Mexico Week 7

   This place is so awesome!!! I love it!!!! It is the greatest place ever! I live in the ghetto, surrounded by dogs everywhere! There are a couple on our roof too, at night we can here them running around. So I am in Cortazar, Guanajuato, not Queretaro, our mission has big boundaries! The flight was good, except I dont have any pictures because my camera was stolen. I wasn't robbed at gun point, but we all fell asleep on the ride from Mexico City to Queretaro, Me with my bag open. Our driver of our van took it! hahahahahaha dont worry, I have the polaroid and its been upgraded to my mission camera. I left my bag open, camera on top, asleep. after the guy dropped us off, I was in such a hurry to get all my stuff that I did not notice until later that night. The mission home is only where the secretaries stay, a heck of a lot nicer than ours! 

  We have to turn on the gas (it is a tank in the back) light the boiler, wait for ten minutes, only then can we have hot water!! It is loco!!! I am companions with Elder Alonso, we are about two hours away from queretaro by bus, and we actually have bikes here! Woohoo!! Sorry I dont have very many photos of the outside, If I take photos outside, then I will probably get mugged, which I haven't and probably never will. I am one of two guerros (gringos) here and I am about 5 inches taller than everyone here. The only other guerro is Elder May and he's 6'2, so while I'm big to everyone, he's a giant! 

We stayed with other missionaries at their house (again, sorry no photos) when we first arrived here. everyone is super nice here and it's pretty great. Our investigators are legit, one has 3 bulldogs that hate everything that moves except for missionaries (lucky us). another is the comandante of the Queretaro police force (like captain). We have another that is like dirt poor, has no electricity dirt floors, he lives with his mother and 3 daughters, who are the cutest little girls I've ever seen!! I only got to take a photo with one and her name is América! We have a couple others, two are living together, dying to get baptized, but the woman is still married to another man, this is actually super common in mexico. 

  Elder Alonso got to baptize the comandante ( Alfredo) and I had to confirm him, in sacrament, in front of everyone!!!! I almost died!! I had to confirm/bless him because it's all in one!! It was intense, let me tell you! after that it was fine, I just bore my testimony, also 8 investigators came to church!!! It was crazy!!!! like what?! The language is coming along awesomely, I can understand the gist of what nearly everyone else is saying. I had to go back to Queretaro for my visa with another Elder who has been here for a week too (only us). so it was 2 guerros who already stick out like sore thumbs, traveling together. YAY!! But as soon as I opened my mouth and started talking spanish to him, He didnt understand a single thing I said, so I was a flippin latino compared to him! I translated everything for him and had to give the cab driver directions but yeah, I'm good! I was with all the new guerros in the city and it turns out, since me and my companion can actuallly talk to each other, we are the closest out of all the new companionships! It may sound stupid but I can joke in spanish now! MILESTONE!!! 

  Elder Alonso is seriously awesome! He's super funny, all the members and investigators love him, and he loves american music! It's awesome, we just  sit there and name off songs that we like and try to sing them to each other. He knows all the lyrics, but has no idea what some of the lyrics mean, so I point out all the songs that he probably shouldnt sing, which is a lot of eminem, rihanna, and some others. But we get along great, I'm teaching actual sections of preach my gospel with him to investigators, and he's super patient with my spanish, but he especially likes it when I accidently curse (which doesnt happen that often) so many spanish words are similiar!!! but here is awesome, culture shock was there, especially when I first walked up to our house and all the sudden dogs were barking at us from the roof. He just looked at me and nodded, smiling. He is from Tijuana and is 20 years old, almost 21. I seriously could not have asked for a better companion! He is the best! Also I have to learn spanish because that's a lot easier for both of us, so yep, spanish protoge, right here ;) hahahah jk, but honestly, I love it here!! Now pictures!! First are of the house,then others. The clothes hanging up? Yeah, thats our closet. Our  house is pretty legit, we have a little courtyard we have to walk to our kitchen, it's lemon tree.

Queretaro, Mexico Week 6

  All right, so I made it ok, a guy was waiting at the terminal for us and took us to the mission house. It took 3 hours to get there from the airport, much more than we thought! I am dead, I fell asleep at 1:45 cuz I couldn’t sleep and then woke up at 2. No sleep at all!! But I am good. We just had a Mexican dinner, met the president and his wife, who both speak English really well! After the Mexican dinner we had Little Caesars, who knew? Elder Cueva, a missionary here wanted to say hi! We will be sleeping at a members house tonight, have intro classes, then I'll be assigned my trainer, and wont get into my area that night. Also, I can't speak Spanish :P everyone said that it would take a couple weeks before I get used to the speed. All right, that’s pretty much it, I miss you, love you, and think of you guys all the time. 

Adios and wish me luck.

Provo MTC Week 5

  I got your package, thank you so much!!! I'm pretty pumped and kind of

nervous. I got my flight plan, my first flight is delta airlines at Salt

Lake City at 7:10. I have to wake up at 3:00 and we leave at 3:30 on the

shuttle to the airport. This is probably when I'm going to have the most

time to call you, also Utah is now in daylight savings time. I arrive in

Atlanta, Georgia about 12:45 pm. I have only an hour layover and I leave at

1:45 to Mexico City. I arrive in Mexico at around 4:21 pm. I have 8 missionaries in my group, traveling to Mexico.  I land in Mexico City, where someone will find us and take us to Queretaro, which is only like an hour away. They said everything would be explained by our travel leader.

  I'm probably going to miss my district the most, that's going to be the hardest part, for sure. Not really scared for Mexico, a little nervous about teaching and sticking out like a white thumb, but not really. I'll make sure I'm extra careful. I'll for sure get some food. The past week and a half hasn't really been anything different, other than welcoming new districts, we got a New Zealander and it's tradition in our zone to assign a spirit animal to everyone (I was the white-tailed lynx) and so we called him "The One Wombat to Rule Them All" since New Zealand is where they filmed Lord of the Rings!!  He got it and loved It!!! I gave up the Scottish accent.  I couldn’t handle going 5 days without talking normal English!

  The time is going super fast!! I thought these would be the

slowest days but they're insanely fast! For the last week we tried to speak

only in Spanish and only a few of us made it, (your son included) but it's

P-Day and we don't want to try that hard.

1)thanks for the bubbly
2)we said goodbye to our investigator Jose, who actually wasnt a member,
and it was sad because he's the greatest guy in the world!! We will miss him