When in Mexico, Move as the Mexicans

December 09, 2019

When in Mexico, Move as the Mexicans

We moved into our new house this week, and loaded everything into two truckloads. It was pretty impressive to say the least. Also the night before while we were waitng (when we thought the guy who had the truck was going to help us), we found all the crazy things that had been left in that house and took some pictures with them. Also kinda sad to be losing our one eyed dog friend who always followed us around. Elder Souza tried to teach him how to shred on a skateboard, which worked, more or less. Also jammed to some Cumbia in the truck while we were moving some stuff, and I think I might have found my new favorite genre of music.

This week I really realized that it's true that there's few things that a hot meal and a hot shower can't fix. We had some trouble with the sister who was on the list for us to eat with one day, and so we were just sitting on a curb waiting for her to bring us the food, and it was hot and we were tired and with headaches, but as soon as we ate, we were all happy and feeling at 100% again. Also, our new house has a boiler that is AWESOME. I have the hottest water I've had my entire mission, and it's fantastic. The first morning in our house, we couldn't get it to work for about 2 hours, until we figured out it was because since they shut the gas off, we had to open up the valve for a bit to let all the air out until gas actually started coming through. The shower after that was so much more rewarding. So yeah, hard times just make the good times - or even the average ones - that much nicer.

In America, as a joke, when we try to make a word Spanish, we add an O on the end of it (which actually, a lot of the time, isn't too far from the truth). In Mexico, to make a word English, they take the word in Spanish and add the suffix -ation. So we've had people guess that the word for "wood" in Engish (madera in Spanish) is "maderation" and stuff like that, and it's pretty funny because a lot of time it actually sounds like English, more or less.

Had some insights in church this week when trying to think about what I could do better and feeling a little overwhelmed. In the scriptures it says that every good thing is of God, and every bad thing is from the adversary. That helped me realize (along with a lot of other conference talks and articles in the Liahona) that the perfectionism and stress that we experience sometimes, when we're already doing a lot of good things, aren't from God. The only person that we are being compared to is us ourselves, doing nothing. Thus, every tiny good thing that we do is met with cheering and praises in the heavens.

Today it rained like crazy, and was really windy for the first part of the day too. Was pretty fun trying to navigate the streets that were completely swamped without getting too wet. Didn't really work, but it was still fun. Got some pics out of it.

Found a house that REALLY didn't want people to litter (tirar basura), which tickled our rebellious bone. (The garbage was already on the street, don't worry. Also there was a lot of dust in the air)

Elder Sanchez went to great lengths to keep dry and to keep us entertained. Also Elder Jaimes was looking for a backpack, and I think we found a perfect match.

Also got one last picture with our collection of toilet paper rolls from the last cycle and two weeks with all of us in the same house. Elder Jensen really likes Mexican food, but his digestive system doesn't, so we named it in honor of him.