Week 37 - April 22, 2013 - DEPORTED!

So yepp...I am being deported and headed back to the states for a couple days while my visa is being processed. I will be assigned to stay in the Houston Texas mission. So that will be pretty sweet I guess haha! I am going to the offices tonight and then tomorrow morning we leave to Texas. I am super excited because elder Murdock is going too so we are just gunna chill for a few days!!

Well this week was a super good week here in good ol mexico! On Tuesday and Wednesday we had leadership meetings all day and it was pretty good. President Camarillo told us some big news...Elder Christofferson is coming to speak to our mission the last week of May so that should be cool! Also we are going to start having American sisters serve in Mexico. President Camarillo said probably not here in Guadalajara because it wouldn´t be the best place for American girls to be!!

On Thursday I had a meeting with President Camarillo and oiur stake presidency! The zone leaders have a meeting with the mission president and the stake presidency every month so it wasn´t a big surprise but I was still pretty nervous. It was suyper cool though because President Camarillo was being super nice to me. Our zone in the last 3 months has only had 3 baptisms.  So far this month our zone has had 9 baptisms!!! We are super excited!! It has been a very good month. It just feels good to help make people's lives better.

Let me just tell you how happy I am that I was raised in a city and not on a farm!! I had the craziest experience of my life here on Saturday!! So we went to eat with a family on Saturday and as we walked into their house they had like 20 chickens running around. My first thoughts were ¨wow...only in mexico...¨ Then the mom told us that they were planning on killing a couple and she wanted ME to do it for them. She toild me that they have never killed a chicken before so they wanted me to do it for them! Okay this is some sort of sick joke!! So we ran around like idiots for about 30 minutes trying to catch the stupid things!!

Then as we finally caught them, I was expecting to go to some slaughter place to kill these chickens...but nope...the mom tells us to go over by the drain on the ground and just cut off the head. I asked her for a knife and she handed me a stake knife...I was expecting like a butcher's knife or something. Well anyways it wasn´t very sharp so I think I just tortured the chickens!! I had to like saw back and forth and on one of them I cut in the wrong place and started cutting through a super thick bone and it didn´t go to well. But I got the job done and as we were leaving the mom started taking all the feathers off the chicken. She then invited us to go back to her house tonight to eat it hahahaha I am so happy that I am going to the offices tonight because I am missing out on that wonderful experience...So Nasty!!!! Check the blog for pics!

Then Saturday after that whole incident we headed over to the church to prepare for our baptisms. We had 3 baptisms as a ward so that was pretty cool. It was actually the best baptism I have been to in my time here in Mexico. We couldn´t fit in the baptism room so we had to go to the chapel and have our program in there. Elder Castro and I baptized a guy named Miguel. He is such a stud! He is 23 and has had tons of health problems in the past. He went through chemotherapy for like 7 years of his life. He is the son of other recent converts and he has come such a long way!! He told us that he wants to be a missionary like us and that he is going to work as hard as he can to get all of his papers in by next year!!! I was like crying when he said that! He is so awesome!! The other two baptisms were of the other elders in our ward (Elder Hippard and Elder Hughes). It was such a good experience!!

Well that was it for my week. Such an awesome week and I am sure this next week will be pretty eventful as well! I am pretty excited to go back to the states fopr a couple days and I am going to try and get out to some super good Barbecue restaurant with Elder Murdock hahaha!!

I love you all and thank you so much for all the support!! Good bless and talk to ya´ll next week.

Les amo y que Dios les bendiga!! Cuidense mucho!!!

Elder Mike Payne

Sharpening the steak knife to kill my prey... I am so hard core!

Here we are trying to catch the chickens with laundry baskets haha

Me and Elder Hughes about to pounce!

Kissing the chicken

Cutting off the head

Liliana's baptism from last week

This person figured out that their car couldn't fit so they just decided to bend the bars on their garage door... a lot of garage doors look like that out here haha!!!

The baptisms this last week - Miguel, Brenda, Gabi, the last bishop (left), and the current bishop (right)

Miguel and his mom

The most people I have ever seen in a baptism.  I counted 43 that were there!  So awesome!