled with balloons and chairs thrown around and people screaming. Then the last room was like hell pretty much. We had heaters in the room and incense. It smelled really strong and when they entered they freaked out cause it was hot. After that they entered into the sacrament and it was the end. It was a great success. Before we started the activity they had a baptism and all the people that came out of the baptism wanted to participate in the activity. It was pretty neat.
The relay race we used to explain the Gospel. The pushups were like our faith. Some of us have strong faith and others not so much haha. The marshmellows were really big and hard to get into your mouth and we related it to repentance because it never was easy. Then baptism was the doughnuts because you have to go step by step to partake of a baptism. Then the balloon was the Holy Ghost. It is very easy to break the balloon only if you were able to do all the other activities first and correctly. It was a pretty great success in all! It was really fun also!
On Sunday we had a pretty funny experience. We were walking to the food and we were at the corner of the street waiting to cross when some drugged up guy walked up and was like "Hey guys what are we teaching now?"  He then walked up to me and looked at me and was like "Hey what are you looking at?"  I was just like nothing and turned around. He kept talking to me and he had a rag in his hand that he kept putting up to his mouth. While he was talking to me a member came walking around the corner and saw the guy talking to me and came up really fast and was like hey whats your problem! The guys went running! It was hilarious! The member was a guy pretty big with beard and all and looks pretty scary! It was a strange experience.
We had a lot of strange lessons in the week. We went with a pastor of another church and then we went with another family and asked if we could share a message and they said that they had some christian missionaries in their house at the moment but we could enter if we wanted. We were like sure! They were so rude! They started talking about why we dont have missionaries in china. They said it is because of the meaing of the word Mormon. We were like it is the name of a prophet! They were like no... it means The road to hell. we laughed so hard!! haha We then told them that we have a temple in china and my companion jokingly said, I guess china accepted the road to hell hahahaha! It was a pretty exciting week and tomorrow morning I will be in a new area. I heard I will be moved to Los Reyes but I am not sure exactly! Hope everyone else is doing well!
Love Elder Ivie