May 28 2012

Hola, sorry about last week but yes transfers did happen and right now i am with Elder Castro and i am still working in Los Pinos. Elder Alvarez left to another part of tijuana. Oh and in addition to the change of companions, two other missionaries moved into my little appartment. So no my ward has 6 missionaries, 2 that live on the other side of the ward boundries and 4 of us that live in Los Pinos. The other two are elders ramirez and rose. Ramirez is from bermejillo durango mexico and Rose is from Utah. I hope the fact that there are more people in the house means i will learn spanish faster because of the increased amount of talking but then again some of that talking is english. Well i am going to get back on the computer latter today where i will have more time to email and send pics.
Love you all!

stairs he dug in someone's front yard

The yard where he and his companion looked for scrap metal

Captain EJ

with the Family Ortiz on their baptism day

old district and ward mission leader in the middle

Sergio's baptism day

 We baptised  the family Ortiz. I was there when we found them :)
And then we baptised Sergio. We had a youth in the ward do the actual baptizing becasue he had helped us a lot in getting Sergio to church.

05/14/2012

It was really great to be able to baptize someone. Hopefully this week we have two more baptizms and if things keep going well we could be able to continue having people baptized in the following weeks. We seem to have quite a bit of solid investigators, the hardest part is getting them to church. They love to hear the lessions, they love having us over, and they always say they are going to church that week but in the end they dont go to church. And in order to baptize them they need to have gone at least twice and we dont wanna baptize them and then just have them stop going to church. But if all goes well these next few weeks should be good. So at the end of this week is transfers and we dont know whos going until saturday, most likely Elder Alvarez and I are staying but it will be interesting to see who from my district is going and who the new people are. Also, at the end of this month, if the mission has 130 or more baptizms, we all get to go see Avengers as a mission.

So this week went by really fast. I was on exchanges with other missionaries for 3 days out of the week. Sometimes im in my area and sometimes im in theirs. The first two days i worked with Elder Rodriguez(sp?) and then Elder Bowers in their areas. It was really fun. Elder R.s area is basically a whole bunch of colonies/little towns spaced apart by feilds, so i got both the city feel and the country feel when working with him. Elder Bowers place isnt all that far from mine so it didnt seem too different and i have already worked in that area before. Its not as hilly which is nice. The third day I worked with my Zone leader, Elder Erekson, in my area. So with him i had to be the experienced one with where we are going. He was in my area to do our Baptizm interviews.

Well got to go. Love you all!

05/07/12

Yeah i would say having a mexican companion is helping me out. But i honestly wish he didnt know as much english as he does. Because he is district leader we does excanges every week so everyweek on wednesdays i get to work with another person in my district and last week i worked with an Elder Rojas who didnt really know any english at all. So that was actually really fun because i feel like i had to work harder on my spanish to communicate with him, and he corrected me alot with pronunciation which is helpfull too.

I am still struggling with the language but i do notice things that are geting better, like i can buy things and generally make out what they are telling me so i know how much things cost and i feel more comfortable just asking random people questions. doesnt mean i always understand everything they say back but oh well.

 
So this last month our mission did really well with baptizms (128) and the Mission Pres said if we get more then 130 this month we can all go and see Avengers as a mission. I hope if we see it i can see it in english. But i am excited this week because we have 2 families that should be baptized this week and they will be my first baptizm from start to baptizm with those investigators.

 
That really stinks about the twins! Speaking of MN there is a guy here who loves the MN Vikings. idk why because hes lived in Mexico all his life.

So to answer your [Mom's] questions:

Nope i really dont have dinner unless i am offered food at a persons house in the evening, but sometimes i eat a snack before bed. like a banana or something. but no we dont schedule time for dinner. Most people here eat their dinners at like 9 or 10 anyways.

I actually ride the bus quite often when traviling to other sectors to visit others in the district which i do quite often because Elder Alvarez is District leader.

While i was walking one guys said "happy cinco de Mayo" but thats really about it. So no, i would say we celebrate it more in high school spanish class then we do here in Mexico.

Yup i actually made stairs for a lady and as a survice project work in a persons scrap yard. With the stairs: this lady front yard was just dirt and going from the house to the road is a little steap so i just used a shovel and turned the hill into stairs. If it rains i am pretty sure it will go back to being the way it was but thats what the lady wanted. I send a pic next week. The service projt was basically working in someones little scrap yard of random junk and collecting the metal and pilling it up fo them. I have pics of that too that i can send next week.

While i study spanish, Elder Alverez studies english or just does random stuff around the house.

At church i do the normal stuff but in spanish. Although my time there is centered on the investigator and helping them go where they need to go or sitting with them in classes and help them learn.

For laundry we go to a little place down to street and do our laundry there. 

So far i have really only gone shopping at regular grocery stores or little tiendas. there are so many little tiendas all over the place in neighbor hoods. just like little stores selling the basics, bread, water, milk, candy and tortillas.

So i am really excited for this week. we should have 2 families get baptized!

Well my time is up, i got to go

Love you all Bye!