Week 20

March 31, 2014

Wow I can’t believe I am already at week 20, time seems to be going by so fast but so slow at the same time... I am almost 5 months into my mission but it feels like it has been so much longer because so much has happened but then I can remember the day I got dropped off like it is yesterday.... it is a really weird phenomenon. Well today marks the day of a new change, as President told me I am staying here in Constituyentes and as I knew also Elder Herd left. It was really hard to say bye to Elder Herd for 3 reasons. 1) I love Elder Herd and I am going to miss having him as a companion a ton! 2) I am really going to miss being able to talk in English ;) (My new companion is Mexican and I will talk about him a little later in the email. 3) It made me really homesick and was really hard saying goodbye to Elder Herd when I knew that he was going to Utah where I would love to be so badly. I am of course going to stay here for my whole mission and it has been getting better but I still really miss home and wish so much that I could be there sometimes.

Enough about my sob story, a little bit about my life here in Mexico: As many of you know I just barley turned 21 on Friday (speaking of which happy birthday Emily!!! and thank you all for the birthday wishes!) and so this week was the week of cakes... We ate tons of cakes for my birthday and for the going away of Elder Herd. My birthday was a pretty normal day. We still worked hard, we still had a day like we would normally have but the only difference was that the sister who feed us gave me cake, and Sister Whitehead and President Whitehead called and sang me happy birthday. The week was good and having my birthday was really good, but I was sick almost the whole week, which stunk a little.

A cool, funny story that I will post pictures of were from last night. Last night the Family Mondragon (The huge family we just baptized) threw Elder Herd and I a huge Going away/Birthday party with cake and confetti and everything. A tradition in Mexico is to have the person you are celebrating the cake for to take a bite out of the cake and everyone shoves your face into the cake.... so Elder Herd and I were supposed to take a bite at the same time and of course we both go about 7 hands on the back of our heads shoving our faces into the cake, but that isn’t all... After the cake was pretty much ruined by our faces someone had the great Idea of picking up a piece of cake and throwing it at Elder Herd.... This started a huge cake fight, which was crazy, tons of fun, and something that I will never forget. By the end nobody ate any cake but I had enough on my face, shirt and pants to feed at least 4 people a piece of cake... haha. I think that shirt is ruined with chocolate stains but I am soaking my pants and I’m about to go clean them, hopefully they can be cleaned!

Third, this week we had another baptism. This week we baptized both Anahi and her sister Cynthia. Elder Herd baptized their parents last change before I got here. Anahi needed to be married so when we finally got that finished we were able to baptize her and her Sister Cynthia doesn’t need to be baptized because she is mentally handicapped and perfect, but when she saw her parents get baptized she wanted nothing more than to be baptized with her sister, we got special permission from President and it was a really cool experience. I love this family also so much, they are so funny, so kind and generous and they always put a smile on my face. It was such a happy day seeing them get baptized.

Lastly the news I’m sure you have all been waiting for... my new companion. My new companion is Elder Grajeda. He is from Chihuahua Mexico. I don’t know him very well because we have only been together for a few hours but he seems really nice. He is a hard worker and doesn’t speak any English, which will be hard. We went to the train station this morning where everyone was being changed, I got to see everyone from my MTC district except for Elder Mason. It was so awesome seeing them again and I loved talking to them and sharing experiences. I hope everything goes well here this next week with my companion, I have a feeling it will be hard not being able to communicate well and I hope it doesn’t bring up anxiety to badly. I miss you all and love you all, I miss you extra today saying goodbye to Elder Herd who said he was planning on going to the house Saturday. I LOVE YOU!

Love,

Elder Adams