WEEK 9

Two months into my mission and halfway through my first transfer. Here are some highlights —

- THE FOOD

The food this week was really good. As usual, we had tacos and soup for every lunch, but they are so good. Most soup tastes the same. If anyone has had one of my childhood favorites, star soup — it's just that, but better. Also, one day when we were at lunch, an hermana asked us if we wanted some tuna (which I didn't want at all because I'm pretty sure tuna is the spawn of Satan). But then she brought out the fruit that is on the top of a cactus, and it's SO good. Easily a top three fruit. I had like seven. She also let us try dragon fruit, lychees, and guayaba. They were all really good. Saturday night was my two month mark and we had 3 phone call lessons scheduled but they all cancelled on us so we decided to go outside. On Saturdays, lots of families will open their garages and barbeque there. If you want some food, you can just walk in and offer to pay for some food. We went next door and it was the best barbeque I'd ever had. We had auja, chorizo, nartono and pig rib. The pig rib was the single best piece of meat I've ever eaten and we didn't even ask for it, he just gave it to us.

- THE BAPTISM

Maria Flores, a nine year old girl, was baptized on Friday. It was pretty unforgettable for my first baptism. On Thursday, we were planning out the program and texted the mom to see if she could give the talk on baptism and she straight-up said no. We called the dad and he said they would come up with something. So the next morning comes, we wake up at 5, go get the keys from the hermanas and then we go to the church at 7 and realize we don't have the keys for the water heater. We make several phone calls and finally get the font filled up. Since my companion and I were gonna sing, we had to go back home to get a speaker and on our way home, a bird pooped on me so I got a huge white stain on my pants. Then when the family arrived, we were under the impression that the mom was speaking, but when we called her up, she again said no. So I had to come up with a talk in Spanish on the spot on baptism. Then I sang in my first duet ever. Not good cuz we're not singers. Maria was baptized by her cousin and then my comp gave a talk. On Sunday, she was confirmed and it was really cool. Hopefully our upcoming baptisms will be a lot smoother.

- THE PEOPLE

The people here are so nice. We have been trying to go knocking doors around our area more and we haven't really had success teaching people, but we've met a lot of people. We saw a kid's birthday party on the street so we went and taught the parents. The kids had a piñata, which was just a plastic bag of candy on a rope. There were also a bunch of stray dogs hanging out right underneath the bag so I don't know how that turned out. We also had five people show up to church — which is really cool. Also, since my Spanish isn't great, I don't give blessings yet, but I've anointed probably 15 times. And it's hard cuz the Mexican names have like 5 or 6 names so I gotta remember all those in the blessing. And in my first blessing, I accidently dumped ¾ of my container of oil on her head. Woops.

- SPANISH

Spanish is super hard. It's hard cuz my companion is as white as can be so it's tempting and so much easier speaking English to him than Spanish. But I've definitely gotten better and I can say everything I want in present tense cuz the other tenses are gay and impossible to use, so I don't use them.

Anyways, hope your week was as good as mine!

Love, Elder Fuller

Maria Fernanda Flores was baptized

Lots of businesses are in English down here

This is the dog that lives under the stairs in our building. He belongs to a family, but all dogs here live outside. I may or may not be guilty of feeding him a little something every day.

Weekly companion selfie