Early Morning Packing

 Washing Laundry

Drying Laundry

Spencer didn’t’ send his regular email last week. I asked what happened and he replied: I wrote one - I think - But I think it got stopped and detained by border patrol or something...Sorry I had a three hour P'day last time so I was a little rushed. I thought I sent one but it must have died in a black hole or something.

Ha I found it. Sorry it´s a little late but I guess I didn´t click the send button.

So this week was a little different than the rest. I don`t think that you`ll understand the how it truly felt but I´ll try my best.

So this day we had a wonderful lunch of steak and potatoes. But it was a little hot this day and we were walking up in the mountains almost all day. So when we got to the house and I put my head on the pillow I just passed out. I was so tired and the bed felt so nice. So close your eyes and pretend that your sleeping like sleeping beauty. It was super comfortable like wearing wool slippers on a winter night. Ok now you can open your eyes but just a little bit because you’re still tired. At this point I saw my companion talking on the phone which is normal because I fall asleep before he reports. Then I hear the dreaded word cambios especiales (special changes). You can start crying right now because that word in Spanish is a cuss and bye bye word. My companion comes in and looks at me and says cambios especiales. I look at my watch and it`s 12:00 at night and we have to be at the offices a 0700 in the morning. I was like “so what did he say?” My companion said “I`m going to Mariano Escobelo and you are staying here as Mayor (senior).”. So my companion starts packing for Mariano and I go back to bed. But I can`t because there is no way to go back to the comfy slippers again. So I stay up to help my companion pack. This is what we looked like (first picture).

So we blast some MoTAB (Mormon Tabernacle Choir) and get to work. The police came by, I turned the MoTAB down a bit and we kept working. We packed and went back to bed.

I have to go because we have a zone meeting.

Love you lots,

Elder Nelson 

Sorry about the last letter. Last week was a bit crazy. We ended up with just three hours to wash, shop and write which is a little hectic. I´m not sure what p'day means in America but here it means pathetic, panic, phrustrating (yes that´s spelt with a ph) and poco tiempo (little time). But it was cool that we had the zone meeting because I got to see all of my old companions that I´ve had. 

So sometimes I walk in Mexico and something happens and I realize that I´m not in Texas any more. For example, the day it rained (Monday or Tuesday or something like that) it stopped and it was all good smelling. So it´s about 6 or 7 and we’re walking and we hear drum beats. My companion is like oh that must be the rain dancers. The what? Matachinas. What´s a Matachina? So we keep walking up the hill and we find a group of kids and adults dressed. No Joke. Like the Indians, beating drums and dancing around San Judas. Well that´s a little weird if you ask me. That´s almost as weird as the time when we asked for referencias from a contacto. We asked: "Is there someone here you know that had a baby recently or a death in the family" and he says "yes there is a death up there" and we walk to the house with a recent death and a funeral procession is lined up coming down the road. Maybe tomorrow. 

There is another funny experience we had this week where we were teaching a sister in the ward. We didn´t have anything to do and we passed by to see how she was doing. So were teaching this less active and then someone knocks on the door. (Now at this point yáll are like did the police bust in and deport you or a drug deal gone wrong, No) So she says: Quiénes son? and the people answer Los Misioneros (Now yáll are saying oh the JWs busted in. No, just wait for me to finish) So they say los misioneros and the Elders from the other area walk in. Hold up. I know I'm new and all but what's going on we’re teaching the lesson here. It cracks me up to this day the scene of them and us standing there like "what on earth?" Silly Eldercitos

One last story. So we go to contact a lady and she comes out but she´s like I´m too busy. I have too much English home work. Ok we´ll help you with it. So we are helping her but it´s hard. No word bank no spaces just missing letters who knows how many and really bad pictures. So there´s one with a lady on the phone and it is ( P    o    i       g) The answer´s phoning. When is the last time I've said: “Sorry Mom I´m too busy. I´m phoning right now." or what´s your favorite activity? Phoning! So after that worksheet I feel like I am both illiterate in English and Spanish. 

Well I have to let you go but I hope you guys have a fun week.

Elder Nelson

 This is the mountain we live by. It has the face of Benito Juárez on it (blessed Juárez)

 Spencer's birthday celebration.

How was conference for you guys. I was super happy that we got to watch it here. It was probably; no, it was the highlight of my week.

So the beginning of the week was really cool. We went to an investigator’s house to have a lesson with him. We knocked the door and we heard like a bunch of scrambling and stuff like ¨what do I do? ¨ and the wife telling him ¨well open the door¨. I was really confused but the door opened and he told us that he was about to leave. Normally we are like ‘OK when can we come back?’ but this guy lives on the side of the mountain a good 3 mile hike up Mt. Everest to get to his neighborhood. So I gathered my Generals in my war room and made a plan. So it was kind of hot and my mouth was parched so I was like ¨can I get a glass of water? ¨ and he was like yeah come in. Pulled a quick one over him. We taught a short lesson and then hiked back down the mountain. To be honest I didn´t think it would work but it did which was cool.

I finally got my packages which was really cool. Tell Grampa and Grandma, thanks for their letter. When I opened it up and we saw the 5 dollar bill my companion was like:

Is that a $5?

Yeah.

Can I see that?

Yeah.

 So we stared at it for a good 5 minutes just admiring the good old Lincoln.

I have to tell you guys about the ward here. It cracks me up the characters we have. So when I showed up they told me the bishop didn´t have ward counsel but I didn´t think he was inactive. He’s super funny because we will be sitting in church 15 after the hour waiting to start and the bishop will show up. We´ve had a lot of big brass in our ward recently (I´m not sure why) but one time the stake president talked to us about doing an activity. Afterwards the bishop called us over in a huddle like we were going to talk about the activity but he was just like “es todo, I´m done” and walked away. 

There is another lady in the ward who cracks me up too, she is a super nice grandma but whenever we go over to eat with them, I feel like I´m eating with the queen of England. She calls us Eldercitos, little elders and always uses phrases like como no, how could I say no. The best part is when I first showed up she told Elder Guerra(war), bienvenidos al barrio, but he´s been here for 6 months. 

I liked conference a lot. It was really funny when Holland spoke because he dropped a lot of American jokes. Even the poster of the T-rex and kids, nobody got. Me and my companion were really having a good time yet the ward was a little confused. It´s funny because when we sing they don´t translate the songs so if you didn´t bring a hymn book you´re on your own. So we were singing in English which was a little weird because I don´t think anyone else was singing. 

I think I have to wrap up. I hope that you guys have a fun week. Are you back in school last week or this week?

Elder Nelson

I hope yáll had a great Easter and are all geared up to go to conference. I´m a little nervous to see it in Spanish because I rarely understand Holland in English so it´ll be fun. I´ve had a lot of fun experiences this week.

So I was hiking in the mountains when I saw three very old goats. That was a little weird but the best part is that they were fighting chihuahuas. I wish I had a picture to give to you because it sounds weird but it´s true. The chihuahuas were taking on the goats and the goats were like ¨What´s this little guy doing down there? ¨ 

The area here is huge. We walk so much and it is always either up or down never flat. We have an area way up in the mountains and we were working up there all week but on Tuesday we had a lunch all the way down in the other Elders´ area. All in all we ended up walking a good 23 Km or about 14 miles during the day up and down the mountain. But it gets better.

We had interviews the next morning so we were up at 500 and had to take a route to the Stake center for interviews with President. It went really good. He roasted my Spanish a little but at the end when we walked out (our interview was like 30 sec and my companions was about a minute while the rest were like 5min ) and president saw the rest of the other Elders he told them Poco Tiempo Poco Pecado. So that was good. 

I was so confused this week. So many weird things happened. For instance, we were contacting a reference that we got. We went to the house and it had a room close to the street and the door was further back. So it looked like an L but the van was parked so it was a square. Ok now you know the set up. There was a really suspicious dog at the door so we knocked the window. We knocked but no one answered. That´s cool so we stood there thinking what to do. Then a kid appeared out of nowhere. He wasn´t even by the door so I have no Idea where he came from. We talked and he said she wasn´t there. Cool, but I was so confused. The only conclusion I came up with is that he was sleeping under the car or one of the three Nephites is like 6 years old. 

We did an awesome service project this week too. So you know how I was tired from walking half a marathon and how we had to wake up early to go to interviews. Well we had to wake up at 500 again to go to service which was tearing down an adobe brick house and moving the pieces across the street in wheelbarrows. We chilled in our street clothes but we didn´t have gloves or really tools. So I used my bear hands to tear down the adobe wall. It was like the berlin wall but bearhand wall. We then sifted through the rubble, chucked it in a wheelbarrow and took off down the hill. We got a tool to break the concrete blocks down a bit, I was like a giant nail. It was super heavy but it worked. 

Sunday was a lot of fun. We had to give talks. Mine was going to be awesome but they scheduled 10 people to talk so I bore my testimony instead. Afterwards we were leaving for the food and a beggar asked us for money. We said that what we have has no price. So he asked us to smuggle him to California. We politely declined. But it gets better.

Sundays everyone is drunk... I have to go. 

Have a great week. I hope yáll have a great time in general conference. 

Love yáll 

Elder Nelson

Cambios! I got changed out of Satélite and now I´m serving in Azteca. This is my first change so I didn´t really know what it would be like but so far it has been great. 

Azteca is in the south stake which means that I´m up in the mountains all day. I´m with Elder Gardiner who is also a güero so we’re two super big celebrities here. He´s a bit older than me because he went to BYU before the mission but we have almost the same amount of time in the mission. We´re just two white guys here in Mexico trying to learn how to be missionaries and speak Spanish all at the same time. He always tells me: It´s the blind leading the blind. My companion is super chill. He´s from California and he says a lot of stuff like Rad. It´s all really funny.

We´re up in the mountains like I said which means that we walk up and down a lot of hills. It reminds me a lot of Colorado with the dry mountain terrain. It´s like the AF Academy but we are walking not driving around. It´s probably one of my favorite places to work especially at night because it has a beautiful view of the city. At night we see a line of lights stretch through the city which is the fence they have between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. It´s really cool too because the big mountain with the words on it is right next to us (you can see this while driving on I-10 through El Paso). We work on the mountain with the face of Benito Juárez but I doubt that you guys have noticed that one before. 

Whenever I tell new people where I´m from they like Los Spurs and then they tell me who they play and all kinds of crazy stuff. 

This area is really poor. I think that as far as the stakes go we have the poorest. It´s rough because the poor areas are where the dead dogs are and the sick kids and lots of trash. There is a lot of running water in Juárez but it usually comes from overflowing sewage and things like that. The good news is that in the poor areas is where the cheap segundas are. Our district leader found a tie with two missionaries on bikes and I´ve heard other crazy stories of things found in the segundas. 

Funny stuff happen in the streets all the time. The other day we saw a homemade dune buggy driving through the streets and we were like whoo, we´re in Mexico. Then like 2 seconds later we saw a police truck with men armed in swat gear on the back and we were like Confirmation we are in Mexico. Just this morning we saw a horse drawn buggy in the streets and I think that he might of been a Mennonite (the ones who speak German and are kind of Amish) but I´m not sure. 

We don´t really have any progressing investigators but sometimes people just show up to the church and I guess we turn them into investigators. Hopefully well turn this area around and baptize.

I hope you guys have a great week.

Elder Nelson