¡Año Nuevo!

Happy new year and late happy Christmas to y'all! This past week we spent a lot of time looking for new people to teach! And another thing that I have started to realize is that church as a missionary tends to be very stressful because your always worried about people coming and needing to talk to people. During 3rd hour at church a member asked me to go with her to her friends house to teach them. So I went with her and a member in the bishopric. We went to the house and it was her friend and her friend's son. He said "I want help" we talked to him and he asked us "when can you come back over and do your thing" 😂😂 he is a super cool guy and I am looking forward to teaching him!

One day this week my companion woke up and said, "I had the most vivid detailed dream" he described it and he stole a red Chevy Impala and was driving it around. He then felt bad for stealing it and returned it to the house he took it from. He started talking to the owner and his name was David. Then we taught him a lesson. So two days after the dream we were biking down the street and we saw a guy pushing his car through the intersection so we stopped to help him. Turns out the car was a Chevy Impala. We started talking to him and his name is David!!! We taught him a lesson! And gave him a Book of Mormon! As we were talking to him he said that the past two weeks he had been having thoughts and random things would make him think that he needed to get closer to God!

Pics from the week: I didn't take to many this week but here are two!

This week we also went over to a part member family that we have been teaching and they taught us to make tortillas! It was messy, sticky, and flour, but most importantly they tasted great!!

Christmas phone call!

Navidad!

This week I got a new companion! It has been a crazy change but it's been great to get to know him and work with him! This week we have had the opportunity to talk about Christmas with everybody! It's an easy way to contact people and start a conversation and share a message at the same time!

My new comp and some Texas Christmas!

The sunsets here are always great!

Gotta love beach houses

One of my favorite scriptures! Moroni 10:4-5 I know it's true and I know God will always answer our prayers!

One of our members gave us 40 pounds of oranges and grapefruits!!

My comp, Elder Johanson, is super great! He is from Layton, Utah. He did choir in high school and definitely sings better then me. The mission Christmas conference last week was tons of fun! We went to a park and had field games then went to the city lights in Hidalgo and sang at the church and went and talked to people at the park with the lights! Then we stayed there and we stayed with Elder Jones my fist comp! At their apartment!! Then we went to the church in the morning and we watched Star Wars!! And hung out at the church.

Brownsville Zone

From Facebook: Thank you to Sis. Laura Davis for the following pictures and taking such good care of Elder Blackham!

Fiesta de Navidad

First of all I am training!! I picked up my greenie at transfers Tuesday.  His name is Elder Jones and he is from Salinas, CA.  (Note from mom: we found out today that due to some emergency transfers Elder Jones will be moved to another area and Elder Blackham will be getting another "greenie" to train so stay posted next week for news about another new companion.)

Elder Jones and Elder Blackham

Classic comp picture with the water tower

This week our ward had a giant Christmas party! There was a huge dinner and a giant nativity that the primary and the youth put together.

Christmas party!

This week we meet some amazing people! One day as we were knocking doors a family opened the door and let us in. We shared a message with them about the spirit of Christmas and the true meaning! They were super awesome and invited us back another day to share another message with them! 

The other night we were going around and once again knocking on some doors. We were not having lots of success but then we knocked a door and my companion said, "we want to sing to you today" 😂😂 so we sang a Christmas song just the two of us! I know it definitely sounded bad and very far from professional but they let us share a message with them!! This was very powerful and I learned to always be trying something different. And even if you're uncomfortable just keep going because people love change!! 

Decorations! People go all out here!

Mi Nueva Mama

This week we had a baptism!! She has being taught by missionaries for about 6-8 months and decided she was ready for baptism! We also call here our new Mexican mom! She invites us over all the time to eat with her and her family. She even taught us how to knit and and we made scarves with her. There was one day this week that she called us just after we finished our studies and invited us over to come eat breakfast! She lives close to our apartment so we walked over. When we got there she was making breakfast gorditos for us! The baptism was definitely the highlight of the week but there was a ton of other great stuff that happened! 

About a month ago we had the opportunity to go to the Brownsville park and help set up the Christmas village. This past week we had the opportunity to go back and sing at the park! It was a super awesome opportunity! And it's a good thing there were missionaries that know how to sing so it didn't sound super bad. 😂

a picture of the house we set up

picture with Santa at the park! 

singing at the park

Brownsville missionaries

Crab! We were walking down the street in Port isabel and there was a crab walking down the sidewalk as well.

From Elder Blackham's facebook page this week:

Así pues, amados hermanos míos, venid al Señor, el Santo. Recordad que sus sendas son justas. He aquí, la vía para el hombre es angosta, mas se halla en línea recta ante él; y el guardián de la puerta es el Santo de Israel; y allí él no emplea ningún sirviente, y no hay otra entrada sino por la puerta; porque él no puede ser engañado, pues su nombre es el Señor Dios. 2 Nefi 9:41. El camino está directo para nosotros a regresar con Dios. Esta fácil a estar en el camino. El único cosa necesitamos hacer es guardar los mandamientos del Señor. También necesitamos entrar de la puerta. El único camino podemos abrir la puerta es por medio del bautismo. Dios nos prometió teneremos Su espíritu con nosotros para siempre cuando guardar los mandamientos y cuando estamos bautizados!

La Toronja

The highlight this week was probably the Christmas devotional! We went over to a family's house in the ward to watch the Christmas devotional with them! They also fed us tacos and Mexican candy during it as well! It was super good and I really enjoyed the message! I felt like a lot of it was focused on service! And it's awesome that the light the world theme is "Give as He Gave!" I know there is true happiness when we serve others! Mosiah 2:17.

Me and my companion have been doing a lot of work with finding people the past few weeks and it is starting to pay off! We have 8 people that we are teaching now that are progressing towards baptism! It has definitely been a lot of work to find everyone but it is super cool to see them change, learn, and grow! 

Windmills! Our area has a lot of far spread out fields.

Here is another picture from the bay at Port Isabel.

Tacos!!

Grapefruit!! Here here are tons of grapefruit trees here and the people let us take a ton home! So our fridge is clear full of grapefruits!

This is the ranch of one of the families in our ward here. They have tons of animals including pigs and turkeys

Who doesn't like a comfy chair??