Sept 15th 2012

Sept 20 2012

 

This week was a little better than last week, you guys probably think that I was upset or something when I wrote my last letter. Which I kind of was but it was something that my companion was doing that was bothering me so the whole letter came out kind of rough. A lot happened this week. Lately we have been baptizing but not finding people so we probably won’t baptize this week, because of the problems we have been having with getting people to go to church. We are doing good. President started a new activity where the missionaries have to ask references from at least 2 or 3 people or families every day. So we have been trying to complete with this part but it’s been hard to find people at home, and to get references. One family gave us one reference of a guy that had brain cancer or a stroke I think a stroke. But he has short-term memory loss so he doesn’t remember anything that we teach him. So that doesn’t really work out too well. Oh well, we will keep on keeping on and see if we can find some more members to help us out.

 

This week there was no water in the church or light. You would have to understand how that water works here but basically everybody has a tank under the ground that holds water and then everyone has a pump that pumps the water into the church or your house or whatever. Since there was no electricity there is no water either. So we had to open up the underwater tank and with buckets fill the font for the baptism. We had to push back the baptism and do it with the other ward at 3 because we didn’t have any help or time enough to fill the font. So during the whole process my companion Elder Shillig (my buddy from the mtc who is now my district Leader) and his companion and I with some other people pulled out like

200 bucket loads of water from this underwater tank. But while we were doing it one of the Elder’s nametag fell in the water into the tank and it was the only one he had. So I told him that on p-day I would hop in the tank and get it out. So that's what we did today we played handball and then went to the church to pull the nametag out of the water. In just gym shorts I hopped down there and pulled in out. It was pretty wild! I’ll send pictures.

 

We had a baptism yesterday for Crystal. When we found her she was living with her boyfriend. We taught her the law of chastity. And I told her that she had to get married or separate if she wanted to get baptized. So they decided to get married, then the day that we were going to go and get married she called us and told us that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get married. So I told them to separate instead of playing around waiting for them to decide whether they want to get married or not. It worked pretty well as he moved in with his brother and now after the baptism they say that they want to get married, so they can get back together. Ha-ha so if they want to get married that’s fine but she knows that she can’t have an intimate relationship with him until their married. I made that very clear to them.

 

Anyway my companion is trying to learn English and showing a lot of progress and a lot of patience. I’m actually very surprised –all my other companions either wanted to learn or didn’t have the patience or they just flat out don’t want to learn. We read The Book of Mormon together. I read in Spanish and he reads in English. The pronunciation is very difficult for him. We have been working on certain words that cause a lot of problems for him. Like earth and first. For some reason the and the words that start with e are hard for Spanish speakers.

 

Last week after writing we went to Tepito! It was pretty sweet. They have a bunch of stuff really cheap there so I bought a watch and some shoes that are super Mexican! All for about 40 bucks. I hope they last for a while.

 

I feel completely accustomed to the work. It’s kind of funny --my first area I felt new and it was hard with the language. In Tulancingo is where I learned basically how to work. Here I’m basically improving on everything that I have learned, but I have hit the learning curve with Spanish and missionary work. We are working and doing what we know how to do but it’s all pretty natural and the days are flying by. They say after a year the day’s move faster so we will see what happens.

Anyway that’s about it for me.

¡Viva México Cabrones!

15 de septiembre

Elder Hendricks