2 Months

Today Is my two month anniversary on the mission! Pretty legit right?! And since everybody goes home about a month or 2 early here because of Visas and what not I've only got about 21 months left! Pretty crazy to think about.

But to start off, DOES ANYBODY HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT MEXICO?! I'm more than happy to tell you what I know. And to find out the rest. haha. 

 

This week has been the craziest. I BROKE MISSION RULES! MWAHAHA. You're not allowed to have pets but my companion and I made an exception, I had a pet snail and named him speedy. I just carried him around for a day, then I saw a goose and I fed speedy to him. And that ended that.. haha, and then while feeding the goose we saw that the lady had ducks and other geese too! Sooo, being the missionaries that we are, we bought a HUGE duck. And tied him up in our apartment and are feeding him tons of corn. and we are taking him to the slaughter house (a members house) tomorrow for our meat for the week. He's cool. We named him Daffy. Real original right. 

 

Today we killed rabbits. We killed and skinned three rabbits and we are about to go eat them for a before dinner, dinner in about ten minutes. I learned how to kill them with one firm karate chop. I was pretty proud doing it all by my hands. But we will be eating GOOD TONIGHT!

 

On the topic of food here, we get 400 pesos a week for food for 2 of us, that's 32 dollars, and we can buy a TON of food. we eat 11 eggs a day as well as an overwhelming amount of veggies. We just get so stuffed every morning while other missionaries buy 3 boxes of cereal for about the same price.. lame. We also bought a whole chicken this week and cleaned, gutted, and chopped it up ourselves. And I guess there was some kind of deal going on because THERE WAS AN EGG INSIDE OF IT! We ate that too. haha They eat like a knock off version of sour cream and onion chips here, but they pour them into a bag with chili sauce, and I tried it. AND ITS DISGUSTING! haha

 

So the only really other crazy thing to happen this week was it rained more in one day then it did for like 4 months... we were up on the hill when it started and we were running down when we crossed this HUGE river. and then we started walking some more but we got stuck at another river. And when we went to go back from where we came we couldn't cross back! So we were stuck under a tree in POURING RAIN! and everything we had was completely soaked. We were stuck there for about ten minutes before it started HAILING! Which made it that much more fun. So my companion and I started to have an Ice fight and started throwing them at each other. The people inside a house heard us and told us to come in. We went in and sat down. They didn't say much but the grandpa just started talking to us for a LONG time. I couldn't understand the story, but he told us his entire life story. We were there for 2 HOURS waiting! My companion then retold me the story and it was just CRAZY. So I've started writing a book based on all of the events in his life. Its called DON ISAAC. Like old man Isaac being translated. Its awesome. And my companion has been translating it into Spanish! Its pretty cool.

Well things sure are different here! But I'm loving it!

Keep doing what you're doing! Love you all!

Elder Winters

Week 2 - in Mexico

Hola amigos y familia!

So this week was quite a bit different from last week. But to start off with what is most important, MY BIRTHDAY! Thank you to all of you who wished me a happy day. It meant a lot being here.

 

Well some things I forgot to mention about Mexico in my last email, for one is that there is no such thing as street names here. Or signs. Or anything of that manner. When you ask where someone lives you ask how to get there and then you ask what color their house and/or gate is. Quite different. It rains EVERY DAY.

 

This week the work got a lot slower and we don't really have anybody to teach since we aren't allowed to contact in the streets or go door to door so we basically have to rely on all of the members to give us people to teach. We have 1 investigator. Its crazy how there are so many people but we aren't allowed to talk to.

 

To end on a spiritual not as well as a picture, have you ever thought of what the Devil does on his down time?  In Lucas 4:9, when Jesus is with the devil on the top of the mountain Satan says. "If you are the son of God, jump off this mountain and IT IS WRITTEN that they will catch you" The Devil reads the scriptures. And I'm sure he knows them better then we do. We need to ever be striving to KNOW the scriptures, continually studying them, and praying to know if they're true, if not we are almost exactly like the devil. Interesting food for though. 

Well Id love to hear more from you all!

Thank you again for all you do!

With Much Love,

Elder Winters

Week 1 -- in Mexico

Okay.. where to begin. This keyboard here is all weird so its hard to use but ill try to make it work. So who has seen Aladdin? (Everybody raises hands) you know the part where Jasmine is on the flying carpet and Aladdin is singing ¨A Whole New World¨.. well that's here. I literally don't even know what's going on half the time haha.

You know how people tell you not to tell your Mom about the scary things that happen to you until you get home? I'm not about that life.

 

To start my companion is Elder Macdonald from LA. AND HE IS WHITE! So we speak in half and half English to Spanish but he's helping me a lot with the language. I'm learning so much every single day. He is a genius and knows the language like a boss.

So now I'm going to tell you all of the crazy things that have happened this week.

Today, a drunk dude pulled a gun on my companion and me, and said he liked to rob people... So my companion told him to repent.. and I happened to think this was very funny so I started laughing and the guy, apparently confused decided to just walk away.

 

I have seen probably about 1,000 stray dogs this week, 1 of which I wanted to keep but he would have been too much work to feed, so we left him alone. OH I SAW A DONKEY! It was in the back of a trailer sawed into two halves. 

 

The first day here I asked to see a newspaper and my companion took me to a stand and on the cover was a man who was split into 4 pieces and then he told me that that's why we don't read newspapers... He thought it was funny since he's seen so much of it.

The members here like to make fun of me here for not being able to understand everything they say so whenever they get too mean my companion will start talking to me in English and then they all stop talking and feel dumb. Its a great way for my companion to teach humility. Which has to be taught a lot.

 

We have 1 investigator and we teach about 30 less actives. We gave 2 blessings this week and already had our first baptism on Saturday.The man we baptized left after his confirmation to go home and have a fiesta...

 

TO end on a good note, I was reading in Jesus the Christ by Talmage and I had the question of why we only needed one sacrifice to save all mankind. And in the book it said that it only took one person to fall (Eve) for all man to be subject to physical and spiritual death. In turn, it only took 1 person (Jesus) to bring us back from both as well. It was eye opening. Also very humbling to know that the example of one person can change the lives of many. I'm working hard. BELIEVE THAT! haha. My Spanish is getting a little better everyday. 

 

I LOVE YOU ALL!

KEEP THE LETTERS COMING!

Thank you for all of the support!

Love, Elder Winters

July 2