Elder James Hadley

January 20, 2014

We had 2 baptisms this week and I did one of them. We have some more getting close but nobody came to church last week... There is a family, an inactive father and his 2 adult kids, who we have started to talk to. Both of them have a ton of doubts but I connect with them so much. I think and hope they will get baptized.

Yeah, the Book of Mormon is really really really great. D&C 122 is one of the best things ever. Read it.
The language is coming along. I'm feeling ok about it. But sometimes I say things and people laugh at me or they don't understand. But I'm learning more and more all the time. I can understand a ton of stuff in lessons, but normal street talk not so much. It's fun to learn though and sometimes frustrating. 

So I'm truly loving the work, and am super happy. The weeks are flying by, and I hear it just goes faster and faster. I read Alma 26 today and it helped me a lot. Read it. 
So yeah, I'm doing well. The food is way better than American food. I eat everything too like chilies and onions and gross stuff like that. It's fun. 

January 13, 2014

To look up where I live, it's called "Izcalli, Chamapa" in the State of Mexico. Chamapa is the name of the area, it's huge and all just hills. We only walk, and sometimes take a Combi, which is like a van with benches around the interior walls, they are super cheap, but uncomfortable, my first ride on one I held in puking. But I'm getting a ton better. 

The food here is so incredible. They have it figured out. This one member made homemade chicken cordon bleu, covered in creamy spicy sauce, and then had a huge pile of refried black beans and salsa and a million tortillas and you would just scoop the beans and salsa then dip it in the sauce. It was the best. Everyone here eats yogurt, jello, beans, rice and tortillas, and bread, so this is the life.

So there are tiny stores everywhere, mini convenient stores. Like 2 or 3 per block, and then random stores too like dog food or tortillas. Speaking of dogs there are dogs everywhere, but they usually just sleep or smell around, nothing scary.

So the language is going really well. I've learned so much, and I only speak like 1 sentence in English per day. My companion is Elder Ibarra from Durango Mexico. He is awesome, I'm sooooooo lucky. That was the only thing I was scared of is to get a bad trainer. But nope, I got the best. This is his last transfer in the mission, and he knows a ton of English because before his mission he waned to read books in English and play video games too that they didn't have in Spanish, so he taught himself how to read English. The thing is that he didn't know how to pronounce it, so his accent is mega mega thick. But that just makes it funnier when he says stuff. I'm sure that it is funny when I say stuff too. But yeah, the language is actually really coming along. I can get the general idea of what people are saying, and often understand everything and not even have to really think to reply. In lessons I can contribute parts, and bear my testimony and stuff really well. The MTC taught me a TONNN, college just taught me vocabulary mostly and kind of simple grammar stuff.

So the food is awesome, the people are awesome, another part this is so good about Mexico is that every single little kid is so cute. It's insane, I seriously haven't seen one not cute kid under the age of 5.

We didn't have gas to make our shower warm, so we would put an iron in a bucket of water to heat it up, then pour the water on ourselves with a cup. Funny right? We bought gas today though. And our fridge doesn't work, but that's ok. We aren't really ever home anyways.

We've taught a ton of lessons, I never realized how many missionaries teach. We contact on the street like none other too, but probably only 10% of those people let us in their houses. Then out of those people when Sunday comes, they just go AWOL and leave. We had 2 new people come to church. Yesterday we went to a house to teach a guy who had missionaries more than a year ago, but he wasn't home, so instead we taught his daughter, and it was the best lesson yet I think. She loved all of it, so yeah, it's exciting to have success after so much non success.