Second Week in the Field‏ - October 27, 2015

This week has been pretty great! Yesterday, Monday we had a Zone Conference where Elder Neilson, the President of the Missionary Work spoke. It was a really long day at that conference but we got so much out of it! On Sunday night we went to Los Reyes and we stayed at our zone leaders house with the district leaders. So there were six missionaries in the house. All I brought there was my toothbrush, towel, soap,

My Bed

and some new socks where everyone else brought a whole suit case. I was fine with just the stuff I brought but we slept on the concrete! I woke up in the morning and my hip is bruised! It was the worst night! 

The Conference with Elder Neilson was awesome! He talked to us at the church for 7 hours! We had a couple breaks but I almost fell asleep so many times! He talked to us about missionary work, then we heard from Hermana Stutznegger, Presidente Stutznegger, and then Hermana Neilson. They all gave amazing talks. We were supposed to read two articles by Elder Bednar and then we talked about them with Elder Neilson. It was a really cool experience.

My Room

The language here is really hard to understand still. I have been able to understand quite a bit more but it is still pretty tough. We were in a lesson on Thursday with an investigator for the second time. He was talking to me and I was trying to figure out what he said. He said something about a girlfriend and I thought he meant that I  didn´t have one so I said yes. But then my companion was like no no no. Apparently he asked me if I was going to marry a girl in lomas (where we live) before going back to the United States. I felt so dumb but he was really old and couldn´t pay attention at all. His wife kept falling asleep so he would slap her arm and be like ´´WAKE UP, THE BOYS ARE GOING TO STEAL YOUR BOOKS!´´ this happened like six times, we couldn't stop laughing, then we were talking about baptism and he hit her and she held up the pamphlet we gave her and she was like ´´Agh whats going on!" haha 

I am still trying to figure out the money here. 17 pesos in mexico is equivalent to 1 dollar right now. I guess it changes all the time. I can buy a coke here from anywhere between 5 pesos to 11 pesos. The coke here is so much better than in the united states. Everything here is so cheap! 

Me and my companion are just about to get our hair cuts right now. We are at an internet cafe which is also a hair salon and then they give us food afterwards. The food here has been really good! It is hard to eat some of the things I don't like such as tomatoes and avocados and stuff like that. But I just drench it in lime juice and It tastes better haha. My favorite food so far has been Tostadas de tinga. It is a tostada (A big round tortilla chip) with cream and then this meat which is sooo good! I had like three bowls! (One bowl is like 5 tostadas).

My View

This week we got two dates for baptisms! On the 28th of November. The investigators have to come to church five times before getting baptized and they cancelled coming to church this Sunday. Hopefully they will come next week. It is a mother and her daughter. Today I am going to be asking two other investigators if they will be baptized! I am pretty excited! 

The weather has been perfect here. Everyone walks around with big coats and stuff and me and my companion are out in short sleeves contacting people. It has rained a couple times but it only drizzles. Nothing bad at all. 

So all in all everything has been awesome so far! My companion is the best! He has the coolest accent and all the other missionaries are like, ´´you have to get his accent before you get a new companion!´´ He is the best! Can´t wait till I can speak more fluently! Hope everyone is having a good week! 

Love Elder Ivie

Mom , Dad and Family
We have a lady in the ward wash our clothes and then we go pick them up the next day or so. We take

Taxi

taxis and taxi vans everyday! They are about 8 pesos every time we get on. Monday I had to go to the offices to go to the immigration offices to get my ´´green card´´. So now i am a resident of Mexico. We had to take the metro to get there and that was a crazy experience. Once the doors open on the train everyone rushes in to get a seat. Everyone starts fighting if they don't get a seat and one of the times we were so crammed into there we couldn't move and i just watched as some guy tried to pick pocket my companion! I would never try to steal something from Elder Alverio.... He is huge! He is shorter than me but his arms are bigger than my head! Probably the weirdest thing I have eaten so far is grilled or cooked platano. I didn't like it very much because it is so different! But yeah everything has been going great! They just opened up a new gym in our area and it costs 500 pesos a month. (35$) we aren't going to do it because it is like a 20 minute walk to even get there. If you look on google maps our apartment is in Lomas de cristo. then if you look more south there is Coatlinchán. We are like at the edge of lomas and in between coatlinchán.
Love Elder Ivie