Flyin' by!

Well hello there my dear family,

Guess what? This past Friday I completed 6 months out in the mission! What?! It actually went by pretty fast, but then I think about the past 6 months and it feels like a ton of stuff has happened. I can’t believe Elder Whatcott and I are halfway through the change already here in Valle de Bravo. Flyin’ by. 

This week has been so crazy.  Tuesday we had the junta with the zone leaders. Luckily it wasn’t too bad. We mainly just practiced committing people to come to church and that took most the time. Then the zone leaders came with Elder Whatcott and me up on top of Valle.  Super pretty up there (see picture). They left and went to find some people in our area to talk to.  Elder Whatcott and I talked to all these people up on top. The people up on the hill listen to us more and are more humble because they are poorer.  After food the zone leaders worked with the hermanas in their area. Nothing super exciting this day. 

Thursday we had a crazy day.  This guy who is super golden came to church last week by himself.  He works in our area at this restaurant, but this past Sunday didn’t have to work. He told us his entire life story about alcohol and all his problems he has had. His wife just had a baby girl and is super happy about it.  We set up a cita with him on Thursday night. He lives SO far away.  Right before we left, for some odd reason our phone battery died and we couldn’t get it working. We first took a 45 minute taxi to Colorinas. Then we took a truck for another 45 minutes to his little pueblo. While in the truck I was just wondering ¨where the heck are we?¨ We just kept going down the switch backs. This guy without teeth gets in the truck with a machete (a lot of people have them for farming) and sits in front. We pass houses in the middle of no where. Then we have to stop and honk at a bunch of cows crossing the road. Finally we get to this little town. We go up and ask this random guy to use his cell phone so we switch the sim card and call this Juan guy who we are meeting. We meet him and his mom who is also really interested in the Church. We had a good lesson about the Restoration with them. The thing is, is they can’t go to church because it is so expensive to travel all the way there and they don’t have a lot of money.  At about 8 we said we needed to head back to be back in the house by 9:30. Juan then told us that there are no taxis at this hour.  I about had a panic attack and didn’t believe him.  He was like "Oh, I thought you were just going to sleep here?"  Nope can’t do that. We go back into the centro of this little town.  There was nothing. About 5 minutes later a bus drives by. It was Juan’s uncle! He gave us a ride back to Colorinas. We were heading back on these winding roads and it was super dark. Then all of a suden the driver slams on the breaks and the bus stops. I looked forward and there was a horse literally like an inch away. There was a whole family of horses that we almost hit.  Super scary haha.  We made it back to Colorinas and took a taxi back to our house. And we got back at 9:40! Not to bad! haha. Don’t know if we will go out there again...

Friday morning we had to go another 1.5 hours away to Tejupilco. I did my first baptismal interview for the missionaries there!  It went pretty well.

Saturday we had interviews with President. He came out to Valle (luckily) with his wife and the assistants to interview my district.  My interview was super short. Only like 5 minutes. I wanted to talk to him more, but they were late for other interviews in other areas. The assistants talked with us about getting people to church. Elder Puerto who is one of the assistants now (remember him, my first zone leader :P ) lived in the states for a few years. He says in the states when the people say yes it means yes and no it means no. Well here when they say yes it means no and when they mean no it means no. People here lie so much! They taught us some ways we can get people to church. The people always make up the lamest excuses why they can’t go like they are going to a surgery right then. Anyway, what we learned from the assistants was super helpful. 

And then there is yesterday. Yesterday was crazy. In the morning we went to people’s houses to bring them to church. Of course they had dumb excuses like some guy is coming to do legal papers. It’s not true because the government stuff isn’t open on Sundays. People just can’t tell us they don’t have interest so we ended up leaving his house. We went to other people’s house and they all had their own excuses. So we went to church and we didn’t have anyone. It was the worst. I felt awful. The hermanas investigators all fell through as well. The assistance for church yesterday was 24... Such a bummer. I felt like all of our work this week didn’t pay off after yesterday.

Anyway, there is this boy named Set who’s paper work of baptism and confirmation was lost so he had to get baptized again. He is 12 but acts like he’s 7 (as you can see in the picture haha). 

The hermanas have been working with him and he got baptized yesterday. The hermanas were filling the font which is this PVC pipe tub thing outside. During the services this little boy filled the font with trash and dirt so after we had to dump the water and refill it. It takes forever to fill, so we all had to take buckets and carry them through the church to fill the font along with the hose. An hour later, and it was only 1/4 full. I was the one to baptize him. Set started screaming when he got in because the water was so cold. I had to pull him in because he was being a turkey and goofing around.  I wondered if he was ready for baptism. We did the baptism on our knees to be able to immerse him. But he wouldn’t go under so his feet came up. We had to do it over again, but he didn’t want to so his mom had to talk to him. The next time was much more graceful. haha it was quite the ordeal. Oh the life here in Mexico.

In terms of people we are teaching, it isn’t many. We have taught a ton of people, but many people don’t seem to be progressing. We taught that one family, but they were out of town again this week. They have a bunch of marriage problems. Hopefully they can overcome this problem. Keeping commitments is one way we can tell how ready these people are. Unfortunately since no one was in church this week, we don’t have people who are really interested. That’s our goal this week, to find people who are really interested.

I miss you all! Hope all is well!

-Elder Thomas