Cameron's letter March 26th

This week was pretty crazy I’ll start day by day.

Monday.
We found out that we’re going to have a trio and that Elder Bacab was going to be with us this cycle.

Tuesday
We moved all of Bacab´s stuff into our house and worked a little at night. We live super far away, so it took forever and our toilet broke the valve next to the wall. It just busted I don’t really know how else to
put it, and it was spraying water like crazy and since it was the valve we couldn’t turn it off. We had to go on the roof and turn off all the water to the house. In our apartment there are 6 tanks of water on the roof and a pump at the bottom so if you don’t have water you turn on the pump at the bottom and it pumps water to all the tanks on top. We had to buy a new valve and that took forever to do. We borrowed tools from a bike shop near by.  After that we started working and it started terrible we where teaching crazy long lessons because everyone wanted to talk like 1hour and a half. I haven’t taught one like that since I was with Elder Lujan. After we left we all felt like the lesson was bad so we committed to work on our time.

Wednesday
This day was pretty normal we met the district leader who was training Elder Ramirez and Elder Huff who just arrived from the mtc. Wow, I really felt bad for him as our district leader was going crazy with all these questions during district meeting and asking the new guy a bunch of them. He didn’t really understand anything. I wanted to help him but when I started to explain to him in English what he said my zone leader told me to be quiet  (I guess he felt like he needed to struggle which is probably true). For me it’s gotten to the point where it’s easy and almost the same amount of thinking as English. I remeber my head would start to hurt because I was thinking so much when I first got here. I felt really bad for this Elder because I remember how hard it was. The good part is that he answered very slowly and after a long pause. This Elder and I are the only English speakers in this district. My first district was nice only 2 didn’t speak english.

Thursday.
I got a call from the zone leader and he tells me that I am going to work with him today. It was really kind of weird and out of the blue at 9am, so I put on my tie and left with them about 5 min later. Come to find out that Elder Ramirez who had about 3 days in the mission ran away while his companion was in the shower and our district leader was left solo. So the zone leaders and I went to his house where the dl was waiting and a member also. It was pretty wild. Still nobody knows where he is but most people say he’s probably at his house but we haven’t heard anything so far. One of the district leaders stayed
with the dl and I went with my zl to work...i was honestly very disappointed as the first thing he said to me was alright let’s go home. So we get home and he brought me some food, and then begins to tell me how he needs a break because Elder Nelson has been working really hard and he can’t take it. I was honestly in shock. It was before 11am so I was like alright I guess we can study a little bit. Then this member came by and started talking about how bad our ward was and a whole bunch of gossip that I didn’t know and that I didn’t really need to know. Anyway we started working at 12pm contacting a little bit and what not. That whole morning wasn’t very productive. At 2pm when we got to the meal and ate. I got back with Elder Sebastian and Elder Nelson with his comp that I was with in the morning and Elder Bacab with the district leader. That’s basically how it worked out. So Sebastian and I worked really hard for the rest of the day to make up for the lost morning and really had a lot of success.

Friday
We worked harder Friday than at night on Thursday very fulfilling.

Saturday
I think we worked harder than Friday it seems like every week we are working harder and harder it’s getting pretty crazy.

Sunday.
Sunday we had a few appointments at night which went pretty good, and Elder Sebastian baptized Ana. She is the one that had a problem with coffee. It went really good, but short. That’s alright she was really nervous and didn’t want to get baptized not for spiritual reasons just for silly social reasons. She came through and that night we meet with her husband who came to the baptism. We meet up with him every Sunday because he works like crazy. He works from 8am to 9pm every day except Sundays, so we really cant check up on him during the week only through his wife. He didn’t read the Book of Mormon this week so that’s a disappointment. He still has doubts so we really put it on him to read the Book of Mormon and he told us he would this week. We also passed by this family on Sunday who are really cool. the dad has some pretty bad money problems and they’re living in this house that’s really nice but they’re trying to sell it to pay off they’re debt. He borrowed 100.000 pesos from somebody and then more from somebody else and more and more when he finally figured out what he had done he started to have suicidal thoughts. We have had this family as investigators for a week or so but just found out that they’re problems are really pretty bad. So we have been working with him a lot and listening to him tell us about The Book of Mormon and how he feels when he is in the church. It’s really cool. He knows it’s true but couldn’t come to church this week because he had some sort of meeting about his debts on Sunday. So it pushed his baptismal date back a week but should be good for the 8th of April. We went by a panaderia and bought some pan. Bread in English, but pan sounds better for some reason. We bought about 30 pesos of pan and took it by this inactive family who are really poor....like really poor just walls and a sheet metal roof with doors made out of trash. They’re probably the poorest I have seen here in Mexico. We took by the pan and ate with them it was really cool. We both felt really nice at the end of the day because it’s probable that they didn’t have any food for that night, but who knows. When we were walking back to the house it felt super cool and we were almost in tears because of how cool the experience was.

That’s basically the week here are moms questions.
Do you eat everyday at a member’s home in the afternoon?
Ya at about 3pm everyday

Last week you said you buy something to eat at night….so that is that like your lunch?
We eat at 3 then work till 9:30 and eat some bread, but it’s like desert bread. They have these really cool bread stores with different types of bread. It’s like a donut shop but not as bad for your health. Well the bread is all white bread so it’s probably kind of bad. Grandma Hendricks says the whiter the bread the sooner your dead. I might just die before I get back home at this rate.

If you don’t have money does that mean you can’t afford to buy food on the streets and have to go home and cook?

No we buy bread most of the nights usually we can buy like 4 pans for 20 pesos.

How often do you cook and what do you usually make for your later dinner?
We just eat milk and pan, that’s about usual. Pan is like a dollar fifty and is a pretty good eat at night.
I’ve heard that most missionaries (your brothers) had money leftover at the end of the month?
No. Nobody has money left over my whole mission. I have had money problems I thought that’s just how it goes.

The funds given to you should be plenty to get you by and then some right?
Well ya but you have to use it wisely. What happens most of the time is one companion uses all their money in like 2 weeks and then the other one has to watch out so they don’t run out. I think Elder Sebastian is especially bad at this. I wish I could teach him but then he starts asking me for money and if I don’t give him it he will just take it (because it’s the lords money not yours Elder Hendricks!! that’s my favorite line). I don’t want to talk bad about him but one day he was like hey give me 100 pesos and all hold on to it until Monday to use for writing home. Then he used it on soda and other stupid stuff.

We can always call the secretary and ask for more, but that’s just stupid and embarrassing.

Is it expected that you will help your comp if he spends his money?
Ya basically -- I will just not tell him how much I have. But what am I going to do eat food while he is starving. I would feel like such a jerk if I just ate my food in his face.

What is a normal amount you spend a week on groceries?
Like 300 pesos more or less that’s like 25 dollars
I have 300 pesos left until the 30th I should be alright.

Are fruit and veggies inexpensive there?

Liter of milk 14 pesos which is about a dollar and that’s the best kind you can buy. You can buy it for 10 pesos if you want but none of my companions have liked the cheap milk because it tastes different.
Egg are like 1 peso that’s like 7cents super cheap. Bag of chips like 7 pesos about 50 cents and bananas are like 3 pesos about 14 cents.
Bread is like 16 pesos for one loaf about 1.25.
That’s kind of the prices. The fruits like mangos are really cheap like 1 peso they have a lot of fruit, but the vegetables there are less. I have really only seen onions and nopales which is like some type of
cactus that tastes pretty good.

Mom said something about losing weight somewhere in her letter. I haven’t gained or lost any weight. if we stopped eating at night I would probably start losing weight but I still weight about 145 so I don’t really see the point in starving at night. we walk a lot and very fast....a lot

Here is an example af a super good meal. On Thursday we at carne asada with little onions Nopales and potatoes ham and cheese. and lemonade and salse verde with avacado. kind of like a guacamole type thing oh ya and tortillas they’re always in our meals. super delish but that family was rich so that’s why we ate all that stuff. it was super good.
Well that’s about it for this week.
Elder Hendricks

p.s. Grandma Hendricks mentioned that she sent me a letter with money in it. You can change out money, but it’s better just to give it to Dad and then he will put it in my bank account. I can use it here if I want. I never got the letter so it probably got stolen. sorry.

 

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