Dear family,
Hola again from Juchitan, Oaxaca. I hope everything is going well up in the nice cool state of Utah. I´m sorry to hear about the end of Braden´s soccer season, but it sounds like you did a great job Braden. I´m glad everything went okay with the funeral. And I´m also happy to hear about Grandpa getting married! That wasn´t news that I had expected at all. haha. But that´s great. It also sounds like you´re going to be having a ton of fun on that cruise. That is something that I would absolutely love to be going on. Have fun, and send me some pictures afterwards. But I´ll get to the questions now.
(Did you get more water in your tank?)
1. Okay, this will answer question one and tell more. The quick answer is that yes we did get the water back on. On Tuesday the spout on the side of the house started to work again, but the toilet and sink still didn´t work. But we knew there was now water because the spout was working, so we climbed on top of the roof and messed around with the tank and we aren´t sure what we did, but the water started to fill the tank and now the toilets and sink work too. So we can shower at our place now and all of that. As well as cook and be able to clean up the pots and whatnot. So everything was okay with our house. ( I´ll explain the changing house situation later) and the week went well. I didn´t have to worry too much about returning to a bad place, though it still isn´t great. So yesterday was a good day, we went to church, fasting about killed me but I´m getting used to just being dehydrated. And all went well. We returned to our house at the end of the day and I remembered that I could make some grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. So I cooked myself 3 delicious Ham and Cheese sandwiches. They were extremely good. As I was eating the delicious sandwiches I was thinking to myself about today, how I could finally write you and not have anything to complain about. I´ve been complaining in about every single letter that I´ve written home. So I happily finished my delicious sandwiches and had some pineapple juice with them and went to the sink and turned on the perfectly working sink and cleaned up. Put the juice and the left over ham in a nice cool working fridge and everything was finally perfect. I sat down by the relieving fan and opened up my journal to write down how happy I was that everything was good and I could write a letter to you with all good news. In case you can´t see it coming, the house read my mind and happiness. And it had yet another trick up it´s sleeve that I really didn´t see coming. After writing the date down and was about to begin writing in my journal, the house suddenly dropped into darkness, the fans died, the fridge shut off... no power. No flippin' way. So we fumble around, I don´t remember if I have a flashlight or not, but Elder Jimenez has a small one that he found. We then looked for the keys and went outside into the coolness to wait for it to come back on. After a half hour it hadn´t come on, all the other houses had power except ours, and it was 10:30. Without the fans, it was blasting hot in our house. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix it because we couldn´t sleep it was too hot. After an hour of a million different ideas to try to figure out the power we decided to just try to sleep and worry about it later. Both of us couldn´t sleep, it was too hot. We climbed on the roof where there was a slight breeze and cooled off there for a while. There was a small storm coming in, so our idea to sleep on the roof wasn´t going to work, sure enough it did eventually rain in the night. To make short in writing cuz this is long, we just had to go and try to sleep, it was a terrible night last night, I didn´t sleep much. And as of this morning, still no power. So now I don´t know if I can buy all the things that I wanted to buy. I was looking forward to buying some more good things, but now we don´t have a fridge, and we can´t even see anything at all in our house at night.
I guess I now have more understanding of Laman and Lemuel though. Our house just won´t stay good, every time it improves, something worse happens. So I know I shouldn´t murmur in all my letters, but I suppose you want to know what is actually going on here in Mexico. So yet another letter is written to you with my complaints, sorry. but I´ll move on now.
(What did the President have to say about your living conditions? Was he as shocked as we are?)
2. The president was just like, well, here you are, now you have a fridge, blender, and beds. Find a new house if you can. He wasn´t too concerned. But he didn´t know our water would go out in a few days, and now this new famine of power after the drought ended. We really do have probably the worst and smallest house in the mission. I don´t think he was shocked at all though. But even all the poor hard working families here have better houses. Oh well I guess, it´ll just make my next home heavenly.
(Did you find another apartment this week?)
3. We have taken two days looking for apartments and ask everybody we talk with if they know a house for rent. The people we are contacting as well as members. And we´ve checked out a fair number, about 5 or 6. But there is a mission rule, the house cant be shared. This is the rule that is the most preventative of us getting a new house. Like I´ve said, our house actually is shared with another, the reason we have our house is because nobody lives there. And we´ve seen some houses that were really nice and bigger as well as cheaper, but their back yard usually shares with another home. So we aren´t allowed to live there. At least it´s a rule that makes sense though. We´ve come across only two unshared houses for rent. One is really good and same price, but there is a cantina right next to it and another across the street. So there is always drunks running around and we were told we couldn´t live there. There other is only 500 pesos a month. The It´s really big, but the catch is the owner wants a 6 month contract and it is really dirty. We were looking at it really hard to see why, and we discovered flood marks and to the owners dismay figured out that every time it rains the house floods. It´s slightly below the street level. So we are still looking for a house that we can get. hopefully it eventually happens.
(Have you been sick any more this week? Does your toilet work again?)
4. No more sicknesses aside from self inflicted dehydration be fast every Sunday, easily cured afterwards though. And the toilet works. So... oh ya. I wanted to ask. Elder Jimenez pays fast offerings every Sunday because we are fasting. I´m not sure if I should do that too or not. Did you pay fast offerings on your mission dad? Ask Wes too. I figure that since one, we aren´t technically members of the branch and two, we are missionaries with money that is already coming form the church, we might not have to pay that, but I dunno. I´ve payed once, but I really don´t know if I should be or not. So please help me with this question. Ask Bishop too about what he thinks.
(Any good news about investigators?)
5. Yay!!! I actually do have good investigator new about the person from Salina Cruz. I know her better now and can give more detail, can´t remember if I gave her name, but her name is Melina and the person who brought her to us is her boyfriend and his name is Ignacio, he served a mission in Monterrey. But she is progressing extremely well and she is going to be baptized this Sunday! She has been to church three times and we only have to teach her a few more commandments. She is accepting everything and always reading the Book of Mormon and asking her questions she has, she is honestly the perfect investigator, don´t know if I´ll every see another one like her. I´ll share with you one of my two favorite questions she has asked. We had given her the restoration pamphlet at the end of our first lesson and had just finished teaching her about the restoration of the gospel during our second lesson, I was using the pamphlets picture while talking about the first vision. At the end I was holding her pamphlet still, and she actually asked, in a slightly worried tone, if we were going to let her keep the pamphlet because she loved it so much! And yesterday she asked us at church if it was really important if she asked in prayer if what she was reading in the Book of Mormon was true. She asked this because she said that while she was reading she already felt so sure that it was true and that she didn´t need to ask our Heavenly Father because she already knew the answer. There is a lot of other amazing things I´ve seen with her. But it´s amazing and wonderful to see how the Spirit can help a person who has a pure and honest desire to learn of the Gospel and of Christ and our Father in Heaven. So I´m really excited, my first baptism will be this Sunday. We are working on details with the baptism though, she wants it in Juchitan because they actually have a nice font and the river here isn´t really clean, nor is the tank they have behind the casa de oracion. But going to Juchitan makes it hard for the members to get there for the baptism. But I´ll give details next week! Even though it may not be me baptizing her, it´s still really neat to be a part of this. I´m excited though.
(Is the town you travel to called Chicapa de Castro? I looked it up on google.)
6. Yes the town is called Chicapa de Castro. Even smaller than Union.
(Food...good, bad or ugly?)
7. I´ve spent too much time so far, but nothing terrible this week thankfully, but nothing extremely good either. But I really did enjoy those ham and cheese sandwiches, I wont lie. They were a good break from Mexican food. Oh ya, and I cooked pancakes one morning and french toast another. So hopefully power comes back so I can keep cooking things.
(Does Elder Jimenez thing your living conditions stink too, or is that just how it is in Mexico?)
8. This is the worst house Elder Jimenez has lived in he says. Mission and before . And everyone living here, yes even the poorest of people, have nicer houses. More roomy usually, better yards and places for hammock (cant spell that) and things like that, so we are living worse, Can´t wait for a house with a hammock place.
(How is the language coming? Which do you speak more, Spanish or Zapotec?)
9. People find it hilarious to find out that Elder Jimenez and I know a few phrases in Zapotec. But we can speak Spanish with the majority of the people we find. there are those who have a hard time with Spanish, but even though the majority use Zapotec, they know Spanish too for when they need it.
(Tell us about the President's visit. What were the beds he brought you?)
10. He just showed up and had small wooden bed things with mattresses. We went to Juchitan and bought a fridge, blender, two better fans and brought them back. Sorry don´t have time for more of the details.
(Do you know why they haven't had missionaries in Union Hidalgo for two years?)
11. I think Union just was to small and the mission just hasn´t had enough missionaries for two to be there full time. But before there were missionaries in Juchitan that would go out to Union once every week for a few hours, but I don´t think that worked really well. But from what people have said its just because of lack of missionaries.
12. Well, there isn´t a twelve, I took a lot of time writing today, sorry but I gotta go. I´ll talk to you all next week. Oh ya! Congrats Andrew on your mission call!!! That sounds awesome, my teacher served in Peru and said he loved it (Hermano Wood). But I gotta go now, love you all! Thanks for all of your love, support, and prayers.
Love,
Jordan
These first pictures are of a move that is being filmed here in Union Hidalgo. Look it up on the internet. Two pictures are of each of the main actresses. The girl is a Oaxacan (I dont know the technical term) and the actress is supposedly fairly famous acording to the newspaper article that we found. It was in Spanish so I couldn´t understand everything, but the actress is named Abbie Cornish and the movie is called La Niña. It is supposedly co-produced by Mexico and the US, so it may be coming out there too. But it´s supposedly about a woman trying to keep an adopted mexican girl. I really can´t remember what the paper said the plot is, but maybe look it up. And I actually saw some of the filming, they were doing a train scene and had a train driving back and forth on the tracks and had us cut off from the main part of town because of their filming, so that´s why we took some pictures. But it was cool to watch, they had the train driving and people with fans blowing up dust for effect. It was pretty major actually. It was supposedly originally being filmed up north, but due to violence they relocated to peacful Union Hidalgo and Chicapa. So I can say I saw the filming of this movie during my mission. Anyway, love you all, talk to you next week.
This is me eating some sort of food. It's like a mix of tortilla and something else. It 's cooked in a corn husk and is thick and crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. It's pretty good though.
So this is my district right now. Some of them will be changed out this week because its the last week of the cambio. (which is the change or transfer, not sure what it´s called in English, but cambio translated means change.)
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