Well this week has been awesome! We were teaching this couple that has been investigating the church since December but would never accept a baptismal date, and at the end of the lesson, I laid down the law and invited them to get baptized and they accepted! Viki and Memo are getting baptized June 9th! I'm so excited.
So the culture here is gonna take me some time to get used to. You have to say these a lot more suave, soft and not so direct. In the U.S. and in English, we are a lot more direct. I'm even pretty direct for English, let alone Spanish. For example, you can't just ask somebody what their name is. You have to drag it out and apologize for not already knowing it, and then ask extremely carefully. This can be tedious when contacting.
Life here is not near as hard as I thought it was going to be, even though we don't have hot water. Although every time I take a shower, it feels like I'm taking a dip in the waters of one of the polar ice caps, you get used to it. After jumping in the freezing cold water and screaming for 5 minutes, your body pretty much numbs up and then you can get to business. Not too bad.
Our apartment is not too bad. I actually have a pretty big fan next to my bed that I blast on high and it runs as I sleep. We don't have clean water, as all the water from the tap is full of parasites and minerals. The nice thing is we can go down the street and buy 20 liters of purified water (courtesy of Ciel, a branch of the Coca Cola Company) for about 20 pesos.
Laundry is definitely different here. Our neighbors let us use their washing machine for our white shirts, and we wash everything else using 2 buckets and a plunger (never been used on a toilet, of course). The big bucket is full of soapy water, and you use the plunger to throw the clothes around in the bucket like a washing machine. After that, you wring out the clothes one by one, and rinse it out in the smaller bucket full of plain water. Then you wring that out and hang it up.
My companion, Elder Lopez, is a native to Veracruz, Mexico. We get along great, and I'm glad he knows a little English so he can translate most of the words I want to learn into Spanish.
This area in Durango is so awesome. I love the Palmeras (palm trees). They're everywhere.
The picture below is an area that has some, but there are more in other parts of Durango, mainly in Central (more city-like).
One funny thing that happened last week. Me and Elder Lopez were walking toward some powerlines, and a pigeon flew into the powerlines, got zapped, and fell to the ground dead. I think the birds here in Mexico are not as intelligent as those in the U.S.
Hilarious, after church on Sunday we passed by this stand. I'm not sure what was going on here, but I think they buy McDonalds food and resell it. MaicDonalds: So close, yet so far.
I want to express those of you who haven´t read the Book of Mormon the importance of it and would exhort you to read it. Especially the young men who are planning to go on missions. You can't expect to preach the word before you obtain it. For me, the reason I didn't read it for so long was because I didn't truly know what it was about, and I expect that is how it is for most members who haven't read this book. If you truly knew what was in the book, you would not wait any longer to read it. It's actually pretty fun to read! Not only does it contain a fullness of the gospel, and not only is it the most correct book ever published, it is also pretty entertaining. And I promise you that after you do read it (sincerely and prayerfully), you will have the desire to share it with everybody else in the world. So read it! If I could do it, you can do it.
I leave my testimony that I know this church is true, and I regret not putting my whole self into it. My advice to the youth: God has blessed you greatly to allow you to be a part of his Kingdom on Earth very early in life, and it is like a slap to the face to not take advantage of it. Don't follow in the ways of the world, I know it is especially hard in high school, but persevere to the end. Don't be like me. Take it from my experience: it is a lot easier to gain a testimony and stay on the straight and narrow path while you are young than it is to try to get back on it years later. I say these things, knowing that they are derived from the commandments of God through the prophets, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen
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