Hola mi familia!
How are you all doing? This week was really great, I went swimming, surfing, riding wave runners, shopping for lots of touristy things, ate our at really nice and expensive restaurants, made sand castles on the beaches... okay okay, I didn't do any of that, Ive mostly just been melting in the heat and my sweat, looking longingly at the people who are obviously headed for the beach and the cool blue ocean waves. Jaja. It is really hot down here, and really humid, wish I could loosen up the tie a bit. But things are going really great down here in Huatulco, I'm enjoying it, and so I can get through all of the questions, I better hurry up on to answering them.
(So, I've been checking out Huatulco. It's made up of several small communities. Where exactly are you at? Are you in Santa Maria Huatulco by the church? There is another church in a community called La Crucecita.)
1. Alright, we are in Huatulco, the area is Huatulco 2. The District Leader is in Santa Maria Huatulco, and then another companionship is in Coyul (if I remember right), and the LZs are in Huatulco 1. The LZs got the middle class people here in Huatulco, they have the majority of the members in their area, we got the poorest parts, and the richest parts. Though we also have the centro, which is cool. Its the commercialized place with stores for tourists. If you look at Huatulco on a map, I will tell you what I have figured out is our area, I'm still trying to figure out names and things like that. The church is by two areas known as H3 and H2. H3 is the poorer part of Huatulco, and H3 and H2 are our area. We also have the centro, and then we also have an area known as Santa Cruz I think. I don't know the names of the other places, but U2 is an area that the LZs cover, those are all of the names that I am familiar with. We live in an apartment building called Los Mangos. If you successfully find it in the sea of apartments, you may notice our swimming pool outside of our house. Pretty sweet, too bad we can only look longingly while we sweat and do our studies in the morning. The church is really nice, its actually a church building even though its a rama. but there are close to 100 people that go, it should almost be a ward, just that the other branches in the district haven't grown enough for it to become a ward.
(Tell us about Elder Price. How are you getting along? How is it to have a gringo for a comp for a change? How long has he been out?)
2. Elder Price is a great comp to have. He is from Arizona, and he is a recent convert, he was baptized a year and a half ago. We are getting along great, and its super fun to have a gringo comp. Its nice to speak English with him and joke and things like that. He is 21 years old, if I remember right, he went to two years at ASU and also worked in a chick-fil-a, I can't remember how to write that, but I think you know what it is. Ummm... not sure what else to say about him, but hes a good guy and we are getting along great, so it will be a fun and cool cambio.
(I can't believe you got on that bus at 11:00 at night to ride all the way down there on that scary road! Did you get car sick at all? Did you go with any other missionaries or were you by yourself?)
3. I don't ever get motion sick, but I have a really hard time sleeping in a sitting position, I suffered a bit, but I got kinda rested, I dropped like a rock on Tuesday night, despite having to sleep for the first time in a while in the heat. We left at 11:00 and I arrived in Huatulco at about 7:30. It was too dark to see anything at all out the windows for the ride. I'm not sure what course we took to get to Huatulco, we went in a nice ADO bus, so it wasn't too bad. And so that may mean that we took the longer Salina Cruz route, but I really am not sure. But it wasn't anything too interesting, just a long bus ride in the night.
(So what have you learned this week about Huatulco? Was Elder Price already there or are you both new? Any promising investigators there?)
4. Elder Price has a change and a half here already. Huatulco is an interesting place for us missionaries because its mainly a tourist attraction, so we don't know if the people we are seeing are tourists or locals, makes it hard for the work. But Huatulco is a beautiful place, I haven't seen any beaches yet, but one time I caught a quick one second glimpse of blue ocean. We aren't supposed to be able to go to the beach, but one time we will have to go visit some families that live close and take some pictures. We also have some investigators that we are trying to put fechas (dates) with. Nelly and her daughter Paula. They are really nice and want to be baptized, we are just having the problem with helping them come to church, they didn't come yesterday. But its interesting teaching them, it has been an experience that I will never forget. Nelly is deaf-mute. We also taught the Restoration in English to someone from Tennessee, it was really hard in English, I can speak to my comp in English, but its hard to speak to someone else. We found a very promising investigator named Alejandra, she came to church yesterday and we were really excited to have here there, we contacted her at her house this week. And yesterday in the night we met Angelica, who is a navy medic stationed here, she was interested in listening to us. So we will see how things go for us.
(Did Elder Carrasco stay in Donaji? I'm sad to see you leave when you had so many promising investigators.)
5. I think that Donaji will have lots of success soon. Elder Carrasco stayed with an Elder from Guatemala. I'm sad to leave it, because I was there for so short a time and it was a really cool ward and area. But oh well, guess I cant do anything about it.
(Do you live in the same area as the ZL's? Do you guys get to live in an apartment together? Where are the other Elders' at?)
6. I already kinda told you about the other areas, I don't know much outside of our area and a bit of the LZs area. We live together in the same apartment. So there is Elder Lule and Chan as the LZs in our house, and Elder Price and I. It's a lot better to live together as four missionaries.
(The beaches there are supposed to be so beautiful, too bad for you I guess! And there are some really nice resorts as well. Do you have permission to even go near the beach areas?)
7. We have seen several legit resorts when we went really quickly to Santa Cruz, but supposedly there are nicer ones. I have heard about how there are 7 bays that form the popular beaches, and then some open sea ones that are great for surfing. Man I wanna surf, one day. We usually will have to walk through centro one or two times a day, which is nice, we had a late night cita (appointment) fall through and so on the way home, we stopped for a nice cool ice cream cone and watched a person play some wooden flutes for the tourist crowd passing through the big park there. It was awesome.
(Tell us anything interesting that happened this week with investigators or about Huatulco.)
8. We had a really special experience this week teaching Nelly and Paula. They had a date set before I got here, but they haven't come to church for a while and so it fell though. In my first lesson, Nelly told us through sign language and Paula´s translation, that they had some doubts about baptism and were no longer sure if they wanted to be baptized. Nelly also told us that we are the only church she has gone to, in which she has felt the spirit and has really felt good being there, but that we are also the only church that doesn't have any way to accommodate for her disability of not being able to speak or hear. It broke my heart and I had no idea what to say. Later in the week we had a lesson with her and Paula in the church, and we talked about baptism. They still kept saying that they weren't sure. But we decided to show them the baptismal font. We opened the doors so that they could walk up to and see the font. I was explaining how baptism works while they were looking at the font. Nelly stopped looking at me and stopped reading my lips, so I knew she didn't know what I was saying. When I finished, we all just stood there in silence for some moments. And I watched in Nelly´s eyes and face, something really special. I could almost see the spirit testify to her right then and there as she looked at the font. Our words couldn't penetrate her ears, but the spirit penetrated her spirit, and I could almost feel and see it talk to her. She then immediately told us that she really wanted to be baptized. It was a really powerful and spiritual moment for me, it was miraculous. Its amazing the love that our Father in Heaven has for His children. Anything is possible with Him. Ill never forget that moment.
9. wait a second, there isn't a nine. (oops!)
(Will you send some pics of your area, Elder Price and your apartment?)
10. I took pictures just a few moments ago so that I could send them, but of course, the internet we are at doesn't have an entrance for camera memories. So, guess you'll have to wait till next week, Ill let you see our wonderful swimming pool in front too.
(How is the food there so far? Same as elsewhere or any better? Is it a wealthy area?)
11. Depends on where we eat, there is the poorer section, and some nicer sections, the majority of the time we go all 4 of us together to eat, so sometimes we go to the other elders area. So far it seems pretty normal, though some will be nicer than others. One member promised us some fish tacos sometime. But I don't think I will have much problem with the food here.
Alright, sorry, I know there are so many more things that you want to know, but I have to do the house inventory, even though there are 4 of us in the house, so I gotta work on that and move on. I love you all so much, I willl be able to talk to you next week though!
Love,
Jordan
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