Where in the World is Elder San Diego?: Bienvenido a la Ciudad de México (Welcome to Mexico City)

Hola and many greetings from Mexico!

Wow! What a week it has been here in Mexico! Everything is just amazing. The people, the food, serving the Lord, and a bunch of other things! Family, you would have a hay day here because there are SO many VW´s driving around up in this piece!

So last Thursday and Friday weren´t much of anything. Just a bunch of meetings and things for the missionaries leaving the MTC. Saturday and Sunday were spectacular and very spiritually uplifting from General Conference. I highly recommend reading over the talks again or going onto lds.org and watching videos of the talks. They were so good!

So. Monday. My first day in MEXICO! As I was flying in to the city, I looked out the window and what did I see? Houses. And I mean a lot and a lot of houses and buildings. They went as far as I could see! And I´m looking out of an airplane! President Tervort and his secretaries came and picked us up from the airport and drove us to the mission home. It is so crazy when you drive around here! There are basically no lines and people are merging whenever they want and driving super fast. So fun! Crazy thing is even with all the crazy driving, I have yet to see anyone hit another car. Mexico City is just great. I really feel at home here. I also feel unusually tall. That makes me happy. So we went to the mission home, had dinner (Pizza Hut and lasagna), and had a great meeting with President Tervort talking about what we ought to expect out of ourselves and how to help people know this gospel is true through a witness of the Spirit. Really great. Then we met our trainers! My trainer is Elder Valdovinos. He is from here in Mexico City except a different part. He is bien chito (really cool) and is great. Fun fact! Elder Valdovinos was also the trainer of one of my friends and basically roommates Elder Quirante! Crazy.

Tuesday was my first day in the field and boy was it crazy! Elder Valdovinos and I are opening a new area so we were starting from scratch so that means a bunch of knocking doors and contacting for a while which is very fun. I was getting so lost trying to understand everyone here. They speak so fast! But we had a few contacts and I ended the day with some lovely blisters on my feet. (good news now is my feet are like rocks! yeah! no more pain for me!)

Wednesday was great. I started contacting and knocking doors by myself! Yeah! All our appointments for today fell through, but it´s ok! It just means we get to work even harder to find the people God has prepared!

Thursday was pretty similar in that basically all our appointments fell through so we got to do a bunch more knocking and contacting! Elder Valdovinos said we need to try get up to 25 contacts each. Yay for motivation!

On Friday it poured on us! So much rain. Oh how I love it. Whether my books like it is another story for another time. We did more contacting and knocking and found a great lady named Blanca. She invited us in as we were knocking our last street for the day and we taught her about the Restoration and Book of Mormon. I felt the Spirit strongly and know she did too. We got her to even commit to read part of the Book of Mormon and pray about it and about Joseph Smith! God is always so gracious towards us in our lives. His Spirit and words in the scriptures always touch my heart.

Saturday. All of our appointments fell through so we knocked and contacted for most of the day. And guess what? I ended the day with 28 contacts! Whether or not they fall through doesn´t matter too much, just the fact that I can hold my own in conversations and understand people is great and also that Elder Valdovinos and I are talking to more people and about to find some investigators! It rained again also so he and I were nice and wet for a good part of the day.

Church was way good yesterday. There was such a great spirit there as we had a testimony meeting. I even got up and shared my testimony in Spanish! Thanks to Heavenly Father for the gift of tongues, I am doing pretty good in the language. We taught a great guy named Jaime also. He is great and I know that as he reads the Book of Mormon and prays, he will receive his witness of the truth and receive direction from on high in all he does as we promised him, just as I know we all can receive the same in our own lives!

Today was P-day so we played soccer as a zone. It was way fun. Elder Valdovinos and I also went and got tacos at a local stand. They were AMAZING. Street vendors here are superb and I would eat from them every day if I had the dinero to. These three things you will always find on the streets: tacos, chicharrones, and gelatin. Isn´t Mexico City amazing?

Well that´s all for now. I love you all!

Ten fe y se obediente!

Todo mi amor,

Elder San Diego