A new transfer in Juarez

Howdy familia!

So I was wrong about my new position here in Juarez 2. I was assigned to be the senior companion here to Elder Baez, a missionary from Argentina who also just finished his training. It turns out that almost everyone who is here in Mexico Monterrey East are the greener missionaries while they sent all of the more seasoned to the border. Which I guess makes some sort of sense. There are two Elders from my generation who are training and District Leaders right now and nearly everyone else is coupled with missionaries from our same generation. We´ve been told by many that nearly all of us will be training.

A little bit about my new companion: Elder Baez is from the state of Corrientes, Argentina and, therefore, doesn´t have the stereotypical accent of the country. Very sad. Also sad is he says a lot of words I´ve never heard before so there´s a bit of a language barrier that I didn´t have with Elder Diaz nor the other Mexican missionaries that I´ve worked with. He´s a mechanic and, wait for it, a socialist... Very strange. Full-blown, red-blooded Marxist. Let´s just say we´ll avoid the topic of politics.

Also, it´s supposed to be really hot for the next month. They call it the ¨canicula¨ here and it should be interesting. The 10 day forecast says it´ll be around 90 all week so not as bad as I expected. But still, we walk. A lot.

It´s different being a senior companion and it´s pretty hard leaving the house at 11 instead of 12. The salvation of these people is weighing pretty heavily on my shoulders. I´m basically directing all of the work here in my little part of paradise, and my mind is always occupied with how we´re going to improve the work here. We don´t have the greatest numbers right now and it´s been a long while since any of our investigators have attended church. I put all the blame on the stupid husbands...

But I´m not discouraged! Tired. Dog-gone tired. But not discouraged. A member in the ward told us how amazing it was that missionaries never get tired and how much energy he had on his mission. I almost called him out as a liar, but I decided to let it pass. It´s true that we can persevere through situations others would find overly-difficult, but it´s only because we know our message is worth something. We´re exhausted. Many Elders lie and say that they´re not tired to try and impress the other missionaries, but the truth is we´re all groaning and dragging ourselves out of bed. But I think it´s worth it. So I´ll keep on going through these next 19 months until I finish. Or collapse. Whichever comes first.

Sounds like ya´ll are having a good time at home and good to see that EFY gave everyone a boost of the spiritual. It always did that for me. The key is to keep that spiritual adrenaline high and not crash. And yeah, Masey, it´s extremely hard for me to think/type/talk in English. I can only imagine what it´s like for the missionaries who are at the end of their missions.

Love ya´ll tons. Keep the prayers coming and I´ll keep sending them your way. Hold to the rod, keep the faith, endure to the end.

Love, Elder Brayden Decker