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It's been just over a year since I returned from my mission to Cincinnati, OH.
I was going to Spain this summer, so I thought I'd just get a layover in Cincy for a few days.
I went with my brother, John.
It was the most hectic few days of my life. Trying to see 2 years worth of members/investigators/recent converts was harder than I expected.
Luckily I came up with a genius plan. I had a fiesta done for me at a members house on Sunday night and just invite a bunch of people that lived nearby.

This trip just re-iterated the general hispanic inability to settle down.
In the 1 year I'd been away from Ohio, most of my contacts had moved house, and switched cell provider. It made it difficult to track them down.....but I figured.. hey, if immigration can track down Mexicans, so can I!

I arrived at the airport, and was picked up by a good friend Angel. He loaned me a truck for my trip. It was a Ford ranger V6 5spd. Driving a manual transmission truck with a left hand in a cast was a little bit tricky, but didn't end up too bad. All I had to make sure of was that I wasn't turning and changing gears at the same time :)
I started on Friday by going to downtown Cincinnati. I stopped by the branch president (Scott Martin) from my Hamilton branch (my greenie area) and allowed him to buy me lunch :)


I then went to Jungle Jim's (a cool huge shop 4x the size of Walmart where they sell tons of foreign food) I bought a bunch of European chocolate/drinks.
I then met up with Efrén Pérez with whom I went to eat with Rafael and Fabiola Luna

I was exhausted, as the night before traveling I'd been up until 4AM on a date (at least it's a valid excuse) and woken up at 6AM to leave for the flight, but while driving home from dinner, I decided to call my old Peruvian friend Jaime Solís. He answered, and we stopped by a few mins later.


I arrived home extremely tired. I tried to check my email on the lame dialup connection at the house I was staying at, but got fed up, and went to bed (at around 3AM).

We woke up late the next day. We rushed out the door, following the highly innaccurate GoogleMap directions to see Juan Carlos and Betty. I think we offended our hosts a little, as they'd made a big effort to make us pancakes for breakfast, but we didn't have time to eat them. We took them in the truck with us and ate them on the way.
I'd been in their area for 7 1/2 months, and really got to know them. He's just the coolest guy.


After that, we drove up to Indiana.
Being a Spanish missionary, it was a great change to serve in Batesville, IN. It was an English ward. My job was to get hispanics to come, and to translate for them. Now, over a little year later, they have their own group (which means they have their own sacrament meeting in Spanish) with 10-15 hispanics attending, in which my recent convert Adolfo de la Cruz is the Group Leader.
I'd received a lot of help from English members, and it made a change to have an experienced and capable Ward Mision Leader (Max Alley).


Since he'd been so cool, (and the fact that I'd lost a bet with him whilst serving there) I took his family to lunch. A couple of my recent converts crashed the party too!


Max's kids wanted to play Ultimate Frisbee afterwards; something I'd done whilst in the area on P-days. For oldtime's sake, I played with them, nearly re-braking my hand in the process
We stayed the night at the Alley's.

We went to church together the next day. A fair amount of people still remembered me (considering I was a Spanish missionary, that's not too bad).
One guy came up to me and said "hm... you look familiar, but I don't remember why...."
I almost said "You probably don't remember me because you never helped with missionary work."
Most of you who know me will probably be surprised to know that I held my tongue,.....but, after all, I was in my old missionary area.

We stuck around for a bit taking pictures, and then left for Kentucky for the fiesta.

There were tons of familiar faces there. It was the coolest.
Below is Hugo Sánchez and his wife. They got married whilst I was in their area. Going to a mexican wedding is a great way to find new hispanic investigators :)


One of the coolest experiences of my mission was that of teaching Oscar Zárate.
He had a kid with, and was living with a semi-active member, Marilú.
He'd had missionaries trying to teach him for ages, and was thought to be one of those eternal investigators.
I was in the area for over 7 months, and by the time I left, they'd been married, he'd been baptised, and he'd been made a ward missionary. Watching the change in him was possibly the most incredible experience of my life. Since, he's received the Melchizedek Priesthood, and they're halfway through the temple-prep classes, and should be sealed in the next few months.
They were the last ones to leave the fiesta.


The fiesta finished at 3AM, giving us another day with ~3 hours of sleep.
We woke up, and drove to the CVG airport the next day at around 6AM.