FIRST WEEK IN MEXICO!

Hey Everybody! My first week in Mexico has been very interesting. On Tuesday I took a taxi from the mission office to Texcoco where I live and met my trainer, Elder Ovando. Just the 2 of us live in a little cement house. We have hot water for showers, but we have to buy separate water to drink. We don’t have a little maid like I was hoping, and we’re pretty poor. We get about the same amount of money (equivalent in pesos) every week that I got in Boise, but we have to spend a lot of it on transportation every day. Most of our work isn’t in the actual city of Texcoco, but in the pueblos that are around it. Every day we take a combination of combi, taxi, and autobus rides to get to our appointments. The people here act like they’ve never seen a white person before, I get stared at a lot, and I get called a wero a lot, which means white boy. We study until noon, then usually have an appointment with somebody, eat a meal with a member around 2 and then work the rest of the night until 9:30pm. Its weird here; there are only really 2 meals, breakfast, and la comida which translates to "the food" so I’m not exactly sure if it’s lunch or dinner. The food has been pretty good from the members, but I’ve been sick ever since about my third day here. It’s fine though because I’m still able to work, I’m mostly just sick in the nights and in the mornings. Don’t worry at all though, I’m getting better and I’ve heard that it happens to all of the Americans their first couple of weeks here. My companion is a really good missionary, and has taught me a lot already. He doesn’t speak any English at all, so it’s hard for us to communicate very well sometimes, but it’s good for me because I’ve learned a lot more Spanish now. The work here is amazing; the goal here is for each companionship to baptize every week. We’re teaching lots of different people, and it’s kind of hard because I don’t really know them yet. We had zone conference this week and it was pretty much all about how to get more baptisms. Speaking of baptisms, I baptized my first person on Saturday! I baptized Patricia, a lady about 40 years old. I didn’t really know her very well at all, but it was a way cool experience. I’m mad I didn’t have my camera with me, but another missionary took pictures and I’ll try to get those from him this week. We’re also supposed to have another baptism this week on Sunday; I’ll let you know how that goes. Today for P day it’s been pretty boring, we just went to Wal-Mart and cleaned the house and that’s about it. The message I sent last week didn’t get lost in cyberspace, I really sent it that late because we had been busy all day but from now on I should always email earlier. They don’t do daylight savings here, so it’s about 3pm here right now. That’s terrible that Connor and Brock are both hurt, are they able to still play? Thanks for sending a package; I’ll let you know when I get it. I got an email from Kalin and it sounds like he’s doing really well in Ukraine. Keep me updated on what you hear about Dallin too. I’m emailing at an internet cafe but it’s free for us because a member owns it. Anyways I’ve got to run for now; I’ll talk to you next week! I love you! Elder Johnson