Elder Nathan Fullmer Smith: Anona Adventure

Hey yall! I went on a pretty sweet adventure this week. I took a good amount of pictures to prove it too. So on Thursday, we did divisions with the Elders of Tenango. The Elders of Tenango have 2 branches in their area. Tenango and Anona. Anona was the first branch of Oaxaca. I told a bit of its history in my last email so you can refer to last weeks email. On Thursday we visited Anona and we stayed there over night.

Anona is in the middle of nowhere. It is pretty complicated to get there. First we traveled from Nochixtlán to Tenango. About a 40 minute drive. From Tenango we took a taxi to the very top of a mountain. From there we had to go down the mountain by foot following a trail. It took about another 40 minutes to walk down. And let me tell you, this wasn't a stroll down jack and jill's hill. It was intense and kind of dangerous at some points. I loved every minute of it because I miss going on hikes with Mom! So when we got to the bottom, there was a member names Moroni waiting for us in his truck. He then drove us to Anona which took about 30 minutes driving through streams and fields of corn. So we finally got to Anona after all of that. We were tired and hungry, so Moroni´s mom fed us :)

We went contacting in some small towns around Anona, because almost everyone in Anona are members. It took another 30 minute drive to find the next little town with more than just a few abandoned shack houses. It was tiring but a super cool experience. It´s absolutely beautiful with the mountains and the quiet of the Mexican countryside. I took some pictures of the animals that the branch president owns. I also caught a chicken and put it to sleep. (I learned how to make a chicken go to sleep about a year ago and its super funny).

We ate a lot of Pitaya as well. Its a delicious cactus fruit that you only find in the desert. Its blood red and it has the consistency of Watermelon. Its sweeter than watermelon and its kind of rare to find, but there are a lot in Anona. So Friday morning we returned to Nochixtlán. It was a lot harder climbing the mountain on the way back and we all ended up dead after an hour of intense climbing.