The Nebraska of Mexico: Faith, Hope and Charity

Nick sounds like he's adjusting to life in Mexico and his Spanish is getting better each day.

So this week...

Monday night we looked at the clock and realized we had to be home in 10 mins when it was a 30 minute walk, and we just missed the bus. So we were like shoot.. while we wait for the bus might as well buy a taco and sit. While we were doing that this guy comes up and is like, Elders! I love you guys, let me buy you tacos. We tried to turn him down and thank him, and we went to catch the next bus but it just blew right past us. They do that sometimes. So he was like, it's a god-sign. Anyway, we just sat and talked with him about what we do. He said his brother was a missionary and he always talked about how hard it was sometimes so he wanted to make our day a little better. Then he also drove us home in the back of his truck. So here I am with Elder Cruz, sitting on the edge of the back of this truck, going like 40 mph down this road, looking over Queretaro, just thinking, this doesn't happen in America. Really cool experience.

But more of the small things about the week...

I'm getting fairly decent at Spanish, so I can talk to the people sometimes. But what I suck at more than anything is the small talk in the beginning in Spanish. But then I realized, I cant even make small talk in English... so yeah.

Laundry... You were always like, "you'll thank me when you leave to go to Mexico and have to do your own laundry and stuff".... nope. We give it to this lady who I swear is a professional, and she washes, irons, and folds it all for us. I took a picture of it. It's so nice. So there's that. (I so hoped he wouldn't have someone to do his laundry. Maybe in his next area. )

Singing in Mexico. Cruz loves to sing.. but he cant. Oh well

Cars. The most popular car here is a VW beetle from like the 50's. Everyone has them. I thought that was cool.

Music. People here just blast music from their houses that you can hear from 3 streets away. It's really hard to teach a lesson and focus on Spanish when all you can hear is Gangnam Style playing.

Dance. When girls are like 15 they dance for their birthday. And it"s like a big deal. Kind of ridiculous.

So I learned that the Spanish word for cockroach is cucaracha, like the song. You know why I know that now? because one freaking attacked me while I was going to the bathroom. Scariest moment of my life, those things are so fast. I killed it with a butcher knife. (He must not remember the Palmetto bugs in Florida)

Coke. Everyone's like "Cokes different and better in Mexico". It's the same.

Dog peed on my backpack.. that was fun

Tuna is the fruit of a cactus. You eat it but while doing so you swallow like 120 seeds. and it just tastes like crappy water.

3 Liter bottles of pop. Favorite thing in the world.

Circus, they have all these animals in cages outside. So i high-fived a sleeping brown bear, and touched a tiger. Thought it was worth reporting... but while I was walking back, the monkeys reached out of the cages and grabbed my shirt. 2nd scariest moment of my life.

Horchata here. Tastes like candles.

Chucharron, the death of me. This lady was like "Here I brought you this huge bowl of chucharron". It was soggy, and wrinkly, and moist. The last bite I left too long and it got cold but I still had to eat it. Started heaving at the table but it went down and she didn't see... never again.

English classes. Every Saturday. It's so much fun. Mexicans really can't speak English. But, it's so hard thinking of what to teach. Cause we really don't think about English at all and how we have irregular verbs and stuff, and how it;s dumb how read and read are spelled the same but you say them different at different times.

Anyway, other than that though this week was pretty hard. We talked to this lady that's a member. It was our 3rd time visiting with her. Really one of my favorite people here, that has taken care of us. She told us that her husband is cheating on her. I guess that really just struck me. Here's this lady with two little kids bawling her eyes out to us, because her husband threw it all away for personal gain. I don't know, we're going to help her as much as we can. It's just really hard to know how to, when I've never like gone through anything close to that. We saw their family later that week, they just pretend everything is alright, meanwhile it's hell on the inside. That must be so hard.. But I'm sure we'll figure something out.

But, I thought a lot this week about Faith, Hope and Charity. We need all three. Faith is when you act on a belief. We can't have faith without hope. Charity is when you love everyone no matter what. I remembered what my teacher told me in the MTC. She said its like this... Faith is when you believe in god. Hope is when you believe in yourself. And, Charity is when you believe in others. I really liked that. I know its hard to love people sometimes, but it's so important that we do anyway. Because, we never know whats going on, on the inside in someones life.