Dog Fight

This week went pretty fast over here.

I guess there is a hurricane somewhere in Mexico and that has brought some nice clouds and a little rain to Suchiapa. It was really nice this week. Only a couple of times felt hot and that was just the humidity. The bad thing is that we didn´t have sun to dry our clothes. That was OK the first few days cause we have fans to do that inside.

However, this week we have just a little electricity coming into the house. On full blast our fans go slower than the slowest they can go and sometimes not at all. Our lights go in and out and when they are on its not very bright. We have some bad food in the fridge now that we are going to get rid of today. It;s been pretty interesting.

Last Monday night we happened to walk by a house with a lot of people on it. They were all watching a pitbull attack what I think was their dog. They had some cinder blocks and were throwing and hitting the pitbull but it didn´t even phase it. I walked up to the fence and couldn´t see too much of what was happening. It just looked like the dog was biting the others neck. I stomped and hit the fence right by it and yelled really loud and the dogs took off. The pitbull ran down the street and the other ran into the house. I don´t know if the other lived or not.

A little later the owner of the pit had him on a chain and was walking by as if nothing had happened. The people tried to talk to him but he pretty much just shrugged his shoulders. I really hate pitbulls and more than that, their owners. But that was pretty interesting.

We had two baptisms this Saturday. Jorge and Erick. Jorge is the husband of a recent convert and Erick is a 9 year old kid of one of the members. We ran out of water to fill up the font, of course, and weren´t sure what we were going to do. We had to get to a lesson and luckily the bishop said he would get it figured out. I guess they used the old bucket technique and filled it pretty fast. The baptisms went well and they were confirmed yesterday. Also, Jorge received the Aaronic Priesthood. That was a little soon I thought. Usually they wait 3 weeks. But I think we are having a stake conference soon and he will receive the Melchesidec. They pretty much just threw him in the pool.

We weren´t able to go to Rivera this week cause of the baptisms and it was really crazy. We did find a place here that looks over the river and mountains. It was pretty cool there too. Well, that's my week.

Love and miss you all,

Aaron

Silence

Hi family,

Lets see... this week was alright. That p day kind of messed it up though cause we didn´t have any down time and didn´t get much done. 

We were walking through Suchiapa one day and we saw a fairly tall house with a couple doves on it. We decided we should go to that one. When we walked up to it, it had a wall all the way around it and a big yard, with grass! Its really rare to see that here. The other thing was that it felt like it had air conditioning pumping out of it, the doors and windows were open so we weren´t really sure but it felt amazing. No one answered the door that day but we were definitely going to go back until they did. We finally went back on Saturday and a guy was just sitting in his chair without a shirt of course. He just looked at us and asked what we wanted. We didn´t really say anything to him for some reason, just hello. He ended up getting out of his chair and coming to talk with us. All he asked was where we were from, we told him, and he let us in. He said he never lets any religious people like us in. I guess we were the first ones. He said he turned down just about every religion. He didn´t even know what church we were cause he ended up saying his son went on some two year thing with those Mormons or something like that. We told him thats what we were. We ended up having a good lesson with him. At the end of that he took us out to his back yard. He has a ton of birds, some deer, a rot weiler, and a really ugly turkey. I was able to get some pics of some Tucans while I was there. He is very rich. His daughter left and said she had to get a suitcase. He asked how much money she needed and pulled out his wallet full of $50 bills (500 pesos). When we left, we were walking away and he called us back. He asked how we were doing financially and if we needed any money. Pretty tempting but we of course turned it down. 

We helped clean the church on Saturday as well and the only people to show up were one of our investigators, his wife and her sister ( who are members), and Hermana Angelica. I was kind of mad cause that doesn´t look too good. We cut the grass with some machetes and cleaned all the water that was in the building from a rain storm.

Yesterday was pretty cool too. The whole day just seemed to drag on for some reason. We were just walking all over town and nothing was happening. We had one lesson and that didn´t go too well. After that we saw a road that looked like it didn´t go anywhere but we decided to walk down it. It was a dirt road with fields all around it. One of the fields had a soccer field and a donkey. Welcome to Mexico! We just kept walking and walking. We ended up at the river with a big suspension bridge over it. We went over that and just kept going. We walked up a hill and ended up in a different town. It´s called Rivera Buena Vista. We walked all the way through that. It was so weird to be there. Its really small and the houses are actually spaced apart. At one point we had about 8 dogs start barking and running at us but nothing happened there. We walked to where there were no houses and stopped. For the first time in our missions there was silence. This was pretty amazing. Suchiapa is a pretty loud place, all the time. We just stood there and listened for awhile. We could still hear birds and crickets of course but no one was driving, yelling in a speaker, and shooting off fireworks. I then saw a guy walking down a road with a rifle in his hands and we headed back. I haven´t seen that much here. I think he was just hunting though. We talked with a few people there and we are going to go back this week. I didn´t have my freaking camera this whole time, cause the battery was dead, but I will next time. 

Well, that was my week. I better go.

I love and miss you all!
Aaron

Blood, fish eyes, & a spritz of BO

Hey everyone,

Well it’s good to here you guys are eating some good ol BBQ. This week I enjoyed some pretty interesting things. But first just so you know, everything I heard about Elder Enke was wrong. He´s not weird, he doesn´t steal things, and we get along really well. He also played football, snowboarded, and is a lot like Nick Lytle. We had a pretty good week.

OK, well it was pretty hard to leave Teopisca. I don´t know if they got baptized or not. That doesn´t really get around unless you are face to face with the people in the area. I´m hoping they didn´t, ONLY because I want to go to their baptisms, but really I hope they did. I was able to go to all of the members and investigators to say by, bie, I don´t know!

At one house they had made some blood sausage. It’s made by squeezing the blood for awhile until it kind of coagulates. Then they roll it up in some intestines. I wasn´t sure if I really wanted to eat it because next to that there was some really good looking pork. Elder Hernia was kind of hesitant and I wanted to beat him to it and I remembered Dad had had some coagulated pigs blood in his mission so I just took a bite and.... it wasn´t bad. It didn´t really taste like too much. I ended up eating 3 while Elder Hernia only had the one. I was amazed he didn´t like it cause he loves liver and I would eat blood sausage over liver!

Then when we were at an investigators house here in Suchiapa he invited us to eat dinner. We had already eaten but figured we would anyway. We had fish and crab soup. I know most of you probably think that sounds pretty good right? Well, when he gave me my bowl it had a crab in it. That was alright I was going to eat it of course. Then as I keep looking at it I notice a fish head floating around in there and then saw a whole fish there too. He started eating and I don´t think I've seen anyone eat that fast. There was still scales on the fish as well. It was quite the struggle. Not with the taste but just with trying to figure out how to eat it. Really the worst part was the soup. That was what tasted like swamp. I was sifting through the fish getting out all the ribs and cracking open the crab. They said to break a part and suck the meat out. For some reason it didn´t work for me. Elder Enke was able to do it and it was his first time eating it too. I tried breaking the claw and ended up stabbing my thumb in 3 spots with the dang thing. That was the longest dinner of my life! Towards the end I saw the white eye balls sitting in the head of the fish. I figured I wouldn´t have another time I could eat those, which I probably will, but I just went for it. I tried biting through them but couldn´t. They were really hard. So I just got a drink and swallowed them. The whole time the family was just staring watching two gueros trying to eat that stuff.

Oh man has this week been hot. Probably hotter than I´ve ever been in. It was bad enough just walking around but got even worse when we sat down to teach people. That was when the sweat caught up to me and I just started pouring. Some people say it got up to 107 but I don´t know if they actually know for sure or not. It sure felt like 107 if not hotter.

Today we had a zone activity. That is why I'm writing so late. We just went to Tuxtla and played basketball, soccer, and volleyball, volleyball sucked. They did have some really good sandwiches, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and ham. I know it sounds normal but it was really good to have normal food. The funny thing was that the sisters made all of us the food. That just shows you, we´re in Mexico. Any other place and they would have eaten first.

I did get to meet up with Nelson this week and today. He goes to the same church to have district meeting and is in my zone so I should see him a lot. I also saw Udall today too. His comp is my comps old comp along with Nelsons comp. They were companions in the MTC.

My house doesn't have a shower now and you just dump a bucket of water to flush the toilet, which of course doesn´t have a seat! It’s nice to have the cold showers, buckets, in the morning.

We also travel to Cardenas, Chiapas three times a week. That is kind of nice but once again it’s hard to get our investigators over to Suchiapa for church

OK, well that was my week. I hope everything is going great for you guys.

I miss and love you all!!!!

Aaron

Freaking transferred!!!

This sucks pretty bad. I’m now going to be in Tuxtla. It’s in a smaller town though kind of like Teopisca a little outside of Tuxtla. It’s called Suchiapa. Elder Hernia said people say my new companion is pretty weird. I saw a pic of him and he definitely looks weird. His name is Elder Enke. He´s American so that isn´t going to help my Spanish too much and I guess people think he steals stuff from companions. It won´t be too good for him if he steals something from me. I’m going to keep my eye on him. I was pretty mad when I heard I was leaving. I love this place and we had a lot happening here. We are really close to having an independent ward here, probably in the beginning of August. There’s a lot of people here too that I’m going to miss a lot. This week wasn´t too great. It seemed like hardly anything happened. Monday we got a call at 4 that we had to be in Tuxtla that night to get my visa the next day. I hate how they do that here. Communication kind of sucks. That kind of ended our p-day. We got everything together and left. I was able to catch a movie on the way to Tuxtla. It was I am number 4. My first movie in Spanish and I actually understood most of it. It was a pretty weird feeling. I was able to see Ngatu and Udall there as well. That was really cool. They both seem to be doing really good. Hopefully we´ll be in the same zone sometime. We didn´t really work here in Teopisca until Thursday because of that and our District meeting on Wednesday. I had a chicken heart yesterday. We always eat chicken with broth and veggies here. This time mine just happened to have the heart with it. I was a little worried cause I had eaten one at that Brazilian place in Boise and it tasted like wet dog fur. Elder Hernia said he didn´t like those and he loves liver, which we ate last week. I just stabbed it and threw it in my mouth and it wasn´t too bad. It actually tasted normal and was pretty tender. We got in contact with some old investigators we had. They didn´t really seem to want to take the lessons cause they never had time for us. We decided to see if they were there. At first one of them answered and said they didn´t have time. We started to walk away and she called us back. Her sister-in-law said Marth, their mom and mother-in-law, thought she had done something so we didn´t want to teach them anymore. Oops. So we talked with them a little and set up an appointment for the next day. They actually went to church this week as well. We have 4 baptisms set for this Saturday, Nelson, Tere, Stephanie, and Emilio, all one family. I really hope I´ll be able to go to that. Well, that was my week. I don´t really know of much else. Hopefully this transfer is alright. I love and miss you all. Aaron Oh yeah! We went to the caves last p day. We went a little farther in this time and there was a ton of bats. They were in a little smaller space and Hernia and the members we were with, Pedro and Luiz, were a little timid of going in there. So I hiked up and shorts and went in first with them following. They started flying all over. We had borrowed some head lamps from Nelson and Tere and the bats would fly up to the light toward my head and go back. It was pretty cool. We could feel them fly past our faces and everything. I did get some really good pictures of that. Well that was the most exciting part of my week. Oh! I’ve lost about 13 pounds here! I’ve had to move up to the fourth notch on my belt. I thought my pants felt a little big.

Just about..........6 months!

Well, this week went extremely fast and we only have one week left and then transfers. Elder Hernia feels like he will be leaving and said that happened with his other companions. He felt that they would be leaving and was right. We shall see.  

We still don't know if they are going to close Teopisca or not. I really hope they don't. There are a ton of people here that we met this week that are progressing pretty well. There was a family of 14 that we met but still haven't been able to teach them and its nearly impossible to teach all of them at once. The dad said they are ALL going to church this week.

We have also started teaching the daughter of Emilio and her husband and daughter. They are pretty awesome. They ask questions that nobody, especially here in Teopisca, asks. Stuff like in the Celestial Kingdom if we are going to be able to have kids. They are all really smart. We had been teaching Emilio about twice a week and always spoke with them a little as well. One day she asked what religion we were. We told her the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She said "Oh, I thought you were Mormons?" I told her it was the same. We said if they wanted to know about our church we could teach them. I also mentioned about the group of preachers, pastors, and bishops from all churches that one pastor said if he wanted to learn about Mormons he wouldn't go to a Catholic. He would go straight to the source. Something like that. We have taught them a few times and they went to church yesterday.

Friday night she had a dream that had a guy tell her to not go to the church. She said she was scared and wasn't sure if she should go. Elder Hernia told her she needed to pray and figure it out that way. I then told her how the Spirit works a little, and that fear wasn't from God (of course I couldn't remember the scripture) but it all seemed to help her and at the end of the lesson she said she felt much calmer and peaceful.

We counted and saw that we have found 31 new investigators and most is families. This week was crazy. We have the chance of opening a branch here in Teopisca at the end of July. We just need 5 men with the Melchesidec (I don't know if that's spelled right, Spanish and English are blending!) Priesthood that pay their tithing and all that. The problem is not many pay tithing. We are going to have 6 men with the priesthood but still need to work on the tithing thing. It should be pretty easy for them to see the blessings from doing that. None of them like going to San Cristobal for church, its an hour there and back, and they wouldn't have to pay for the ride.

Hmmm, we have a dog that follows us around once in awhile and protects us from other dogs. He's really playful but seems pretty tough with the other dogs and chases them off. Elder Hernia calls him Toby but I think I'm going to think of a better name for him.

Well, that's my week. I sent a letter home today but it takes about 12 days I guess. I love and miss you all! Oh, and we´re going to the caves again today but farther. Should be fun.

Love you!

Aaron

Aaron's letter to Dad this week.

I have had quite a lot of thunder. There's a radio tower in the city and that kind of centers everything there. One time we were walking right by it and had a really loud boom as well. I remember having thunder like that once before in that house. It was during the middle of the night. That scared me pretty good. I don't remember if we had Sadie yet or not.

We do pay for the time on the internet but its not too much, about 80 cents. It's in the center of the city so there's always music playing and a lot of people out there. Plus we have a great view of the big Catholic church right here. It just rang its bells not too long ago.

I have been pretty cold at night the last few nights. Sometimes its pretty hot but I don't really know how hot cause overall its pretty cool here. So I don't know if I'm just accustomed to that or what.

I remember you said you had a lady cook for you. We have members cook for us everyday. Sometimes its pretty good, usually when its eggs with chorizo, sometimes not so good. We seem to have the same things every week. Chicken soup, but we have to eat the chicken off the bone of course. Then sometimes its beef with some weird sauce that I don't really like to much. Kind of like mole. A lot of times I just eat just to eat. I did have my first real empenadas yesterday. They were good of course. We have also had chile rellenos a couple times. Its really good. It has chicken, rice, and veggies in it. Kind of like a stuffed pepper but not, haha.

There's a lot going on here but also seems like not much happened this week. I'm going to write that in the weekly. Oh, the bells are going off again. I also had my 4th of July fireworks this morning and right now. People shoot flares off like crazy here, right now as well. Thank you for writing every week. It really makes the week a lot better hearing from you. Plus I get to hear more about your mission experiences as well. I'm really glad you went on one cause if you didn't I really don't think I would be out here right now. I'm so lucky to have you as my dad. I love you more than you can ever know and I cant wait to be able to see you again. BUT I have some work to do here right now.

I LOVE YOU!!!
Aaron

First 4th without fireworks...

Hey everyone!

Another week down! This one went pretty fast for me.

Well, we had a baptism on the 4th. His name is Antonio. He was the first person I invited to be baptized here in Mexico. He has been working with the missionaries for a year and has had some health issues that kind of pushed him back a little. He was also the first person to be baptized that I've taught here in Mexico and it was on the 4th of July. I guess that makes up for not having fireworks.

It was a pretty crazy day. I had gone on exchanges again in San Cristobal. Elder Hernia came that day. We had our district meeting ate lunch with the mission leader and got the font going. We then left back to Teopisca to get Antonio. We got everything ready that we needed and headed back. No members came to the baptism. Antonio's daughter came which was really good. She has been supporting him through this whole thing cause she wanted him to change his life. She's Christian but is now going to talk with the missionaries there in San Cristobal. There were some women sewing some things at the church so we asked them to join us for the baptism. Elder Hernia asked one of them to give a talk and a guy that was there as well. He baptized Antonio. He didn't know Antonio had trouble with his respiratory system. When he pulled him up Antonio took a loud breath of air and scared Elder Hernia pretty good. He thought it was his other health problems with his heart and didn't know what was happening. Everything is all good though.

Antonio was really excited to finally be baptized. After that we ran through San Cristobal to grab our clothes we had cleaned there and headed back to Teopisca. We have found out we´re the missionaries of the old people. There's about 3 or 4 that have said they would like to be baptized. It's pretty crazy. Hopefully they understand what we teach, at least a little. Sometimes I don't know if they really do.

This week I saw a truck with probably ten cow heads in the back of it. Man that smelt wonderful.

We were in a taxi a few days ago, a guy jumped out of a store and we were about an inch from hitting him. Pretty sure he was drunk. Speaking of drunks, I now have a friend here that's a drunk, Fransisco (Paco). Every time he sees me he walks up to me and shakes my hand and says ´Güero! Mi amigo!´

Once again I ate a ton of Tuna (cactus fruit). I had about ten. There's a guy that has a huge field of trees and cacti that doesn't sell it or anything. We´ll probably go there again sometime. Well, I cant really think of much else. I guess I better go.

I miss and love you all!

Aaron

Three weeks...

Hey everyone!

I'm trying to think of what happened this week.

I was in San Cristobal for a day on exchanges. Elder Hernandez had to go to a conference for trainers in Tuxtla. It was kind of nice to be in another town. Elder Casas said we were going to eat rat. I was actually kind of excited but wasnt sure if he was joking or not. It turned out he was and we just had some cauliflower with an egg batter around it and cheese. It wasn't actually too bad and was different from what I usually get here in Teopisca. Usually it's chicken and vegetables or some chicken slathered in some sort of sauce that I still don't really know what it is. It's not too great but at least it's not bad. I've been pretty lucky with the food here. Nothing has ever really been disgusting. I'm sure that time will come though.

Hmmm... Some funny experiences this week. We were tracting some doors and I just decided to look across the street. I see a 3 year old boy just peeing all over and his mom just waiting for him to finish so they could go back inside. We laughed pretty good at that and I'm just glad it wasn't some of the grown men here that do the same thing.

We have had 4 days in a row with a ton of rain. Probably more than I've ever seen. We helped some people bring in their shoes into their store cause the "river" was just about taking their shelves and everything away. I went in their store and took my shoes off so I could just go in the water. I took one step outside and slipped immediately. I was able to catch myself before smacking my back and only got a little wet at the bottom of my shirt. I really can't think of much else that happened. We have a baptism on the fourth. That will probably be the extent of my Fourth of July. Maybe a firecracker or two if I can find one.

We went to church in San Cristobal and no investigators showed up. Oh, I think I forgot to tell you. Last week I gave my first talk in Spanish. It actually went pretty well. It was about 10 to 15 min, about three times longer than my farewell and I just planned it in the morning in about a half hour. It was on the sacrament and was actually pretty easy.

Uhhh, not really sure what else. I might write home if I think of anything else.

I miss and love you all!

Aaron