Week 3 - Bosques - 1st Area (and Mission Home)

Date: December 01, 2014
Area: Bosques - 1st Area (and Mission Home)
Companion: Elder Rodriguez from Mexico

Hey everyone!

How are you all? Fair warning, this keyboard doesn't let me backspace most of the time and punctuations marks work about as often as the water in my apartment, so work with me here! And also I'm forgetting English.

Trip with Investigators to the Mexico City Temple

I LOVE MEXICO! Thank you all for the encouraging and supporting emails! What a week it has been! This work is VERY hard. Like I said earlier, we are starting basically from scratch here and there are some hard feelings so it is hard to find people to teach. Those who actually listen seem to like our message, but most are busy and unwilling to read and pray about what we teach.

Before I came to this mission someone told me there would be dogs everywhere and I thought thy were exaggerating...but nope they are literally EVERYWHERE. These two dogs were trying to kill each other and it was seriously horrifying, I thought I was going to die! I guess that trick is if you bend down and pretend to pick up a rock the dogs will be quiet or run away, so that's a cool little trick I'm going to try sometime.

We have running water very inconsistently and when it is there, it's extremely cold, so we take BUCKET SHOWERS! My life wasn't complete until I took one of these, and yours shouldn't be either. Basically when we do have water we fill up this bucket and this pan and then in the morning we boil the water, mix it with the cold water, and it's just like magic. Bam. Still pretty cold water, but hey I'm grateful!

Nobody uses their signals while driving here, and it reminds me of you dad! Haha. Except you only do it when there is no one around...literally the only signals I see are for NO PURPOSE! I have seen 4 signals and been in a car twice that used them once each. Of the 4 signals one was a parked car, one was just driving straight, one wasn't even pointing the right way, and the other was legit, I was pretty stoked about that.

I got to go to my ward for the first time yesterday and it was awesome! There are two other Elders and Two Hermanas in my ward and thy both had baptisms yesterday! My comp and I got to witness them and that was so cool! There were two young girls and one lady, all of them super awesome! The rule is before someone can be baptized that have to come to
church 5 weeks, so we are really pushing for investigators to come to church and follow up on their committments, pray for them and us and our success!

Last night (Sunday night) my comp and I got to attend this meeting of the Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents, and a few Seventies on Temple Square! That was way cool. They asked me and a few other Elders to Usher so that was super sweet! Then we got to see the temple lights go up for Christmas and that was beautiful! I think Christmas time will be a good opportunity for us to teach more people and share our message.

This has been an incredible week, but also the most depressing and hard week of my life. Nobody wants to listen; this is exactly the opposite work the adversary wants me doing, and he is working hard on me to try and get me not to do it. It is literally a constant struggle to move past these feelings and to work my hardest, which is so crazy because I want it so bad. I have to use my will to work against the constant depression and opression of the adversary. I have to pray so hard all the time and not let all these people get to me. I'm very grateful for my sense of humor because I seriously don't know where I'd be without it, but I'm even more grateful for prayer. I have gained such a knowledge and understanding for it's importance as a constant thing because I need help all day every day. Please pray for me as well to feel happy and motivated to do this work which I love so much and want so badly to do!

So this one time Elder Rodriguez and I were teaching these two old ladies on the street after dark and they didn't really want to hear what he had to say but we talked for like 10 minutes and I got most of what they were saying...but I missed the little part where ONE OF THE LADIES WAS BLIND!! So I was trying to give them a card inviting them to the temple but my comp whispered to me in English, "She's blind!!" so the rest of the time I was just trying to figure out which old lady it was so that was a pretty good time.

Haha our neighbors have some crazy parties. We are on floor 3 and someone below or beside us had this party and they played this one song for literally over a half hour and it was really catchy...but it still got annoying haha they did it again this morning that was pretty great.

Bishop Brown back in St George, Utah adding Kelson's
Picture to the Map of missionaries Serving from the Ward

We have 3 baptismal dates but I'm not sure they are really committed at all, so we will have to see how that goes. Pray for them! This week we are just contacting like crazy and contacting old investigators to try and get them moving again. Everyone who actually understands the Gospel wants it so bad, so the trick is just getting them to really get the big
picture. I mean seriously, Eternal Families, there literally is nothing better! All we gotta do is not do bad stuff, it's easy!

Well I sure do love it here, I'll try to get some pictures soon, we can't take our cameras anywhere really because we'll get robbed, so I haven't taken many but yeah! This place is nuts and I love it. It makes me so grateful for the family I have at home and the opportunities we all have too. Literally I get frustrated with the people in my area because they live in these little tiny places and not because they are poor but they are just bad at making decisions! They have money, they just blow it on TV's and cars and a bunch of other stuff, there are actually awesome church programs in the ward to try and help them be smart because any of them make enough to be living in a nicer area, but yeah I don't tell them that it's just frustrating because they could live so much better!

Haha funny story, a recent convert named Jonathan lives like alone and is only 16 his dad is just all over I'm not sure but the phone company here pays him like 20,000 Pesos a month because they built a cell tower (like a straight up 100 foot gigantic tower) on top of his little house which has got to be so unhealthy...haha but he is a good kid he just needs to be active in the church! Pray for him too. It's crazy because I can see his tower from anywhere in our area!

Our area is really small so we walk everywhere. It's good it's small because my foot is really taking the heat. It really isn't hurting too bad because we don't walk a ton, so don't worry mom :).

Well I love you all and can't wait to hear what's going on back home!

Elder Davies

P.S.
Dear Elder works for my mission! If you want to write me there, just select my mission (Mexico City East) and it'll print in the office here! I have much more time to read those than emails, I'm sorry I'm so backed up I'll try to get back to all of you soon!