Well, this week is an exiting week because 1) it's the end of the month and we are scrambling to get out potentials to the front so we can report something good for the month, and 2) because it's the end of the transfer, and it sounds like some big things are happening here in Tierra blanca. From the sound of it, I'm staying, which is something I'm glad for. I'd rather be in the hottest part of the mission for the coolest part of the year any day. But it's really because I'm starting to love the ward and feel their love for the missionaries.
Peanut Butter Blessings
Last week when the Familia Trejos (2nd conselor to the bishop) went to Veracruz, they got me 600 oz of peanut butter, which has been a blassing an a half! The few youth we have are really neat as well. They always like talking to us at church activities and what not. For the size of ward they are great. Unfortunalty, their size does somewhat hinder them from helping a whole lot in the missionary work, not to mention the amount of work and life they have to do. So there isn't quite as much support as I would like, but we will see what we can do.
The Fellowship
The other day the ward did an activity where they went out and contacted inactive members from the ward. It was a great productive activity for the ward, we got some descent refferals from it as well. Personally, I would like to give the ward more opportunities to help us out. We have soem great families we are teaching--and people as well. We just really need fellowshippers for them. Those are just some of my thoughts on the ward.
Funny Story
Ha, funny story of the week is that I accidently made the power to half of the other Elders' apartment building go out, but I'm gonna leave you hanging and not say why this week. I'm just gonna blame it on the wiring.
So our teaching pool roughly consists of these people (I will give them in order or probability of joining the church) First we have (name has been removed for privacy purposes), she is a 10 year old little girl. Her mother and older sister are extembly inactive, and her father is who knows where. But she is a sweet little girl, and she is basically our only hope for not blanking this month. I'm really putting a lot of faith in here. She has been tought by Elders for a few months now. I don't know why she wasn't baptised before, but quite frankly, I'm not complaining right now! Then we have Hermana (name has been removed for privacy purposes), she is 50 give or take, and she is an extremely nice lady. She loves us Elders. She has been going to church for years now, so we are good there. Her daughter was baptised a little while ago, but has followed the inactive route. Laticia is reluctant to get baptised because she doesn't understand the whole confession of sins deal, and she is afraid that we will stop coming over after her baptism like the other Elders did. We have a few more after that: remind me to write about them next week. I'm out of time already, and those people are the main focus of the hour anyway. But thanks for your love and for your prayers. I sure love you all and hope all is well for you.
Congrats on the Family night dad. Now lets see just how far you can go!
P.S. Hey family, I coulda sworn I came from a big Family. I tell everyone I have 6 siblings, but it sure doesn't feel like it... did you guys go die or what? I wann hear from all of you!
My first transfer in Mexico is about to end! But I have 6 months as a missionary... I feel like a daggum gold fish in a whilrpool!
Health
So, I have officially diagnosed myself with a cold. The cold started in Park City because we slept with the windows open, and it has continued and fluctuated ever since. So I am planning on obtaining some cold medicine pronto! So other than not really feeling so well in the cranial cavity I'm enjoying myself.
Man, I cant believe how my physical health can have such a drag on me! But, it's good. I decided once I feel better I'm getting back on track with my exercise plan. I'm pretty convinced that I have lost all my baby missionary fat (thak you MTC for that). But things are well.
Introspection
This week has been rather slow due to the lack of work, but its all good. These last few weeks have been more just looking inside I guess and sorting some things out, discarding other things, and I guess just preparing for what is coming. To tell the truth, I feel somewhat that feeling you get like in a game of risk or some strategy game where you are about to make some big move that are going to get things set for the rest of the game. Or that feeling I would always have before a wrestling tournament (man I miss those days). But I will just talk about my observances of the culture pues.
Mexico Culture
So, first the food! I love mexican food soo much. All i=I can say is you don't know mexican food, you really don't. MY favorite dish is molley. I love molley, it's soo good! A lot of the food is just homemade tortillas made of masa and some lettus, cream with chile (salsa) and sometimes meat. I'm in a pretty poor area, so meat is scarce. Most of the food is just made of things you can buy in larg quantities for a cheap amount of money.
The people are really great people. Here, people have a very different mindset about life. They don't exaclty have the "ladder system" as we do the los Estados unidos. For them, the philosophy is that you work so you can pay your rent, luz (electicity), and food, with a side of coronas. They work to live here. The environment is a lot more relaxed as well because of this. They aren't worried about losing opportunities or promotions and what not. It's just the same work every day until you cant work anymore or are lucky enough to find a better job. I beleive one of the reasons I was sent to mexico is to somewhat learn this method of a chill lifestyle.
Here in Tierra blanca, not a whole lot of people have cars. It's a lot of motorcycles and those scooter things. Most people are not married, or were married but have lived with like 3 other people since then. These people love the techno/pop sounding music, so I have heared a lot of the new songs that have come out on the radio in the states. To tell the truth, I don't like them, ha! A lot of people here have never been much farther than Tierra Blanca in all their lives.
I am the only blond haired, blue eyed 6' plus person here for miles, so that certainly draws some attention. Fortunatly, missionaries have spent a good deal of time here so it's not somethnig completely new! But all is well, I'm acclimating just fine.
I love you all, and thanks so much for everything. I hope all is well wherever you are, whether it's a completely random trip to Hawaii or whatever, I hope you are enjoyng yourself!
Wow! I can't believe that I have already been in Mexico for a month! How crazy is that?! Wanna here something else crazy? Is that I'm closing in on my 6 month mark! Woo Hoo!
Well, this week nothing super special has happened. It hasn't rined much so it's been nice and hot. We are back to having just 4 missionaries at our house, which had been nice. I think the song that really helped me this week was "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World. Man, I miss those guys! Ohh and "Times of Our Lives" by GreenDay. I don't know why, but those songs were in my head a lot.
I guess this week was more of one of those growing pain weeks. There were moments when I really didn't want to be in my shoes. But I made it and I feel great! Every morning I woke up at 6:23 AM and climed up on the roof and just watched the stars until the sun came up. It's been pretty neat! It's been realy nice to just have some alone time and think all to myself.
That's about all for this week! I'll let you all know how things are going next week!
Wow! I have to say, I can't believe it's already PDay.This week has flown by faster than a supersonic jet.
So, I will start off with Tuesday. Tuesday, we had zone conference. Zone conference was Carlos A Carrio, some City in our zone that's about a 3-hour bus ride away (for the record, I'm probably gonna start relating everything to bus rides because that what we use here). The conference was schedualed to commence at 9 AM, so with us being 3 hours away and the bus leaving at 6 AM, we got up at 4 AM to get especially prepared because we were going to be seeing President Hansen. I slept for a good portion of the bus ride, go figure. Most of the ride was along some river, I have no idea what the name is I'm sure you can find it on google earth. But anyway, this river was swollen as heck, man it was huge and muddy. There were parts where I swear it must have been a foot from the road. It was so daggum swollen. And as we got closer to the city, I noticed that there were houses that were almost completely submerged in the water. This river made the sugercane fields looked like a slightly overgrown lawn (if you dont know anything about sugar canes, thery are pretty tall!) But I just can't believe how flooded everything was. Man, I felt so bad for the people, but at the same time I thought it was cool to see a flood. Just about the whole city had at least a foot or 2 of water.
But anyway, we went on and had a really great zone conference. It really helped me build my faith and confidence in President Hansen, as it's always really nice to be edified at things like those. At the end, they had us greenies bear our testimonies and it was all a really neat experience. In my zone, there are only 3 from my generation: me, Elder Malietua and Elder Havili.
We rode the bus home from zone conference, took some pics, and just had some fun, I guess. When we got home, we were informed that the Elders from Carlos were going to be staying with us for a few days untill they get the flood situation figured out. Apparantly they are realeasing the pressure at the dam a little father up the river so the cit has risin in water like 38 cm a day or something like that. So up untill last night we have had 8 Elders staying in our little house. Actually to tell the truth it was fun, Elder Gardner, who is a marine cadet brought his guitar and, it semmed alot like scout camp at night when we came in from working. Elder Casteñeda taught me to play La Bomba on the guitar. so that certainly was fun, we just talked and chilled and enjoyed the company. but now president has them spread out in different areas in the zone untill the floods go down.
SO that pretty much brings us up to conference, i gotta so What a boss time of the year it was to be able to hear from those great leaderes of our loving Heavenly Father, i done think a conference session has ever helped me soo much, man i loved. I cant beleive how fast it went! We took a tv fromt he church and set it up in English in one of fthe classroom, so al of is american elders got to watch it in enlish wich was really nice. BUt man i loved conference, i really like how they advised us to just be gratefull for everything and to sticlk to the basicos, man applying those things in the last few days has helped so much, it really does bring a nice sence of harmny to life. Fam i hope all of you listend and took notes, especially on the FAMLY HOME EVENING ONES!! BUt thatr basically my week and i enjoyed it, im planning to hit this next week even harder and carry on witht his energy of conference and zone conference. Thank you all so much for everything, i sure do love yall!
I gotta say, this week kinda stretched. At times it was fast and at times it was really slow. All in all. I gotta say it seems pretty fast.
New House
This week went much faster than last week I gotta admit. Thursday last week we moved to a new apartment. The new apartment is one room smaller than the other one, so we all have to sleep in the same room just as we did in Park City. To be honest, I like the new house a lot more. The other house was an ugly bright blue green color: everything was this color. Our new house is yellow, orange and red with a blue floor. I like the new colors more. I guess, ha. And our new house is a lot more clean, maybe because it's brand new and doesn't have 3 years of missionaries. Whatever the case it IS cleaner!
Hot Water
We have been with out water for the last few days, so Elder Castaneda so gracialsy "borrrowed" from the neighbors so we can all bathe. Here, you get your water for the house from a big tank thing that at the top of the house and our's has been empty for some unknown reason. So having to bathe with a bowl and a 5 gallon bucket of water sparked a great idea. At our house we have these little metal things that are used for heating up water. They probably sell them here to help heat up the water for a big pot or something. But I used it for a...... drum roll please... Water heater! Man, you have no idea how good it felt to bathe with hot water for the first time in what seems like years. It was such a nice relief, you dont even know!
Personal Study and Preparation
Something else that helped me a lot this week was to absolutely make sure that I get my personal study in every day. I can't believe how important it is to get personal study in. It really just brought a different attitude and a different spirit into my day. As Jeffery R Holland taught us in the MTC, "your morning makes you day, and your day makes your months, which make your mission, which make you life." I honestly believe that becasuse my studies helped my day so much and it helped my week so much! I have also begun to implement working out into my day as well, which has been a help.
I'm an Electrician
One other funny story of the week (mom is gonna hate this one) is I got to play electrician this week!! Woo hoo! One of the wires in our house fried, so after doing our laundry (by hand) me and Elder Caseñeda decided that we need to have electicity in the rest of the house--mostly for our empty fridge. So, I inspected the wire. We had to sacrifice an outlet location for this but now we are down an outlet in the kitchen and with electicity in the rest of the house. Lets just hope that my twisting 2 wires together is a good enough job to last as long as we are in the house, but then again, that's how the whole house is, so we should be good ;)
A Baptism and Madagascar 2
So this week I had the opportunity of going to Tres Valles fo a boutism, its about 30 mins away and looks the exact same as here in Tierra Blanca. The font had no water because something was wrong with the church, so we had the opportunity to hand-fill the font with 5 gallon buckets and a nearby members home. It was work! But the important part was done, and 2 people were baptized. Then we got on the bus (the main form of transportation here) and rushed back home, on the way home the bus was playing Madagascar 2 and I couldn't help but watch. Man, I love that movie. "Now who would like a cookie?!" Man, epic... but we got back just in time to have the Baptism of Guadalupe as well, which I was given the opportunity to do the service. It all went well and I'm really looking to just sitting back and learning from Elder Casteñeda this week instead of trying to voice my opinion. Right now, I just really need to follow and learn and just wait until President Hansen calls me as a leader to lead. After all, all good leaders were good followers at one point of time, so I'm just re-learning this philosophy. I must same I'm so grateful to be here. The weather has been so beautifull the last few days. It' rained everyday and been very clowdy and I'm focusing more on my calling than myself, and that's the most important thing right now.
I love you all and thanks for everything!
