Week 11- December 27, 2015 Christmas

Christmas in the mission was pretty great! We had a lot of stuff planned to do but didn't do any of them. I was sick the entire week. It started on Monday and I still am. We went to a doctor on Saturday and I have a Stomach Infection and a fever. He gave me a bunch of pills and I have been feeling a lot better. On Christmas Eve Eve we got a call from the offices saying that I had a package in the offices. The President had given us permision to go get it if we wanted to. So the next day, Christmas Eve we went to the offices bright and early and ended up finding two packages there. The President was there with a bunch of his family and a bunch of other Elders that had packages in the offices also. It was like a second little reunion! After we went through the tiangis that were right outside the offices. They are huge on Thursdays! We bought four pairs of socks each. Two of them were matching and were holiday socks. We matched on Christmas and on the following Sunday. Christmas Eve we had a big dinner and ate turkey and pork and lasagna and a bunch of other good food. I wasn't able to eat a bunch but it was still really good.

On Christmas morning we got to sleep in and we opened up all our packages in our bed. I got so much candy that I filled up a entire box! I don´t know what I am going to do with it all. I got some ties and a lot of beef jerky which they don't have here in mexico! We went and got to talk to our families on skype for an hour and it was amazing! We then went back to our apartment and I slept the entire day because I didn't feel very good.

We are going to have changes next week. We are also going to be opening up a new area called, Ixtapaluka (Estapaluka). Because of this area they have to cut the missionaries in other areas. Our area is Chapingo 2. The president said that all the areas that are split into 2 areas, like ours, are going to be put toghether into one area. So that means our area would be twice as big as it already is. All the areas would get a little bit bigger. They are going to be sending 34 Elders and Sisters to this area and it is supposed to be a really good baptizing area. I am hoping that I will get sent to the new area! It would be a really cool experience.

Not much happened this week because of the holidays and people being on vacation and with family. But this is all the exciting stuff that happened!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Love Elder Ivie

Week 10- December 21, 2015 First Baptism

I had my first baptism this week! It was amazing!

 The day before we went to the temple with her and a bunch of other people from the ward. It was neat cause we rented a combi or a van and rode to the temple together.

 The temple is beautiful here in Mexico! The lights are everywhere. They have palm trees with lights all the way up them and the nativity scene. It was a cool experience for the day before the baptism.

On the ride home I remembered in my bag I had some sour candy that I brought here to Mexico from Utah. I gave some to a few people and we had so much fun with it! I don't think they know what sour candy is here haha cause most of their candy is chili powder and spicy.
The day of the baptism was way busy! We got to the church 1 hour and a half before it started to fill up the tank. When we opened it up it still had water in there that was like brown and had huge spiders and bugs in it! We had to drain as much as we could and clean it out and then fill it back up in time for the baptism. We were not able to drain it all but we got it pretty clean, but is was cold! The baptism went really well. Then we had the confirmation the next day in the sacrament meeting.

Oh not the last Sunday but the one before was the dedication of the Tijuana temple and we got to go to the stake center and watch. It was really neat to hear it in Spanish! President Uchtdorf spoke and the president of the temple is the son of Gordon B Hinckley. Uchtdorf spoke English and paused every once in a while to have a guy translate it into Spanish. My Spanish has gotten a lot better in the last couple weeks. I am probably going to get a native Spanish speaker for my next companion so I am kind of enjoying the last couple weeks I have with my companion to speak English haha!

We had the ward Christmas party this week too but we left once they started eating because my companion was having a lot of pain in his stomach. We had drank some horchata earlier and it had milk in it and he cant drink a lot of milk. So we gave him a blessing and came home an hour earlier than we were supposed to. Oh on the day of the baptism we ate the best food ever! Hermana Gayosso fixed us up some Tostadas de tinga and... some tacos de suadero. It is part of a cow and the meat is really red and tastes amazing! You have these tortillas with some ground beef and onions then you put the other suadero meat in and then cilantro and salsa and more onions and ooooh it is amazing!!
For Christmas here in mexico we don't have to work like we usually do. We can if we want. We will probably go out to eat later in the day at a restaurant and then go bowling or something fun with the other members of our district.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas!
Love Elder Ivie


 

Week 9 In Mexico- December 15, 2015

We had an awesome week here in the mission! Half way through the week me and my companion ate some small meat patties with this gravy and beans, but the thing was that it was all freezing cold. It was pretty nasty. At the end of the day my companion didn't feel very good and at our last appointment he threw up. I didn't luckily. The next day he felt really weak so we didn't work and we went to the doctor. He had an infection in his stomach. That was Thursday so we didn't work that day but Friday morning we worked and came home after the food and Saturday we couldn't leave. We played a lot of games and ordered pizza with Jaritos pinapple flavored! It is amazing!

This Saturday is my first baptism! She asked which one of us was going to perform the baptism and we said it is up to you, then she said I want Elder Ivie because it is his first baptism! I am super excited! I think it will be a turning point in my mission. We just barley got out of a lesson with her and she is struggling a lot with stuff. I shared with her the story of Joseph Smith in the sacred grove when he was about to pray and a darkness came over him. I told her that Satan is going to try everything he can to keep you from getting baptized because it is what God wants. I then bore my testimony and I think it helped her out a bunch. We are going to go to the temple on Friday night with her to see the lights. It is going to be amazing one day before her baptism.

Today we got a call while we were studying from one of our investigators husbands. He had an accident with a horse and hurt his leg and couldn't feed his animals. So we got all dressed up and went to help. It ended up taking a lot longer than we thought. We started at 10 and finished at 4! We missed a lot of appointments but it was worth it. We made the feed for the animals and looked at all his animals. It was really cool! He was a cowboy that participates in the Mexican rodeos. He does the bareback riding and sometimes bulls! Pretty cool!

We had the Christmas activity with the whole mission yesterday and that is why I wasn't able to write. We don't have much time right now to write either but I will try and hurry! At the activity we had a devotional and sang, then it was a talent show. Then we went and ate food and did sports. They had arm wrestling, which my companion participated in and took second.... he kind of hurt his elbow though. I got pulled into doing the stick pull like in the Joseph Smith movie. It was weird cause the stick was a really thick piece of wood covered in duct tape and was slippery. I went against a kid 2 times my size and we started going and I snapped the stick in half! It was crazy! We then got another one and he started before they said go and my hands slipped so he won but it was super fun! We then went and watched a movie... but in Spanish... it was Big Hero 6. I liked it a ton! It was a really fun activity. I don't have much more time and I cant remember everything that happened this week. Hope everyone is having a good week! And enjoying the snow! It is actually pretty cold here.

Love Elder Ivie

Week 8 December 7, 2015

We had a really great first week of December! Last week we found a gym that was really close to our house and we went and talked to the people to see how much it would cost. It was quite a bit so they said they would call us back later if they could make us a deal. This week we called them back and said that we could come for a certain amount of money that was a lot less than they had previously told us. So the next morning we went to the gym! It isnt that nice of a gym but it is a 3 minute run from our house and they have all the equipment you could need. So for the past week everymorning we have been going to the gym!

We have three investigators with baptism dates right now. One of them, Gloria is for the 19 of December which is coming up really fast and she has progressed really fast. The other one, is a less actives girlfriend. She came to church this sunday for the first time and we think she will progress really good. It is hard to have lessons with her though because it is at her work. And the third is with a guy that has been taught by other missionaries before. He just disappeared from off the map for a couple months but he called us the other week saying he needs our help. He just got separated from his wife and all this other stuff and so we started teaching him all the lessons again. He knows a lot about the gospel. It is hard to have lessons with him though cause he is never at his house. 

On Saturday we had a missionary activity at the church playing soccer and volleyball with the ward. We got there early and it was just the missionaries there. We waited a while and nobody came so we just played basketball, and I showed the other missionaries how to play some really fun games with the basketball. Even though no one came, it was really fun. 

Last night we dropped off our clothes at a members house so that they could wash them for us and we went with them to another members house to watch the Christmas Devotional. It was really good but kind of hard to understand in spanish haha. After we were walking down the street and there was a guy riding a motor cycle towards us in the dark. He started to go around us really close and then all of the sudden he lunged his arm towards my stomach and screamed ´´HUETO!!!´´(which means white boy or something haha) Me and my companion freaked out! He didnt touch us but the way he moved his arm, I thought he stabbed me in the stomach hahah. My companion gets scared really easy and he was laughing so hard after it happened. 

This week on friday we have to come home after we eat and have to stay in the house the rest of the night, then the next day we cant leave the house at all. It is the day of the virgin and it is really crazy! So we have to stay inside all day for security, so we went and bought a board game today. We also have to stay in all day on the 1st of january. 

I am getting really excited for the baptisms coming up and for all the activities we have with christmas. The spanish is still pretty hard to understand but it will get easier! Hope everything is going great in Utah! 

Love Elder Ivie

Week 7 November 30, 2015

Sorry I was not able to write a letter to people last week. Me and my companion went to Teotihuacan and visited the temples and got back with like 15 mins to write and eat before going back to work. I don't know if any of you have looked at the blog that my mom has set up, but there are a bunch of pictures of Teotihuacan.

We had a crazy crazy week this week. On Thursday we had an appointment with one of our investigators that is almost ready to get baptized, Gloria. She is about 32 and has a 2 year old daughter. When we got to the appointment we saw her sitting on the curb outside the house. We went and talked to her and I didn't know really what was going on but she was crying and stuff. After the lesson my companion explained what had happened. Her mom had kicked her out of the house and she had no place to stay that night. My companion forgot the cell phone at our house so after the lesson we went back to the house and then came back to Texcoco, which is like 15 mins away in car, and had lunch then met Gloria at the church afterwards. We had tried calling the bishop and a bunch of other people but nobody had an answer for us. We had also missed a bunch of calls from the zone leaders, they wanted us to try and find our district leader in his area because they lost their phone and had a meeting in the morning. We had so much work to do. We waited at the church with Gloria from 3:00 to 5:30 and finally one of the members of the bishopric drove up and said she could stay with him. The ward was going to the temple that night so Gloria had to wait at the church all the way till 9:00! It was a crazy day. We never got a hold of the district leader so we had to go to their house at 9:00 at night and give them a message. We were really late getting home. We do have a baptism date for Gloria on the 19 of December! That is pretty exciting!
We have been walking so much that I already had to get one of my shoes resoled! I took it to a shoe repair shop by our house and they stitched the sole back on for like 2 dollars! It is crazy how cheap everything here is.
We had my favorite food yesterday after church, TOSTADA DE TINGA!! It is a big round tortilla chip with crema (sour cream) this really good shredded chicken with a bunch of things in it, and then cheese on top. It is so good! On Tuesday we ate with a chef, well we do every Tuesday, but this time he made Nopales soup, which is cactus. It was kind of weird. Every time you chew it makes a squeaking noise on your teeth and is slimey. I just imagined they were pickles or something. Then he gave us a huge bowl of rice and after two huge quesadillas! He had this really fancy cheese inside that was like dripping out and it did not agree with my stomach at all. This week has been pretty fun with that... haha.
My spanish is getting a lot better. All of our investigators and the members say that I have never once sounded like a gringo. Even random people on the street say that I have perfect spanish... I dont know how much I believe them but that must be a good sign. I just need to broaden my vocabulary and be able to understand people better.
Here in Mexico they don't celebrate thanksgiving. At the end of the day I was sitting at  my desk and looked up at the calendar and saw it was thanksgiving and turned to my companion and was like, ¨Hey did you know it is thanksgiving... HAPPY THANKSGIVING!´´ It was pretty funny.
Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving and is having a good start to their winter.
Love Elder Ivie