Monday, April 21, 2014

Merida - Week 15

Buenos Dias!

I hope everyone had a good Easter Sunday yesterday! Easter is a let down in Mexico, at least with the Mormons I guess. Mormons here don't celebrate it for some reason. A bunch of members told me its because we remember Jesus Christ and the Atonement every Sunday, so nothing is really different on Easter Sunday. It was kind of weird to me that NO one even mentioned the word "Easter" on Sunday; we just had the usual missionary work push in sacrament, talked about prophet in gospel principles class and a normal relief meeting. Haha, Relief Society here is kind of different.  All the ladies LOVE to participate. A lot of times the teacher barely gets a chance to talk and it feels like a big discussion group of people wanting to say everything they know and why what they're saying is right. I always get scared to bring investigators to relief society, but so far none of them have gotten scared off.

This week will be exciting because we have 2 baptisms set for Friday! Usually we have them Tuesdays, but one of the investigators got this HUGE bug bite. It was all infected and he had to take antibiotics and couldn't submerge in water. I really want to know what kind of bug it was so that I can watch out for it! Luckily we don't have as bad as a bug problem as some of the other sisters. We just have lots of ants and little spiders and sometimes cockroaches. Hermana Ludlam was telling me she has scorpions and huge centipedes and huuuge spiders in her house. When I hear things like that it makes me realize how good Hermana Tozcano and I have it in our area.

Speaking of how good we have it, we've been spending time in another part of our area a lot lately and it keeps surprising me how poor some people are. We talked to one lady who doesn't have a fridge so she has to go to the store several times a day. I've seen a bunch of houses that have fire pits in front of their house or walls of mattresses and I'm realizing a lot of people don't have appliances likes ovens or lamps, that in the US we totally take for granted. But people survive like that! Those people who don't have much spend a lot of time washing and cooking and working because they have to do everything themselves. They're almost ALWAYS busy, so it makes it hard to visit them and get them to church.

Other random things, we taught a lady this week named Feliciana who is suuuper Christian. Usually I like teaching Christians because they don't worship Mary at least, and they are way more dedicated than most Catholics here. Sometimes I like to think about the mission like a video game because we have to have so many lessons and have or little goals and everything. All of our investigators I give a level of difficulty to of 1 – 10.  Haha, I mention this because Feliciana would be a level 10 difficulty. She is studying to be a pastor and so she knows A LOT. It’s hard because she's super nice and everything but we have to think really hard how we can help her understand the restoration. She's the hardest we've come across so far. Usually people don't know much and just believe what we say, which can be good and bad I guess. I know it's the spirit that's saying "hey this is true," but sometimes I wish people would ask more questions.

Two more random things before I go: Not sure if it's just here in Merida but people are obsessed with Halls flavored cough drops. Instead of always have gum on them, people always eat Halls like its candy. Kinda funny. Also, in an area not too far from us, I heard that there's one ward with 8 companionships. 16 missionaries in ONE ward! Crazy! Our ward thought it was hard to juggle 4 missionaries, but another ward has 4x as many. And the members are always supporting them with their meals and accompanying the missionaries with appointments. I was glad to hear that because I think it really motivated our ward to be even more supportive than they already are.


Well, that's all I have time for. Adios! 

Hermana Harper

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