Hello, hello.
We've been really busy for a week and it has been veryfun. We have a baptismal service tomorrow for a woman named Juana whose husband, Jeime was baptized a few weeks ago, so we are currently very excited for that. Yesterday we had District Conference in La Cruz with all of the branches in our district. Everyone in the two branches here in Costa Rica stuffed into a bus and we drove to the chapel in La Cruz for a broadcast, which I think was to all or most of Mexico. I'm not really sure. Elder Holland spoke at the end. It was really neat. He spoke some Spanish for the beginning of his talk; it showed a lot of humility to me because he doesn't really know Spanish, but he was willing to do his best to speak to all of the saints here.
The dog dazer works really well. It's awesome.
We offer service to everyone, but usually people don't accept. We offered help to this young guy named Cristian, and after explaining that we didn´t need any money, we helped him weed the planters in front of his house. It was really fun. His friends kept driving by and honking at us. After a while of asking questions and things, he said, "Aren´t you supposed to try to convince me to go to church?" Elder Davis said something about how we don't come to convince anyone, we were just offering service. Cristian said, "Oh, that makes me want to go even more!" We'll go visit him later today.
Mexico is a very loving place. People's families and friends are very important to them. A couple times, we've been teaching a very old person, and I think, "Oh, they must be pretty lonely; they're probably really happy to have someone to talk to," and as we are there, three or four family members will come through the house to visit or for various reasons. Few people are actually lonely or separated from their families from what I've seen. Everyone greets each other, saying good day, and then EXACTLY at noon they start saying good afternoon. It's really fun.
MyLdsMail is now run through Google, so I have all of the same limitations as I would with a G-Mail account; Dad, I received the e-mail and picture you sent, and I can respond in the same way, sending however many pictures at a time. Apparently DearElder is free. We pick it up from Culiacán twice or three times a month. I don't know if it would be better to receive mail through that or just read e-mails here in the cyber. Also, I can't go to any other websites, so I'll only send pictures through attachments.
We have lost of success teaching. Many people are helped as we work all day to invite them to come unto Christ. We just taught the Word of Wisdom to two of our investigators, Elizabeth and Roberto; it's really cool to see how applying a gospel principle to their lives can help them and their families.
The first day I arrived here, I washed off a spoon to eat with at our house, and I was searching around for a bit for a towel. Elder Sanvisente, who lives with us, gave me an old t-shirt that was in the kitchen and said, "Welcome to the mission!" That same experience has basically been repeating for a week in different forms.
For "the food" (lunch) everyday, the Sisters in our branch take turns preparing us a meal. Mexican food is REALLY good. I think a Café Rio or Chiptole burrito would feel out of place here. I don't know anyone in the branch yet, so every meal is an introduction. Elder Davis always has them a play a game where everyone takes a turn asking me a question. He always ends the game by saying something like, "And the most important question of all... Can you play the piano?" I'm beginning to think I was sent here just because there wasn't a ward pianist. I'm excited to play for the sacrament meeting next Sunday and I'm really glad I bought a simplified hymnal before I left the MTC.
Thanks!
Elder Tingey
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