28 de febrero

¡¿como estan my loved ones?!

this week has been pretty good. every day i write something down in my handy dandy notebook that i can put in my emails. i decided im gonna put all the american songs i hear in the email too. i love hearing the american songs. its just really funny to me idk why! this week i heard a great one, I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS. haha it was great. some store had it on repeat and it played like 10 times in a row. we were sitten outside the store waiting for an hermano to pick us up. also heard HEY, SOUL SISTER, TEENAGE DREAM (my fav), CRAZY IN LOVE, and BABY by Justin Beiber!

theres a kinda big area by ours where there is a reformed church (RLDS) and a lot of its members live around it. and the streets that the church is on are LEHI and JOSÉ SMITH (josé smith is joseph smith). haha crazy or what?!?! they prob think they are really cool or something.... whatevs. LDS is the true church. we all know that.

so stuff that happened this week... umm... a really old guy got super mad at me and my comp because we kicked a can and it was not even that close to hitting him, but he flipped and cussed at us. also saw a drunk guy walking at night and started talking to a wall and then punched it. haha. oh i ate a really hot pepper at a members house. it was one where parts of it are really hot and others not at all. i ate a really hot part. woof. it was crazy hot. we put oranges, watermelon, honey, all sorts of stuff in our mouths!! pretty crazy. ummm my comp likes to sing mmm....bop by hanson. really random. we walk so much here! but i honestly dont get that tired! i picture an angel just constantly pushing me along from behind. i couldnt walk this much before the mission thats fo sho... i have the biggest area in the mission i think... i saw a lady dressing a dummy too. it was at her store. it was really awkward.

investigators: we had 2 baptisms for this sunday Florentino and teresa but there was no water so they will be this saturday i believe. we have other investigators like maria magdalena and her fam and tomas a really old man and others but i dont have time to get my agenda out and look. we have a lot tho...

mision life is good and it will only get better i know that for a fact. but i gotta go! love you all. read and pray erry day!!

love Elder Al

21 de febrero

well this week has been good and a little slow. actually, its like both slow and fast. idk. i cant explain it. time is weird in the mission.

so good news, already have one baptism! he was baptized before we even got here and so for some reason the bishop said it counts as a baptism for us. haha and 2 on the 26th. this saturday. oh ya already told you all that.. oh well! maybe im just that excited! and nervous..

so this week i have been kinda sick, but i still worked. and its getting better. it was like sore throat, stuffy nose, head ache, that yucky stuff.

so the investigator we had, augustin, went kinda crazy. the first 3 visits were great, but the last, yesterday, was weird. well his sister just died yesterday (everyone in his fam is old) and his wife has been in D.F. for a while now cause her sister is sick and so he is kinda alone i guess. but yesterday he said he didnt wanna listen to us anymore and then he asked weird questions like why did jesus have long hair and why was he wearing a red robe and ya just random and weird. so we wont talk to him anymore. we will visit him in like 2 weeks or so just to talk probably.

yesterday we gave 2 blessings! i did the oil obviously because i dont know enough spanish yet to give a blessing. and it would be extremely hard. but ya it was for a really old guy that came to church and in class he just felt like super week and so ya we gave him one. and later in the day he climbed up to the house of his family who we ate with and he felt great he said! sweet. then we gave another one to a really old lady. i think his sister. same kinda thing. then we taught the youngest brother of the family and he wants to get baptized. if you teach baptism first and the importance of it, people accept that, then the rest of the info later like restoration, plan of salvation, etc. so its great. we ate torrilas and chicken and canned sardines. they were really poor.

there is also another investigator that looks like wolverine. hilarious.

well dont have anymore time so i gotta go but im here and doing the work of the lord. do the same.

read and pray,

elder inglish

attached pics:

1. drinking coconut milk during the tianguis

2. member family. last night they gave me a bunch of medicine. they are awesome. the kids too.

14 de febrero

well my first week has been pretty crazy. me and my padre (comp, padre because he has been in mexico longer and he is my first companion, but i actually have more time in the mission all together than him because of me being in the mtc. haha) are doin work. 2 baptism dates for the 26 i think of this month. a husband and a wife. Florentino y Teresa. they are really good people. i had only taught them once so they were already prepared kinda but the lesson i was at was when we gave them a date. we are all excited. we also have some other investigators, but we nee to find more. almost all of them are references from the ward or that other missionaries get or that we meet and talk to in the Tianguis or Mercado (market where people sell stuff). we have our own little booth and play a church movie and give out pass-along cards or folletos (pamphlets about the restoration, gospel, etc.). i like it its way sweet and fun. after we walk around it for a while. we do it as a district so there is 6 of us. when people dont want the folletos or pass-along cards we sneak up behind them and slip them in their bags from behind. its way funny. this week i will take pics of it. we do it tuesday and friday.

as for learning spanish. i am talking pretty good. i mean not as fast as them but they say i am learning fast. at the beginning of the week i couldnt really understand people as well but its already getting better. they just kinda use words i dont know sometimes. but ya i understand people like 30 percent of the time. so its still bad. i can understand my companion tho.

in the morning we get free tacos from a sister in the ward! one of our wards. in the town Ozumba. she is way nice and the tacos are amazing. and no they arent dog tacos. those are in Distrito Federal. haha. we also got free food like milk and cereal and cookies and bread and jam from another member. she also paid for our laundry! theres 2 daughters of the hermana with the free tacos that arent members. Analitia y Teresa. sisters. between 20-30. the entire family are me mbers, except them. they both know its true and want to get baptized so thats good. but both of theirhusbands dont want it. one of them is scared of the family or something. i dont know. we are working on them. the other husband i dont remember what his deal is. but they sure need to get baptized.

there is another investigator we have. we went to this house cause we looked in our area book and saw someone named javier and he had good stuff written about him. so we went there and javier didnt live there. it was an older man maybe like 60´s. Augustin. he is way cool! he doesnt have a religion or probably even a belief for that matter. but he was like Oh please come in! i wanna talk to you! (or something like that, in spanish of course.) we have talked to him twice now and he pretty much does everything we ask. haha its great. he is gonna pray about what we are teaching him is true. like a good investigator should.

we have others that weve talked to that we are meeting with this week and next. 2 are testigos de jehova. or jehovas witness. so of course they talked to us first. out on the streets. they just wanna bible bash or as a say in spanish, luchar con biblias. ill ask them about there missing scriptures in their bible, which are great scripts, and we will see what happens.

mexico is so different. there are dogs EVERYWHERE. no joke. its so weird. in the mornings a guy drives around with gas tanks for like the showers and stuff and yells GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!! all day! so people go outside once the voice is close to their house. its quite funny. the first morning in the new house we showered with a bucket of water and heated it up with an iron. total méxicanada. it was great. but we bought gas. our toilet sucks, ill tell you that and that only.

well i gotta go! gonna go to a bday and play futbol and other stuff. itll be great. great fun. well love you all

read and pray

elder inglish

7 de febrero

hola amigos

i am here in mexico! its so crazy. never really been here before. didnt know what to expect other than what i was told about it. lots of people. good food. crazy, but good drivers. and no one speaks inglish. except theres 2 elders that are in my district that are americano. so thats good because they translate what my comp says when i see them. but otherwise i can kinda understand him sometimes. i have a diccionary and i look up words. and i talk to him and he understands me so thats good. estoy aprendiendo. hes a good guy. from argentina. elder moyano. but doesnt know any english except, far far away. from shrek. so that helps some. haha. he tells me to have paciencia. (patience).

well tomorrow i think we will actually start teaching. my comp has been here only 2 months! so i actually am older mission wise, but he has been in mexico longer and knows everything. anyways when we got to our area we found out we have 2 investigators! and i think that they want to get baptized.. not positive tho, and we looked in our binder thing last night and saw that we have a lot of investigators that were taught like 1-3 years ago and some of them like wanted to be baptized but i guess for some reason the previous missionaries maybe got like transferred or something. so i guess starting tomorrow we will start teaching and finding those old investigators. and getting them baptized!! hopefully.

at church yesterday it was pretty sweet. i bore my testimony with the words i knew and started crying and so lil kids came up to the pulpit thing and handed me tissues and stuff. like 2 kids in 5 seconds. it was funny. after sac mtg everyone came up to us and were super friendly and said bienvenidos elderes. and some little girl wanted me to kiss her cheek but at the moment i was like uhh... what do i do?? haha but its all good. they just laughed. and i did too. i wish i would have studied spanish more or gotten Rosetta Stone or something. but actually its not important because the gift of tongues is real. so ill learn that way.

well i gotta go. gots a district meeting or something.

chao,

elder inglish

1 de febrero

still here...

not much new going on... a district in my zone that was 3 weeks younger than us just left... really weird...

dont quite know what else to talk about... but i do wanna get to mexico now. im getting better at teaching in spanish.. but i cant start learning more till i get to mexico till i am surrounded and what not. we could go to the consulate this week, who knows. they say this week every week. but they are working on mexico missions now...

i actually dont mind it here at all because we have just like blasted thru spanish again because the extra time we have here so we are like cramming it in before we have to leave.

honestly dont know what to write about.. im soory! when mexico comes i will write loads more...

love you all

elder inglish