"If it was just the two of us, we'd probably jump on it. Any time you make a decision involving six people, it can get complicated"
-- Mark Price (Former American basketball player & coach; 1964 - Present)
While it was a lot of work having six to a house, there were also a lot of fun times to be had with five roommates. Of all the Areas I served in as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, there was something about Bugambilias that made me feel at home, even though I had already previously spent six months in Reynosa. Bugambilias had its challenges including its large size as well as a daily need to be extra vigilant of danger. But at this point near the end of my two-year service, having over a year and a half of experience in the bag, and prior experience as a District Leader, for once I felt like I was in control. I felt like the leash was removed and the world was my oyster. I had a level of confidence that wasn't in my younger self. I felt like I had proven myself to be both trustworthy as a leader as well as a decent person. In addition to those in my District, our Zone felt more like a family to me than all the others since I started in Rio Bravo. To see everyone once a week felt more like a meetup with friends rather than a mandatory meeting. As much as we put in the work, at this point it felt less like work. A stronger sense of gratitude overcame me and I could see what the last year and a half had turned me into despite the challenges, and perhaps even, thanks to the challenges.
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WELCOME TO BUGAMBILIAS!
Bugambilias was my sixth Area as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, not counting my second run of Buena Vista (See "5th Area: The Lord's High Ways"), in which case it would by my Seventh.
Bugambilias is the Mexican name for what we’d call Bougainvillea which is a genus of a sub-tropical plant native to South America (I say "Mexican" name because it goes by other names depending on which country you're in). Many of the streets and neighborhoods were named after different plants although the Area itself wasn't any more floral than the other parts of sunny, dusty, Reynosa (See "Culture Shock of Mexico"). The only exception might be the vast forests of sunflower patches that sprung up from and thrived in the rockier barren terrain in between neighborhoods and along the stretches of ghostly sidestreets.
The Bugambilias Area was on the far west side of Reynosa, only about a fifteen-minute drive (about 3.5 miles or 1.6 km) from my last Area in San José despite it feeling longer (See "6th Area: San José, Reynosa"). Although I wasn’t moving far away, Bugambilias was distinct. It was one of the larger Areas of the Mexico, Reynosa Mission, roughly six or seven square miles which was a drastic change from tiny San José! As always, we walked everywhere except for the occasional pecera or taxi ride if we had the money to spare, so our legs got an excellent workout. If you look on Google Earth, you can get an appreciation of just how many houses we're talking about for the six of us guys to cover on foot. It would be impossible to talk to everyone and very easy to get lost. Like many other parts of the Mission on the Texas border, Bugambilias was one of the fastest-growing areas in the city with new neighborhoods springing up so fast that half of the houses still aren't visible on Google Earth street view yet.
All in all, it was fairly well-developed, of course with the exceptions on the extreme side of poverty and abandoned skeleton boxes of buildings out in the middle of nowhere that look like they belonged in an apocalyptic videogame. The larger clusters of houses were at either extreme to the north where we lived or to the far south with vast spans of barren and shadeless desert dirt between them. The main streets were needlessly wide, like a highway, although most people only ever walked or took public transportation so there was next to no noticeable road traffic. Vendors set up shop on the busier streets, like small markets, selling things from clothes and ties to sweet chamoyadas and savory tacos. As always, the businesses were rather small, usually only one floor high, and generally unremarkable at first glance. Despite how large our Area was, the vast majority of it was residential and not commercial. More rural than urban. Like a community fused with a grassland.
To walk from the Northmost street to the southmost neighborhood would take about an hour and a half (if you had the energy to try). You wouldn’t dare do that though, not only because of the time cost, but even though it was only early March when I arrived, the brutal sun was upon us, as were the heavy downpours of early spring (The San Valentín neighborhood in the video above was in the Bugambilias area). It was always humid. As was the case, due to our relative proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, when it rained it REALLY rained! My boots I'd gotten back in Rio Bravo over a year earlier were what I wore most days, not just because of the rain, but because they helped cushion my feet against the hard and rocky terrain that we sometimes had to bushwhack (See "Chilly, Muddy, & Moving"). Because of the sheer amount of walking we did, anything to help keep my feet in working order was essential.
The chapel building was situated along the Reynosa-Monterrey highway just short of a mile and a half away from our house (about a 30-minute walk). The chapel building was relatively new and very beautiful. Our Ward, the Bugambilias Ward, shared the building with the Florida Ward. The Bugamblias Ward boundaries were on the Southside of the highway and the Florida Ward was everything North of it.
Because of its centrality and accessibility, I took a photo of the chapel and kept it in my planner. It came in handy when inviting people to Sunday services. Whenever we asked somebody if they'd seen the building before, all we had to do was explain that it was on the highway and show them the photo. Nine times out of ten, they knew it. That saved us the trouble of trying to give them an address to follow. As far as the size of the Ward went, there were about 150 people in attendance every Sunday which was larger than many of the other Wards I served in. When I arrived, the previous Bishop had just moved to Texas for employment purposes and they were in the process of calling another Bishop to serve. (See "Bishops and Shepherds")
Whenever we did our weekly shopping, we'd do it at the Plaza Periférico which was slightly further down the street, East of the Chapel building. The Plaza Periférico was the equivalent of a shopping mall with all sorts of stores and restaurants inside, including Peter Piper's Pizza (See "Assemble"). Aesthetically, it looked similar to what I would have seen back home in the United States. It was kept in good condition so it felt new in comparison to most of the city. It felt like the most modern building around, especially stacked against the poor humble living situations that surrounded it. Like a diamond in the rough. It felt out of place and for one day a week, it was like I was home again until the moment we stepped back outside into the hot and humid elements. We'd usually walk over to do our shopping immediately after our weekly training meeting at the chapel and then catch a taxi back (See "P-Days & Peceras"). We'd usually grab lunch there too, my favorite of which was the Carl's Jr, a place that I never really went to before or even after the Mission. To have the closest thing to an authentic American cheeseburger every now and then was a well-needed treat, especially since I'd lost a lot of weight in Mexico perpetually walking all day in the heat and humidity. A little junk food was good for me.
Among the complaints the city had was the “deforestation” of their streets. Where beautiful trees and grass once added color and shade now lay crumbling streets exposed to the intense sun that made every step outdoors feel hotter than it should have. The potholes were more like craters or dinosaurs footprints and very dangerous for vehicles, but just as equally deep and treacherous tripping hazards on foot. We had our fair share of walking and the peceras didn’t feel like they made our travels any faster but they were a must. The more south you went, the more problems people had with the plumbing. It seemed like from one day to the next, people wouldn't know if they'd have reliable running water or not. For unexplainable reasons, their water would just cut off suddenly and intermittently. And to make matters worse, smelling black sewage sludge in the southern neighborhoods would often come out of the manholes and fill the pothole-ridden street. You couldn't tell the mud from the sewage. Sometimes the sun would dry the surface of the sludge just enough to make it look dry just for us to take an unfortunate slide in. I don't recall ever taking a dive in, but there were many close calls where the best-case scenario was getting it on your shoes and wiping it off on the ground. I feel great sympathy for the people who live in those areas.
We lived in the north-most part of the area in a nice gated community called Los Ébanos (Eh-bah-nohs) which means “Ebony”, specifically the Ebony plant keeping true to all the streets named after different plants and flowers. Our two security guards would rotate shifts every other day; my companion and I actually ended up baptizing one of them.
We lived in a two-floor house with a dirt front yard that overlooked the wall dividing us from the neighboring main road. Just on the other side of that wall was a 7-Eleven which we visited at least daily for one reason or another either in the evening return home for a refreshing slushy after a hot day's work or for a quick hot dog and chips while we did our weekly planning every Thursday.
It wasn’t the best of houses but by now I never got my hopes up. I was greeted at the front door by Elder Gatica (Gah-tee-kah) who was still considerably new as a missionary (5 months in). Bugambilias was his first Area thus the only one he'd yet known. And if you consider it, 5 months was a long time to be in the same place. The two of them helped me carry my bags upstairs after the taxi dropped us off. I was surprised when I saw three other Elders all in the same room studying. I wasn’t expecting to be living six to a house! I’d never done that before. It seemed like a bit much, especially considering I was just coming from San José where it was just Elder Mullins and myself, each with our own bathroom.
OUR DISTRICT & HOUSEHOLD
At this point, over a year and a half in, I felt like I knew most of the missionaries in the Mission, or at least heard of them, but I didn’t know these Elders very well. Elder Gatica was companions with Elder Downey from Las Vegas. Elder Downey was a reserved man with an advanced intellect and talent for music. He’d play the piano at church every Sunday, baptismal services, and missionary meetings. He was generally a serious guy like myself, incredibly mature despite being relatively new, but he knew when to lighten up. His serious demeanor didn't mean he was in a bad mood. But work came first for Elder Downey. He knew his duties and was always the first to excuse us after our lunch appointments. You could trust Elder Downey. I frequently ran into Elder Downey on BYU campus after the mission and actually attended my first football game with him and a couple of mutual friends. Elder Gatica was a spirited guy with a fair amount of energy from Mexico. He was sociable and unceasingly kind. He never judged others. He could be a little crazy and playful at times but he had a good innocent spirit that all new missionaries bring that lights up a place. Then there was Elder Navarro from Guadalajara, Mexico. He was one of the older missionaries of the house, only 2 months behind me in seniority. He loved to talk to people. It was always him who’d strike up a conversation with me when everyone else was busy doing their own thing, taking a genuine interest in getting to know me. He was capricious but we all have our quirks. Elder Navarro’s companion was Elder Depeel from Canada. He was one of three in the whole mission from Canada. He was about nine months into his mission. He was a go-get-'em guy into exercise and protein shakes. He was a hard worker but also knew how to enjoy himself. He was the kind of guy who worked diligently and whose warmth everyone gravitated towards.
Of the six, I was the eldest both by age and time as a missionary. Naturally, not knowing them meant that they didn't know me when I arrived. I suspect that they were a bit curious if not concerned about what kind of person I, being their new District Leader, was. I didn't want to interrupt their morning studies when I arrived, so I quietly said hello and started unpacking. One of their first questions was how long I'd been in the Mission. Their mouths gaped open a bit when I casually answered that I was nineteen months in.
OUR HOUSE
Our house was about as big as the one in San José but not nearly as clean or comfortable with three times as many occupants with three times the number of companionships living in it. We shared a single cheap fridge between the six of us that was about five feet tall. We had a single table (which was mostly used as a counter) in the kitchen which I rarely used because it was so gross and covered with an old sticky residue like pancake syrup and corn flakes as if the table had been tarred and feathered with breakfast food and our pitifully tiny sink was always full of equally dirty dishes.
There was a half-bath under the stairs which was alike unto a closet or Harry Potter's bedroom which had a porthole of a window and a full bathroom upstairs with a shower hidden behind a moldy shower curtain (which I replaced because I couldn’t stand it); which meant that the 6 of us had to share the one shower.
Dirt was everywhere you could get dirt in the house. I remind you that all our flooring was white tile meaning that we wore sandals around the house. Garbage was scattered everywhere humanly possible both overflowing the wastebaskets and without. Leftover pizza boxes, empty bottles of glass and plastic, sticky food wrappers, packaging, used-up toilet paper rolls, beaten and water-ruined pamphlets, and so forth. I never arrived in a new Area with a clean house. Being the person that I am, I always took upon myself the responsibility to put it in order as best as I could, even though I knew it wouldn't last for long. I couldn’t stand living in filth when I could do something about it. I’d had my fill of filth for a lifetime. To me, I thought missionary houses should have been sacred places, temples that housed servants of God whose purpose was to help people become0 "cleaner". I thought that they’d take some pride in cleanliness but no one ever did. In other Missions, the missionaries have regular cleaning checks, in ours, the only visit we received was the occasional one to fumigate the cracks and crevices along the base of the walls of the ground floor, windowsills, and doors. It would leave the whole house smelling like chemicals or like wet paint for a few days but it was essential to combat the cockroaches and mosquitoes of which we had both. Not much of a shocker there. We’d leave the windows cracked as we went out about our day to air out the fumes but soon enough, the place would get dirty again and we'd repeat the cycle.
As mentioned, the six of us shared a study room where the air conditioning unit was on the second floor. There were also two bedrooms upstairs each with a bunk bed for four of us to sleep. I slept on the top bunk of my room where we had a tiny balcony that had a view over the cinder block wall dividing us from the main road. We left the balcony glass doors open most nights to let the cool air in now that we were into Spring and our swiveling fan also helped cool us off. There were also two twin beds downstairs but not really anywhere for them to keep their clothes except in the luggage or hung zigzagging across the room on what resembled a clothesline. There was also a sliding glass door to the "backyard" although it was practically an alley that had a washing basin and hose and not much else. We actually used those glass doors to get back into the house once when we accidentally locked ourselves out. To wash clothes, there were two places down the street which meant that we had to haul our laundry in our arms back and forth which was a pain. Despite the extra space on the ground floor, it was just as messy as the rest of the house. Nevertheless, to prevent tracking in more dirt, we'd keep our shoes and coats by the front door. Despite the garbage can being by the curb, most of our garbage just piled up around the kitchen or the front room.
The recreation below is of the upstairs on the left and the ground floor on the right.
We didn't really have a front yard as much as just a plot of dirt where the electric water pump was and something like a hybrid of sidewalk and parking space leading up to our front door. Being in the back corner of the gated community with walls on three sides of the house meant that we had a lot of privacy and hardly ever saw or heard our neighbors. By the time we'd get home at night, it was late enough and dark enough that no one would have even noticed our return anyway.
ELDER DE LEÓN
De León (Deh Leh-ohn) in Spanish is literally translated as, “Of the Lion”. He certainly had the heart of a lion as well as a teddy bear. Elder De León was my 16th companion in my nineteen months and my fellow District Leader. After serving with Elder Mullins, which I enjoyed, I again made it a personal goal of mine to enter the Area with the best attitude possible and to take full advantage of having a clean slate. I’d learned that first impressions were important but also that attitude and perspective determined success and not circumstance. I predetermined that I would make Elder De León my favorite companion so far. I promised myself before even meeting him that I wanted to have memories of joking with him, working hard, and making the most of my last months. I wanted no regrets. This is how I wanted to finish my Mission.
It was an easy thing to do. Elder De León was a little shorter than me but his voice was deep and smooth like a radio announcer. He was from Guatemala and a convert to the Church of only 4 years which was always inspiring to hear; being raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints my whole life, I have deep respect for converts, especially converts who dive immediately into missionary work. He was just the funnest guy to be around. A constant smiler. We hit it off right off the bat. He was easy to talk to. We respected each other. He was a good missionary and was always more than happy to do what I asked of him, which was refreshing; he never argued with me and always trusted me to call the shots which wasn't necessary but made me feel good. He was a good listener and a talented speaker. He was arguably my favorite companion, or at least in the top three. With that being said, I have things I love and appreciate about every companion I had.
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