September 13, 2010

Well, good thing you sent me my white pants and tie. I just used them to baptize this Senora named Maria de Lourdes on Saturday. Shes the first person for which Ive actually been the one to do the ordinance on my mission. She already knew quite a bit about the church and wanted to get baptized before we even met here. Her finanse is a member. I was actually really surprised that she asked me to baptize her instead of her finanse. He was jealous. I think she partially just felt bad about the fact that we had to come to her house and teach her at 6:45 in the morning because she worked all day and she wanted to make it up to me in some way, but who knows. She is really sweet and I think she has a stronger testimony of the Gospel than me. I got everything right the first time I baptized here. Ya! Only one thing went wrong: before the baptism we were wondering why the font was filling up so slowly and even stopped filling at one point. So we started filling it up with buckets as fast as we could. We didnt know what was wrong. Then the bishop came 10 minutes before the baptism and told us that there was a pump that had to be activated in order to fill it. By that time we already almost had it filled. So, we couldnt add that much hot water and it was a little chilly for the baptism, but still bearable. Here, nobody has constant running water. You have to fill up a tank usually on top of the house with some sort of pump that takes water from a nearby well or underground system and then the water flows from that tank to the faucet.

Other than the baptism the work here has been kind of difficult lately. We dont have any progressing investigators right now. Although, we found a couple of less active families while we were contacting and one of them really needs some help. Jeu and his family hadnt been to church for like 9 years until yesterday. They got offended one day at some comment somebody made about their clothes and they stopped going. It appears that his wife didnt get baptized for the right reasons in the first place and after they stopped going Jeu picked up a drinking problem, their three children were baptized in the Catholic Church just to make his wifes family happy, and now he doesnt have a job. He seems like he really wants to turn his life around. I hope we can help. So far this mission is quite like I imagined a mexico mission with a extremely high number of baptisms every change. But, hey, its better than Italy. Haha, right Dad? Still its almost like Utah for Catholics. I hear there are 365 Catholic Churches in Cholula alone. My area is partially in Cholula. The center of every town is centered around the Cathedral that is there. They are beautiful buildings. The coolest catholic church is the one thats built on top of a huge Myan pyramid. Its not in our area. So I havent actually been able to go to it, but you can see from our area. I feel bad for Spencer, though, because at least here just about everybody is very friendly and respectful of our beliefs. If you said hello, Good day or good afternoon, everyone says hello back. There are a few people that dont like Americans and make fun of us (usually younger people, like teenagers), but the majority are very friendly and kind.

It hasnt rained as much this week. Thats good, except that now it feels a little hotter.

I got your package! Man, you spoil me. I love it. The chocolate covered pretzels are so addicting. I was wondering about the colors of the sprinkles, too. Are they Christmas colors or Mexican flag colors? Speaking of Mexican flag. Tuesday is 15 de Septiembre, which is basically like independence day for Mexico, but this year its going to be crazy because this year marks the 200th anniversary of the independence of Mexico from Spain. YA! FIESTA!

Love you all,

Brett