Week 9 - Week of the Drunk Men

So, this week we had a baptism and have 4 four more scheduled for the upcoming Saturday; the work is coming along.

This week has been really hot.  Like almost sunburn hot.. sweating is way better than freezing like at the MTC, I did ask some of the members and they said that June is like the hottest month so, I don’t know if they consider it hot right now and that its going to be scorching in June.

Healthy Kick - In the last half of the MTC I decided to do push ups and sit ups and I was really good at doing that every morning in the MTC but.... ya that stopped like the minute I arrived in Mexico. I really should work on that cause I don’t want to be a weakling when I return. 

That's exciting that Hunter Ensign has his call; Ireland is really cool.  Many of the general authorities served their missions in that area… haha

50 lessons a week is under the goal.... and this week we only got 42. slacking…! J.K, not slacking, sometimes its just hard to get 8 lessons in a day, especially Sundays and Saturdays, when nobody is home. 

Junior High, what a terrible time.... haha I had a blast in 7th grade but 8th and 9th weren't my favorites.

Tell Chloe I love her.

Ya, my Spanish is improving, I can ask questions about the lives of the members and understand now. haha…  and ya, it was pretty isolating.  Geoff and Sam, among others, have said that having latino comps is hard.  I actually like my comp a lot, but my only problem is that he doesn’t speak English. We communicate through spanish so if I don't have something I need to say or a specific question we don't really talk about non essential stuff.. which kinda sucks.

Yes, the entire area is a hill. and the picture I sent you last week is not the hill that's terrible-- that hill is rather normal.

So that sucks about going to Bountiful's seminary building at 2 in the morning .... haha and puke in class is always fun... Not!

I forgot that Holly's parents are moving to Utah and Tanner -- I miss that little guy. 

I think this was the week of the drunk men, we talked to so many drunks. And a guy we were talking to took a hit of cocaine right in front of us... haha and I see weed all the time.

My comp was almost robbed, some weirdo was walking by and came really close and tried to pick pocket him. But it was the shoddiest attempt I've ever seen, we were like "whats up?" and he was like "Hey come into my house.... that lady over there is white..." we turned around and said, "see you later man."  haha

What else?  Oh we ran all the way across the city, and when I say run I don't mean run, but we had an apt that was way up high and we were on the complete opposite side of our area. So when we finally get there, no one was home.... ya that stunk.

So baptism. I had to speak at the baptism about baptism, in spanish.... It went okay, I shared a lot of scriptures and bore my testimony-- haha I hope it all made sense... The baptism was of an old lady named Graciela. She has hard core arthritis and she was afraid of the water, so the baptism in the font wasn't the best experience, she was crying.... and they re did it... kind of a fiasco but it was good.... 

We would have 5 baptisms this Saturday but one of them didn't come to church so his date “callo" or fell through, going to bump it back like a week or two.  

So a little story about faith and judging people.

When I first got here we had this investigator who was a drug addict with tats and ear rings and stuff. He actually is American I think.... i.d.k. he was born in Indiana.  Anyways he got kicked out of the US after being in prison there and stuff like that.-yes he speaks english which is nice sometimes-

Anyways, he wasn't progressing in my view and I wondered why we were teaching him, I didn't have much faith in him, and to an extreme view not I didn't have enough faith in the power of the gospel to change lives. Anyways, the last two times we visited him he has cleaned his bedroom and he does his hair now, and everything about him looks cleaner, and his faith is definitely growing. idk I'm telling this poorly, he made some comments during the lesson about how he noticed from our teaching that somethings in his life he wanted to change, like playing video games and music... which is way cool I think. He is using the light of Christ in his life more to discern and he is more receptive to that light. I left that lesson a little bit humbled and with faith in the power to change.

Too bad he didn't show up to church on Sunday --the next morning... 

idk What else. 

I love you guys. Oh, and anyone who hasn't read Jesus the Christ read it, and if you have, read it again! I love it.

well... love,

Elder Blotter

Yellow Water...

Week 8 - Dead Tired!

This week has been good.  Tiring, but good.  Seriously, I am so exhausted after the day. When we come home to plan, I like struggle so hard to stay awake to write the next days appt.

Ummm sooo this week:

We worked hard - 51 lessons and 51 contacts, the contacts are supposed to be 80 for the week oops......

There’s like a giant hill called AV Revolution, it’s a massive hill that seriously sucks so hard to climb. At the top is like a poor area, the rest of the area is like slummy houses and like they are all pretty similar with like a big metal door on the front and behind is a little courtyard thing or a hallway or whatever and then you get to the house.  Oh, and all the houses are like connected, like the pictures I sent last week.  I’m doing a terrible job explaining this, anyways Marvillosa, I think is what its called at the top of the hill, is different.  The houses are more shack like and disconnected and they actually have yards - not like an american yard; like a Mexican yards - anyways way poor at the top of the hill.  I saw a couple dogs eating what either was a dead human or a dead dog. It was that eaten it was hard to tell; pretty gruesome.  At the top of the hill are a couple of families that are pretty faithful.  When we visited them we got a bunch of contacts that actually turned into appointments.  i.d.k. People seemed more humble up there, but it’s so far away.

About halfway through the week I was told that I was going to work our area with someone else cause my comp was going on splits with the DL.  I nearly died.  I was so stressed about it.  Like, literally I was resigned to just being lost all day long.  Sunday morning, the day that the splits were supposed to happen, came and my comp cancelled the split cause I would’ve just been wrecked.

I mean seriously only a week and a half in an area and not speaking spanish, you can handle this on your own right? no.

Spanish:

Much better than last week.  I can use spanish well (after I wrote that I laughed... well is relative) during lessons with sharing stuff and teaching doctrine, but conversationally… haha… ya,  I’m not there yet.  I definitely understand more than I can say.  

Two of our investigators with baptismal dates fell through, which sucked.  Fell through as in they didn’t come to church this week, so we have to move the date back further. We have two baptisms this Saturday which is cool though.  We had three investigators come to church, so that’s cool.

So we taught a couple of investigators with members present, but the members are less active. It’s a little annoying.  This has happened twice now; the members, during the word of wisdom lesson, say “like, but Jesus drank wine, why could he drink wine and we can’t?”  Finally, in one lesson, in my terrible spanish I was like “In the Old Testament, when the Israelites came back to the promised land, they killed everyone that was there -  the women, children, cows, goats, etc.  Is it okay to kill people today because they could in the bible?”  My comp was like “In the law of Moses, if you didn’t keep the sabbath day holy you got stoned to death, why don’t we do that now?”   It was a little harsh but it wasn’t that harsh in the lesson.  But seriously people, if the church is true and God said we can’t drink alcohol then that’s why.  Isn’t that enough? Cause it should be enough.

Umm… funny thought that popped into my head: our laundry is like soaking our dirty clothes in dirty water and then calling them clean. haha it’s kind of a joke.

We have/had 5 baptismal dates, which is cool, but two didn’t come to church so there’s that. Haha with one lady, who I thought was a member, we were visiting her and we taught “The Restoration”, which is a little weird to teach a member, but some members need that, so I didn’t think to much about it. Haha, at the end of the lesson we gave her a baptismal date, ya she was an investigator.  Haha my bad. 

Oh, theres one lady that we talk to that acts like I´m speaking some language other than spanish, maybe the other members are being nice and pretending to understand, but I’m pretty sure my spanish is adequate in that I use verbs.  Maybe I conjugate them wrong but it still should make partial sense.  This hermana (sister) just turns her head and says huh?  It’s frustrating.  Haha, the funny part is that she speaks rather slangy and not good spanish either, so I have a hard time understanding her.  Haha, ya we visit her all the time, she is a recent convert but she practically knows nothing, we go and define words for her which is hard for me cause I have to recognize the word in spanish and then try and explain it in spanish.

Ummm… this letters been long.  The hills are tiring and the altitude is like double that of Utah, so its tiring. I get home and have to walk around from like 10:00 - 10:30pm, so I don’t fall asleep.

I’m trying my hardest to be a good missionary, and I know I cant do it alone. I haven’t gotten sick yet so… lets hope that keeps going.

Love you!

Elder Blotter

P.S. There is this lady we are teaching, that is a member of some crazy religion, that believes Jesus or another form of Jesus is some old Korean lady, and she is called the church of god or something weird.  Also they have a religion here that worships saint dead, also very creepy.

Week 7 - First Impressions

Well...... so much to say and I'm not good at writing or remembering so I'll try to tell you guys everything... but don’t be upset if i miss something.

So the flight we woke up monday morning at like one am, the bus was supposed to leave at 2:30 am-ish, it was late. so we could have gotten like another hour of sleep. packed up, had to send some crap home, you should've gotten that... don’t need any of i think. anyways... bus left at like 3:30-ish to the airport and then get to the airport and there were a ton of missionaries leaving and so the checking was slammed and that took like twice as long as did security, annoying, but like our flight boarded at 545 and thats like when we, me and like the other kids in my district, got finished checking our bags. zoomed through security pretty easy, 

Flight to Houston/Dallas (I forgot)

It was like 20 degrees colder in Texas than was Utah, weird.  Not much to say about the airport except it was bye to a bunch of different peeps from the MTC.

Flight to Mexico City

Not much to say it was a flight, easy enough. We arrived in Mexico at like one in the afternoon;

customs and immigration took a little while but no problems, so that was nice.

We got picked up by two elders at the airport, and were taken in, like, these really nice taxis to the office where we got fed by the mission presidents wife, like hot dogs french fries and some beef; kind of a weird meal.

We then got taught how we teach in the mission for the rest of the day.  Oh ya, pretty much the President doesn't speak any english so like the interview was in spanish, that was though, haha so we got taught forever in the office, so tired it was rough.

The next morning we woke up, got ready, etc. and drove to a stake center where we got our companions.  Every white person (gringo) always gets a latino for a comp and all the new latinos get gringos for their trainers.  My comps name is Elder Zubietta, and he is from Ecuador.  He doesn't speak hardly any English, he’s a convert of like three years, he´s a hard worker, which is nice, but his last few comps were what they call “fritos" here, which means slacker - but literally translated is fried - so sometimes he does stuff and I’m like: “you probably don’t know this, but I think thats against the rules.”

The Area

I’m pretty sure Brad (brother in law) served here, you guys have got to tell him that.  There is a less active member who is trying to find him on FB named ¿yeni? or something and she told the other elders about him.  They were shocked when I said I was related to Brad.  The area is called Ixtla in Pariaso.  It’s pretty ghetto - I.D.K -  the pics do it justice, I think.  There are tons of stray dogs; I practically own a dog. There are tons of VW beetles - I’ll probably have to buy myself one of those after the mish, to remind myself of Mexico.

hahaha 

My comp doesn’t speak much english so its tough to communicate, and my spanish totally sucks.  The members who we meet say my spanish is really good, but..... ya no. It’s not.  I understand some people almost entirely, well the gist of what they’re saying during the lessons, but with other people I have no clue. 

The members here are really cool.  They just give us food and stuff whenever we visit them.  We are in an area that have tons of hills and stuff. Those were just two random thoughts....

Anyways we have to eat (I think he meant **make**) our own breakfast, which is like eggs cooked on a hot plate and I bought corn flakes... and apples.  Ya breakfast is lame.  For some reason we go to the church building and do our morning studies with the district, which is annoying cause then I can only bring the stuff that I use during the whole day and not my spanish text books or Jesus the Christ and stuff. I.D.K… we study till about 11 or 12, and then we go to work.  We have like appointments for every hour of the day.  A good amount of them are less active members.  We are supposed to contact 15 people in the streets during the day.  We eat lunch at like 2:00 pm and lunch is at a members house or a member gives us money to buy lunch somewhere.  I eat like the same amount as my comp and get harassed for not eating enough. idk haha i haven had anything i didn't like, they have tons of like fruit juices here, they ask if you want water and then they go blend a cantaloupe and pour you a glass, its pretty nice......  what else oh ya i cant figure out when we are supposed to return to the apartment, 9 or 930, then we plan and then i sit around till like 1030 to go to sleep.

Thats a typical day.

We have had like two golden investigators already.  We found one in a shop as we were walking back to our appt. she like yelled to us and told us that she wanted us to teach her, that was pretty cool.  The other lady, which was a reference, we went to teach her and it turns out that her kids are all members and stuff.  She has read some B.o.M and had like all the pamphlets, and I think she has a Liahona subscription, hahaha.  We bore our testimonies and then she bore hers. She´s been to church for like 10 weeks in a row, we´ll baptize her on the 22th of March, hahaha, so that’s way cool.

Then there’s the investigator that speaks english well, because he lived in America. He got addicted to drugs and was in prison for a while before he got deported to Mexico. Ya, we gave a cool lesson about the word of wisdom, and I shared a bunch in english, but he didn’t come to church, so that sucked. 

The mission president wants every companionship to have a baptism every week. That’s pretty cool, a little lofty I think, but idk.

What else....... idk.  It’s all a blur.  I follow my comp around cause I don’t really know whats going on hahahaha.  Not knowing spanish sucks; like it’s pretty discouraging. Anyways... idk what else to write. 

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder blotter

Week 6 - Arrived in Mexico City

I'm in Mexico so far its very pretty.  I've been assured its very safe, I love you.  Monday is my new P-Day... Sooo I'll write you in a week I guess.

The mission president told me I was getting a latino for my first companion; this is like the highest baptizing mission in the country.

The first day is like drinking from a water hose; I only got like two hours of sleep last night.

Anyways later! love you!

Elder Josh

Week 5 - Last Week in the MTC

So this week.... I don't know, its been really exciting that its the last week, we've had no real difference in our schedule yet, tomorrow is completely different and sunday is different too but so far its the usual, but our teachers have been doing some stuff different so thats been nice.... hahaha seriously you're going to be disappointed that this is short and i didn't really tell you anything but... nothing happens here.

we were teaching this lady from Guatemala I couldn't ever figure out if she was a fake investigator, she was really cool it was really cool teaching her, we taught her for the past two weeks and this week when we went to teach her we were about to start our lesson and the scheduling guy came in and was like, hey so you guys are done teaching her...... it kinda sucked she started crying and stuff we took a pic so that was cool.

What else? My district was like ya we're going to focus in and really grind hard the last week... what a joke. they have been way less efficient this week than in the past, which is saying something.

I'm not ticked at them cause its not my problem, and the district leader was distracted too, I just used the time for more personal study so that was nice. haha I've almost finished all the short books in the mish library, I haven't started jesus the christ yet.

umm ill look up the scriptures that you gave me... i had some scriptures i could share but i left my journal at the apartment. matt11:28 and then follow the footnote to 1st Jn 2:6 three words in the matt one is come take and learn. the action words pretty cool i.d.k.

love you guys,

Elder Josh


**************

That's elder Zach Checketts and elder venn Spencers cousin.. it was so fun seeing them before Checketts left, his mission call is to india but he didn't/yet get his visa so he's going to Spokane Washington, thats a far cry from india.  Im not sure where elder venn is going somewhere south america spanish speaking.

p.s. - hahaha don't worry I'm getting a hair cut like tomorrow.... wish me luck.