Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Its been raining a lot here too, its super hot every morning but the around 4 or 5 every afternoon it gets windy and rainy, not cold just a ton of water. Elder Castillo is always cold and wears a sweater his rain coat and sometimes a hat and he has rain boots so he always walks right through the middle of the puddles. I dont like it because its hot but if you dont wear anything you get super wet. 
 Family history hear is cool because there are so many converts so there is a lot of work to do and they have a cool history. The Aztecs and Mayans have such a cool culture Im excited for someday when I can visit the pyramids in the mission and also after the mission there are bigger ones outside the mission. And there are even still people in mountains here that speak Mayan. Then the spanish conquistadores, Mexican culture is really cool. 
 The Mexicans have a lot of a lot of church jokes but I dont really get any of them even though I understand most of the words, things are different here. We saw real nuns the other night it was interesting because Ive never seen nuns in real life. I wonder how they get into that because no one thats catholic seems really committed and they dedicate their entire lives. 
This week we had a bunch of contacts in the streets and we have a lot of new people to teach this week so hopefully eveything goes well and we have a bunch of new investigadors. We found a lot of new people because we were looking for some references that we couldnt find so we had to ask people were the street was and knock a few doors, it made me want to talk to even more people in the street because we had so much success, Elder Castillo doesnt really like to talk to just random people in the streets so weve never done much of it but Im going to do it more. We have a new family named familia Santa Maria who actually isnt new they had the lessons already but arent baptised because the husband isnt divorced from his past wife and isnt married to his new girlfriend but they want to get baptised and they attended church a bunch in the past so hopefully they can get everything worked out soon.
Today we went to a street market (tiangis) in a street close to the church were a member of the ward was working, we ate carnita tacos and horchata that was really good, carnita is a whole bunch of different pig parts like snout ears and then other normal parts, it sounds weird but if you dont think about it too much it is really good haha. Then I looked at shoes and dress pants, its hard because the sizes are different but everything is really cheap hopefully I´ll find some soon, the pants wont be too hard because I can by them big and then we have a friend who can fit them for cheap but the shoes Ill have to buy in a real store because no one in the street has feet as big as mine. 
I think Im getting more used to the spicy food I only cry sometimes now haha and a lady asked Elder Castillo what percent of spanish he thinks I can speak, I was thinking like 40 but he said 60 or 70 so that made me feel good, I have a promise from the president if I read the book of mormon by the end of my training out loud that my spanish will come quickly and Ill have a good accent, at the first I only read during study time but now in order to finish I have to read during whatever spare time I have so now I read at night too. Poor Elder Castillo has to listen to me all day but I have to listen to his violin and put up with everything else so its ok haha. It definately is way better especially when we are teaching with the spirit things go really smoothly and a lot of times I cant really remember what I said or how I said it. 
I wish we could talk everyday because there is so much more I am probably missing but whatever and also I never take pictures so hopefully Ill have the oppurtunity to take more.
Love you lots

Elder Christiansen in our conference, ....ps I did not take this picture haha
You can see some of the senior missionaries on the left side, its cool theres a bunch because of the temple visitor center, their cool and one couple is from star valley a bunch from utah and a few from Mexico


The mission pictures we took when Elder Christiansen was here. I look really stupid and my head is at a weird angle...I need to work on my posture. See if you can find me, Elder Te is to the right of me and some hermanas in my zone are in front of me, Elder Castillo is on the other side somewhere and I dont really know that many of the others.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Marriage is a problem here too, probably in the whole world but its weird that in a culture so focus on families that there is so much divorce and people living together not married. Especially people who have been together for so long and have kids and sometimes even grandkids. Why not just get married?  I used your expirience  in my talk yesterday so I hope thats ok haha. It was my third talk so I was less nervous and that may have effected the quality and also that I didnt write it word for word because I was feeling more confident, everyone said it was good so who knows if they are serious or if theyre just being nice. But your right you really do get so much more out of the scriptures when youre trying to help other people and then you recieve blessings for sharing. 
This weekend was crazy! so Friday morning we took our investigator Lucio to the temple visitor center which is even cooler when you have an investigator and it was so spiritual the sisters did a great job on the tour and I know he felt the spirit but afterwards he told us not to visit anymore. I doesnt want to change and he doesnt want to waste our time. I was super sad but in my heart I think I knew from the begining he wanted to learn english more than learn about the gospel, but he had so many great questions and we liked him so much. Its sad but maybe in the future when hes ready to change he"ll come back, he knows where to find it. Then after that we visited Olga because she wasnt home for our lesson on thursday we walked up to her house and she was outside hanging clothes on her ledge to dry, she let us right in and told us that she had been praying for an answer to a question and we showed up so she said we answered her prayer, she even voluntered to pray before we even asked and normally she doesnt want to pray outloud with us. She just needs to go to church and she can be baptised so this week we are going to reteach that because she doesnt understand that it is important. We also learned why her house smells so weird all the time, she makes soap but with real herbs and stuff, she gave us a bar of mint soap it smells super strong but I think it will be good and she told us to be carefull not to get it near our eyes haha. Then we found a part member family that moved into the ward that we are going to teach and also a guy named Jose Luis, he rode his bike up to us while we were walking and said "where can I get a hold of John Esmiths book" haha we gave him one and explained to him that it was actually Jose Smith and taught him a little about that and got his address I guess he visited the visitor center once a long time ago and had been thinking about it. We went to his house a later when he said we could and he wasnt home but his mom was, a super sweet old lady, we talked to her for a while and made an appointment for a better time we could come back and teach them both, as she was closing the door I heard her say to her self "que buena gente" what good people haha. So we{re excited for that. We set a date for the baptism of Jasmine which is good but she gets crazier by the day. Its really sad, she sits outside her old house waiting for something to happen while listening to American 50s music so normally we teach her sitting on the curb outside her old house, last time she told us her life story and it was super sad. I know the gospel will really help her if we can keep her keeping her commitments. Then on saturday morning we had a meeting with Elder Craig Christiansen of the presidency of the seventy and Elder de Hoyos president of the area seventy, it was really good Elder Christiansen was president of the mission 18 years ago but the old Mexico City Mission is now 5 different missions so thats crazy how much the church has grown sense then I think he said when he came there was 21 wards in the whole mission and now our mission which is just a super small part because the other missions are bigger has 9 stakes with at least 10 wards in each stake. We also took a mission picture so hopefully Ill have that to send soon. The meeting was at 7.45 in the morning so because of traffic we had to leave the house at 6 but were not even that far away. Then when we got back we found out that the primary presidents daughter died, we had just eaten with them on tuesday and given her a blessing (she had some weird gross thing on her neck, I think it was a tumor but I couldnt quite sure but she had only had it sense April 25) she had said she was feeling a lot better. It was super sad she was only 33. Anyways the bishop asked us to share a message at the funeral which was that night at their house because only the primary president and the daughter are members, it was so sad and I was soo scared to talk at a funeral. The funeral actually turned out really nice, there was a lot of ward members, Mexicans really know what ward family means, nobody knew the daughter very well because she lived in a different ward with her husband but had been living with the primary president sense she had the problem because of her husband is gone a lot for work. The primary president talked and shared her testimony that she will see her daughter again and that when she does she will be perfect without pain. she took down the crosses and candles that had been set up by her family and explained that she didnt want to offend anyone but that she and her daughter are members of the iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los últimos días and that they know that Jesus lives and that she didnt want the images and stuff. It was really good. But we didnt get home until after 10 (we had the presidents permission) and the rest of the week had been so busy so I hadnt had time to prepare my talk so we planned and went to bed at 11 and I got up at 5 to write my talk, I was so tired. We also started teaching a less active family who has a 9 year old son named Jesus who isnt baptised yet but he wants to be so thats super awesome theyre a great family. And thats everthing interesting that happened I think. Something I thought was funny the sister that we are teaching the twins in her house is named Bernice but its pronounced Bear uh knee say haha theres a whole bunch of names like that here that we have in the US but theyre pronounce way different its funny.
Its good to hear from you and everything that is going on! I love you lots and good luck with all your lessons.
Hasta luego 
 Mexican money
 The tennis racket Mauricio gave me haha its pretty old but super nice of him Im excited to use it
 view from my window

This week hasnt been too different. We have a family that we have been teaching their names are Margarita Daime and Mauricio. Margarita and her son Damie (Damie is my age) were baptised a long time ago but they have never been active so they know almost nothing about the church. Mauricio is her other son who is a lot older was actually in jail when they were baptised and just always said he was catholic and went in his room when we came over but on sunday when we visited them first of all when we got there they were getting ready to eat and insisted that we eat with them. I didnt want to because they hardly have any money but its rude to say no so we did and it was really good. Margarita works in the street markets selling clothes so how much she sells literally means if they can buy food or not. So because we were eating together it was the first time we had really talked to Mauricio. I really like him a lot hes a really nice guy and he has a lot of faith. He is a tattoo artist and he really is an artist he has some super cool drawings and he carves wood too which is super cool. We talked to him for a long time about the church and then went back on Monday to share some pan with them which was great because they had nothing to eat and we got to talk some more with Mauricio. While we were talking to Mauricio and Daime, Margarita went to do some laundry in the laundry sink that she shares with like 5 other families and found that her upstairs neighbor, who had left to pick up her daughter who had gotten hurt at school or something, had a lot of laundry sitting there waiting to get done so what did she do? She did it all for her. Washed it and hung it up to dry how nice is that? She is the most charitable person I know. She is always doing stuff for people and she really doesnt have much sometimes she even gives some of the clothes that she is trying to sell for her livelyhood to people who cant afford it. SHe used to be an English teacher but she lost her job so she has to work in the streets. I really love this family. Margarita told me to tell you not to worry about me here because I have a mom here haha. We are also taking Lucio to the Visitor Center on Friday I really think this will help his progress so hopefully he will have a baptismal date this week. That may have been confusing so sorry and I hope this letter was better than last weeks.