25 Things About Mexico

You would not believe my life right now. It's crazy. The first good news is that I haven’t gotten sick yet! The water smells horrible and the streets are dirty but it's awesome here. My companion is Elder Gutierrez from Chile and he doesn’t speak any English. He is a very hard worker and a great missionary but our area is not very successful. There are only two active families in our area that attend the branch. (They are the Branch President and the 1^st counselor).

My Spanish is coming along. With some people, I understand almost everything,...but with others I can't understand anything they say.

Some of the houses that I eat in and teach in are almost like they are out of a movie. Small, dirty and tons of people living in them. The food is pretty good here, but we hardly ever eat. We eat a meal at 3:00 in the afternoon but never breakfast or dinner and we don’t have any food in our little house. (Our “apartment” is more like a little room.) So we basically fast for 23 hours every day.

Well here are 25 things that I love about Mexico which will help describe my experience here:

1. Tacos
2. All of the houses and windows are barred like prison.
3. My companion doesn’t speak any English but his trainer taught him some funny phrases in English
4. We don’t have a toilet seat
5. Tacos
6. Our shower is cold
7. We haven’t had toilet paper for 5 days, but we just got some today
8. There are a ton of mangy dogs that roam the streets
9. All of the sidewalks have dog poop on them (like every other step.)
10. It isn’t rare to see 5 guys on a moped being driven by a little kid.
11. We only eat once a day.
12. The hobos here use our restoration pamphlets to make cigarettes.
13. The water smells like sewage.
14. Food from the street vendors is delicious.
15. Tacos
16. There are so many shops along the sidewalk that I am constantly ducking my head.
17. I didn’t see any other white people until Saturday at conference when other missionaries came.
18. There is no such thing as a cross walk here. We just play Frogger to get across the streets. Cars get really close to us sometimes.
19. It either smells like tacos or sewage
20. The police always have their lights on so you know where they are and there are millions of them.
21. We sometimes throw pebbles at windows to get people to talk with us.
22. Tacos.
23. I am living the life of Nacho Libre! It's not a joke. It's a way of life.
24. It rains a lot, then cars drive by and splash us.
25. Tacos!

But Mexico is awesome. We were teaching an investigator in the park the other day and I didn’t quite understand everything, but I felt the spirit. Everything around us was crazy at the park. There was a band practicing, (and they really needed to because they where horrible), and kids playing soccer...but right there with our investigator it was calm and the spirit was there. My companion is a very hard worker and a great teacher. He is very good at listening to our investigators and responding.

One of our investigators this week was really sick on the day that we were going to set a baptismal date with her so we weren't able to. But I FELT PROMTED BY THE SPIRIT to offer her a blessing. So I anointed her with the oil in Spanish and then my comp gave her the blessing. It was awesome, and the next day she was feeling a lot better. We had a baptism set for my birthday but the investigator didn't come to general conference and there aren't any active families to help bring them. Some other cool stuff that happened this week is we are teaching a recent convert how to read and I helped one of our investigators make an interview video for her college English class.

I hope all is well at home and with baby Scotty. Tell the little girls I love them and I love you too.

Elder Shumway