Ok, so I don’t have a lot of
time to write and it is a little difficult to write on these Spanish keyboards
but I love, love, love Mexico!!! I am in the actual city.
Mexico is so so different
than I thought it would be but I love it so much! My companion is from Baja California and has
one more sibling than I do. The Spanish here is crazy crazy fast. The phrase I
have down really well now in Spanish is, “please repeat that only slower”.
So my mission president is
great and super super nice. The only thing
is we have so many rules! We wake up
5min early so we never wake up late even by a minute. We can only listen to Motab and that’s only
during our exercise time. We aren't
allowed to write letters or emails to people of the opposite gender unless it is
the mission president or a member of our family. The boys have to comb their hair with a part
in it. The list just goes on for a long
time. Even though it is super strict I love it.
The mission president said if your whole heart and soul is really into
the work you really won’t care at all. It
is so true.
There is so much success
here. Our mission is one of the highest
baptizing missions in the world with over 300 baptisms a month! At first when I heard the numbers that we need
to get each month I thought there was no way! But after talking to people no one even comes
close. They always go way over! We are supposed to bring 4 people to church
every week, add 12 new investigators
every week, 14 lessons with member’s present, 50 lessons taught, and 1 baptism
every week. We already have 3 people who
are getting baptized this upcoming Sunday so I am so excited!!! Especially because one of the ladies husband
is a member and she is pregnant and she really wants her little family to be
together forever.
This area is a new area for
sisters so the ward loves us so much! It
is super funny though because I am trying to learn Spanish but everyone tries
to practice their English with me. In
our little apartment there are tons of members, which is super nice. They let us wash our laundry there and always
offer to come teaching with us. It is
great!
Another thing I was super
worried about was the water but it turns out that no one drinks it. So every house has huge jugs of water to
drink from. So on that side everything
is good. Another thing they always give us that is really good is water blended
with a little bit of pineapple or mango.
It is super good. Actually all
the food here is amazing! So don’t be
surprised if I come back round because the food is super bad for you and comes
in large quantities that is part of what makes it so delicious! Oh and everything is super spicy. Even when
they are serving spaghetti. I am like… oh good something not spicy tonight. Then the sauce will be hot sauce instead of
spaghetti sauce.
Another thing I love here is
all the buildings are super bright colors! I am already planning on where I am going to
live after my mission when I come back to Mexico. It is preferably going to be an apartment
with windows. Our apartment is actually
pretty nice because we have a water heater.
However, it only has holes in the walls for windows. It wouldn’t be so bad except there are probably
as many dogs and chickens running around as there are people!! So the dogs are howling all night and the
roosters crowing all morning!
I have literally never seen
more people in my life! Public
transportation has been the highlight of my week. The buses are super crowded. You have to stand and hold onto something,
which was a little hard today with all our groceries. But these little combies
are worse! They are like a mini van that they have stripped all the seats out. So there will be 40 to 50 people standing in
the back. You are super squished but you
can’t even stand up! Everyone is hunched
over. However, my favorite part by far
was the subway! In each car people are
smashed against the windows. There is a
worker that if people aren’t fitting, his job is to try to push as hard as he
can to get everyone to fit. You don’t
even have to hold on because you are so squished you couldn’t move if you
wanted to. I thought getting on would be
the hard part but getting off was so much funnier. When someone trying to get on sees you are
trying to get off, they will grab both your arms and pull as hard as they can. So they can get a spot inside. So I was in the middle so I had two people
pulling my arms so hard that at one point I just crowed surfed my way out of
there. It was probably the best
experience of my life so far.
Another thing that is crazy
is I would say there are about 5000 people living in our apartment building. Instead of having separate mailboxes for
everyone all mail goes in one big box. We
spent a solid hour looking for our bills through all those letters.
If you think it is hard to
stay awake for general conference, try watching it in a language you don’t
understand. It was pretty funny to listen to the prophet with an old Mexican man voice though. It was really cool because I wouldn’t
understand anything but then all of a sudden I would understand a whole talk. I know that that talk had a message that I
needed to hear.
My favorite people to talk to
here are kids about 4 and younger because we can understand each other
perfectly! Our Spanish is about the same
level! So I have made friends with lots
of little kids in the ward.
Another crazy thing about the
streets here is that the numbers make no sense! If we are looking for house 67 it will go
64, 65, 66, 134!!! We will spend forever
looking for houses and usually end up going to the wrong house. The cool thing though is every wrong house we
have gone to is now investigating the church.
So there is a reason for everything!
Another weird thing is there
are no building codes so sometimes to get to people’s houses we are walking on
roofs and all sorts of weird places. I love it though and all the people here
are super amazing. vLots of weird things
have happened which I will leave out until I come home from my mission. No need
to worry my companion studied in Tijuana so she has some major street smarts.
Lots of amazing things have happened too though. we were trying to find a
member’s house because we had a lunch appointment. We asked directions from this guy. We started talking about the church and he
said he would come to conference and he did but it turns out he has 8 Kids!!! It was so cool to see how you never know what
can happen when you are talking to someone.
Well I thought all your
stories were super funny and I can’t believe that dad lost his ipad again! But the mission president said we aren’t doing
our job if we don’t leave a spiritual thought.
So the field is white everywhere not just in Mexico!!!
Got to go!
Love.
Hermana jones
No comments:
Post a Comment