Jarin's Birthday!!

Well Im still in Muzquiz which is great, my new companion is Elder Sumano who is from Merida, Mexico (close to Cancun) he's super great am happy. He was an assistant to the president before and he only has one cycle left so Ill have a new companion in August for sure. Ive already learned so much from him and weve already had a ton of success and its only the second day. The only thing is there is definately more pressure now because before with Elder Castillo I just worried about working and doing my best but now I know that we are going to work hard so I can focus more on getting better. He is also District leader so thats fun to learn about and he or I talk to all the missionaries in the District everynight and we we'll have exchanges with all of them at least once during the cycle. 

My feet are alright I just have the one ingrown toenail that is infected, I went to the Doctor on saturday (the 2nd counselor to the President is Doctor for all of the Mexico City missions) and they dug out all the ingrown parts and half of my toenail and it doesnt hurt at all anymore so thats good I just have to soak my feet every morning and night and a couple other things. 

Im glad the work is going well in the ward and youre having good experiences. How are the missionaries in the ward? Its crazy Cooper leaves so soon. Is it hot in Idaho? Im excited to see the pictures and everything. 

Jesus is going to be bautised on Sunday after our stake conference and Marilou the next week. Hopefully we'll have some more dates soon, I know we will Elder Sumano teaches so powerfully and clearly its great. This past sunday we had 4 investigators at church and we should have a bunch more at the stake conference. The Stake is super big there are 11 wards so they cant all fit in the stake center which is our building so the meeting on sunday will be in the stake center by the temple which is super weird to me because its at least 20 minutes for everyone and more than half of the members dont have cars so its way more difficult than in Idaho but we'll see how it goes. Also this week we finally got the Liahona from May with the conference talks which is super awesome because I understood close to nothing and the talks are so great. 

Its weird it doesnt feel like my birthday, I didnt even remember it was until like 10 this morning and then I had to check the date twice to make sure haha. We had little ceasers with some elders that Elder Sumano knows one from Park City and another from Guatemala. 

I dont really know what else to say except that I miss you and everything is great here in Mexico. Love you lots and I hope everything is alright. Talk to you soon on Monday,

June 15th

Si things are good we had a good week. Our first baptism will be a 9 year old boy Jesus Rodreguez Melendez if he will come to church then we have Eduardo the 5th and Olga and her niece the 12th if they will come to church also haha, the Santa Maria family if they can get married and the hermano can quit smoking by the 26th and some other people we are not sure about when. We have 2 new families that are promising this week and hopefully more. We´re almost full until thursday which is good and bad, good because we have lots of investigadors and bad because if we find anyone new we dont have any space.

That is a cool story from the bishop, I am glad Im here but I think it would be fun to visit the Mexican countryside its so beautiful and the people are supposed to be even more friendly and excepting of the gospel. I keep wanting to write words in spanish and Im probably writing in a weird order so I hope you can understand lo siento. 

I had a super cool experience on saturday night I was getting ready to read the book of mormon and I had the feeling to send a text to our investigator Oscar. We hadnt had contact with him or his girlfriend who is a member for almost a month and he was so close to baptism. He was one of those investigators that I had a connection with and I liked him a lot. So I sent him a message that said that we missed him and hoped that everything was alright and that we want to visit them this week if we can (during all of this Elder Castillo was in the shower) then I knelt down to say my prayer to start my study and as I was asking Heavenly Father to help us have contact with Oscar I heard the phone vibrate, when I was done I checked the phone and it was Oscar after weeks of not answering he finally answered and said that everything was great and asked if we could please visit on Monday. An immediate answer to my prayers and we´re going to visit him tonight at 7 and hopefully he can have a baptismal date soon. He only needed 2 more lessons with the other missionaries and had a baptismal date in January but then the ward didnt have missionaries until we came so he never finished the lessons. 

Today I got a hair cut from the Hermana Jessica, the 19 year old who is preparing for her mission and goes with us to a lot of appointments, he cuts her Dads and her brothers hair so I trusted her but now I have a Mexican Style hair cut haha I feel super weird, probably only because its different but I dont know haha. Also next week because it is the end of the cycle we have pday on wednesday! My birthday! so I wont write until then. Im glad your having fun with tennis and everything else that is going on.

Everything is good here in Mexico, for some reason it is getting hotter which everyone is saying is weird because we should be moving into the rainy season, I dont like the heat but I like it better than being wet all the time so I guess its ok. Weve started exercising with the other Elders in the other ward that shares our building Elders Boyle from Utah and Medina from Veracruz MX, the church is inbetween where we both live so we go and run or play futbol (soccer) or basquet (basketball) for 30 minutes everymorning its fun and its good to be able to talk to other missionaries besides Elder Castillo. I hope that I have more exciting things to tell you next week.

June 8th

Hola,

Wow I forget that the time is 2 hours different, It was 3.33 here and now its 4.18. You did have a busy day! Is it going to be like that all of June? How was tennis? That is funny that Anna is driving the truck haha. Does she like it? Is it because the car has a problem? 

Yeah shes crazy. I really love the members of this ward though...its a hard area because it is in an area where there is a lot of traffic because we have the Avenida Central and 2 metro stations and a lot of the people we contact live in other wards. Just make sure the missionaries know that you want to help them. I cant imagine working with more than one ward, before I thought it was normal but now I realize that it would be super hard and crazy. I bet Bro Coles is a good ward mission leader. We still dont have one and a lot of times the bishop gives us less active or active members to visit so we're busy with that, I hope that they are doing visits and stuff because it kind of feels like we are doing all of the visiting and thats not how it should be. We had our investigador Eduardo at church yesterday and I was embarrassed about how disorganized the ward is, we have the same organization but it isnt applied very well here. I hope he felt the spirit and wants to figure out a way to come again (he works in a hospital on sundays with his girlfriend who is a member). I agree that its just about being friendly and knowing your neighbors, I think that its way harder in Idaho because we dont associate with a lot of people who arent members...Im not sure if thats a good thing or bad thing. But people just need to remember theyre own testimony and the way the gospel has changed their life and when they remember that they have the desire to share with others. Normally when we are with members we ask them about their conversion or mission or something like that and then ask them for references or invite them to share with their friends. 

My feet are better I dont have blisters anymore but I have ingrown toenails that are infected so I have to soak them in hot water and soap (and Ive been using your oils) for 30 minutes everynight and morning while I study and if they dont get better soon I have to go to the doctor haha. I havent found the socks or powder... the powder because I dont know what it is in spanish and most of the stores here you just go to the window and tell them what you want. im going to keep looking but I bought a new pair of shoes today for like 30 dollars...500 pesos, my district leader Elder Medina says that they are a really good brand so hopefully theyll be nice and I can trade more so my shoes have more time to dry. We went to a huge market place thingy this morning in the district. It is an entire colonia (neighborhood) huge area that is just like the street markets we have except it is like all the streets for a long ways and it is everyday. Its so big it has its own metro station...it has everything you would ever want to buy...everything...and the deeper you get into it the cheaper it is. Like half of the things are clones which means they are fake but almost exactly the same as the real thing but others are real. Its crazy. We went with the missionaries in the other ward elder Medina (our district leader from Veracruz MX) and Elder Boyle (from Provo and has one cycle more than me) It was nice to do stuff with other missionaries because Im tired of Elder Castillo and they are cool. I had divisions with Elder Medina on Thursday and it was super fun. We had 4 new baptismal dates this week (Familia Santa Maria= Gabriel and Sara, Eduardo, and 

Im sure it has been terrible sharing a bathroom with Anna. When will the bathroom be done? How was Jaces birthday? I cant believe he is 14 either. 

I miss country music, I hear American pop all over in the streets and in the buses but nobody knows what country is. I have also realized how bad some of pop music is because there is no filtering here because nobody understands anything anyways, people are always asking me what phrases from songs mean in spanish haha. 

I dont know if ______ is a bad word either but Ill ask my companion later haha. I agree with what you say, everyone has trials and I know satan works harder on us when we are doing what is right but we have soo much more help when we do whats right that it is easier. I know I would have died either from frustration are a crazy Mexican roberto without the help of nuestro Señor. I stand out so much everyone always shouts whatever they know in spanish at me and normally it doesnt mean anything, they always ask what happened because thats what que pasa is when you translate it directly its funny. Theres also a lot of people who know English really well. Saturday I talked to a homeless guy from LA. They say you can get awesome jobs hear if you know English so I dont know why he is homeless but its crazy. 

I had intercambios with Elder Medina from Argentina last week, it was fun hes a good missionary and pretty mellow which is a relief because everyone else is so crazy haha. 

June 1st

The sister missionaries are amazing and they can get to people that nobody else can because people feel more comfortable talking to them. 

We have a wedding to deal with too. Hermano y hermana Santa Maria need to get married and they want to get baptised so I hope that they do soon. Good luck with all the other people too youre in my prayers. We have an hermana in the ward that used to be active in the ward (she was 1st councilor in the relief society) named Norma she has a super strong testimony with amazing experiences and the story of her conversion that truely are miracles, she just has one huge problem, she has major anger problems and cant forgive people for being imperfect. The last time she was at church when she was a councilor in the relief society she got made at the relief society president who is now the young womens president who helps us a bunch and punched her in the face and pushed her to the floor....haha. Shes crazy. But other that she is super awesome and charitable. She has given us so many references that are so great she is the ultimate missionary but doesnt even go to church her self and still insists that it is the other ladys fault even though its been almost a year. we have 5 progressing investigadors from her and she has more for us this week. One of the families is a grandma and her grandson who want to be baptised named Lucia and Diego, but Diegos mom (Lucias daughter) wont let them get baptised and is pretty rude about it. Diego was crying last time we visited them and Lucia has pretty much accepted that she will never have the opportunity because she is old and her daughter pretty much controls her life. We havent met the daughter yet because shes always at work so we{re hoping to talk to her this week. The other family is a dad and his 4 kids, the mom died 2 years ago and the 2 younger kids who are the same ages as me and Elder Castillo 18 and 20, have some type of disease Im not sure what you call it but they are super little and are literally skin and bones and in wheelchairs. The dad is a math teacher and they dont have a lot of money because of how much it costs to support his kids. He is super catholic, like he goes to Mass every night that he can and before his wife died he worked in a church run program for the homeless and people with addictions, but he also trusts Norma and has a lot of faith that he will recieve an answer to his prayer if he reads the Book of Mormon and prays about it. I think that it will be soon with him hes super awesome. 

Then we are still focusing on the baptisms of Jesus, Olga, Oscar, Mauricio, and familia Santa Maria as soon as possible with dates for Esperanza and Jose Luis, Raul and Daniela, Noe, and Eduardo. Its frustrating because we have so many people that could be baptised so soon but they are the same people we had a month ago. Olga could have been bapisted a month ago if she would go to church. We need investigadors that are ready so we can baptize every week like the mission standard. 

Yesterday we had our ward conference. We had to be at the church at 7 because Elder Castillo was playing his violin with the choir....that I had to sing in. There were only 2 men, me and another hermano, and the rest were women haha. They actually started at 8 but there were only like 3 families and the stake leaders. The attendance was normal but none of our investigators we invited ended up coming and only a couple of the less active members we invited, but one of the hermanas Guadalupe Hernandez who has been to church in a really long time came and said she loved it and she wants to come back, she said she has missed the sacrament a lot. We visited her after church and her daughter and the daughters boyfriend were there and they had a lot of questions and they asked when we can come back and talk more so thats great. It really is true the only way to find investigators is through members, weve had very little success with contacts in the street no matter how cool they seem the investigators with member friends always progress more. Yesterday was the coldest day while I have been here it rained in the morning which is unusual because normally it is normally in the afternoon, it wasnt that cold but I think Im getting used to the weather because I was cold when I woke up. Everyone at church was wearing winter clothes all bundled up haha it was funny, its supposed to be starting to get colder because we{re getting more into the rainy season. 

Im excited to see the pictures of the bathroom and all the other fun stuff you have planned in the summer, tennis, the marathon, birthdays, camping and everything else. 

Love you lots...(its mucho amor haha not muy amore) Hopefully Ill have more exciting news next week. Hasta luego

Elder Inskeep