D&C 89 and Soup

This is a Rose we have on our gorgeous rose bush out front.

All of Puebla at night. P.S - The ladder we
climbed to get up there was sketchy as anything haha

  Okay, QUESTIONS from Dad. We do have daylight savings time here!....but it was last week haha pretty crazy. I didnt realize until we saw it on the calender that bammer made, that Mexico does daylight savings time a week before the US does. Wierd stuff. My language skills?....well....haha I can understand anything someone says, so thats a big improvement from the beginning of the mission. I can pretty much say whatever I want, but every once in a while, its frustrating cause i wanna quote something I know in English, or I wanna say something in a specific way, and i cant find the words. But its not too terrible. I definietly need to study more, thats for sure. For the sacrament, it depends. Sometimes they use regular bread, but a lot of the time they use bread from a "Panadería" (which is a bakery) and its delicious fluffy, homemade type bread haha its really good. For the sacrament, they prepare it from water that has a filter on it, so yah, we are allowed to drink it. However...there are some places where they might not use filtered water, and you drink it anyway haha but if you drink a lottt of the water you get really sick....just a little bit and you might have some diarreah or something. So its not a huge deal. And, no. Sadly they dont really have any special candies or chips or cereals or anything like that for the seasons. So i looked for Boo-Berry cereal at the store and they didnt have it :( bummer. But they do have this special type of bread called "Pan de Muerto" that they put out for Dia de los Muertos. Its pretty good....but its not Boo-Berry cereal. And they dont really celebrate Halloween down here. Just a few people going around...but ill talk about that in a bit haha

       Okay, so this week has been pretty good! Monday we got to have a family home evening with a less active family that is now VERY active! It was soo fun! Then Tuesday we had a lesson with some investigators and it was well.....kinda like bible bashing. Or at least thats how i felt. But in the end it was good and I told them, look, all these doubts you have that we have answered and all the things you are asking...you can learn if you only read and pray about the Book of Mormon. And they all agreed that they would do it. So not terrible. 

       Sooo Wednesday was pretty slow and so we are gonna combined it with Thursday haha but this is where we get to talk about Halloween here. So basically they go trick or treating...WHATEVER night they want as long as its within 3 days before Halloween haha or at least thats what it looked like. So on wednesday AND thursday (and even a few on Tuesday) the little kids dress up in costumes and go from the little stores and businesses that line the streets here and ask for candy. So where my comp is from they say "Dulce o travesura" which roughly translates to "Candy or something that makes you wanna punch me in the face". But here in Puebla they say "¿Coopera para mi calaverita?" which lamely translates to "cooporate for my skelleton?"....yah i dont get it either. But its pretty cool here to see them having Halloween and all the little kids trick or treating. It reminded me of going out and having your feet hurt soo much, but you gotta get more candyyy haha good times. And there isnt really anything Note-worthy that happened on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Surprisingly, there arent really parties for Dia de los Muertos, just bread, and everyone puts flower petals in the shape of a cross in front of their doors.

       So, I need anyone reading this blog to let me know if there has been new revelation in the church that the members are no longer allowed to eat soup or something....because I think there are forces at hand, trying to prevent me from eating soup. So you know we drink water from a "Garrafon" which has 5 gallons of water (aka heavy mug), well Monday night i was gonna make some soup and I tried to pour the garafon and it slipped off the counter and my hands were wet from washing the pot, and it slipped out of my hands, hit the floor and pretty much shattered, which i have never seen haha and water went everywhereeee and we dont have a mop so we had to squiggy it all the way to the door and out. Not fun. Then the next night Im like okay, we buy a new garrafon, got the soup. Lets do this. So i plug in the stove, turn it on...and its not heating things up. Okay well I'll just use the other side then. Turn it on, and BAMMMMM. Sparks flying, sounds like someone is welding, my comp and i are screaming like little girls, we run out of the kitchen and then the stove explodes. Like literally it catches fire and like breaks in half. Dude, i dont even know what to tell you. Point is, we aint got no stove, and soup is either now, or very shortly will be, against the word of wisdom.

       Okay, spiritual thought for this week comes from my brain. Basically I was laying in bed the other night after a tough day (for me personally) and I was thinking about whyyy the mission, as good as it is, is the hardest thing I have ever done. I thought about how life, and sometimes, this gospel is so hard! Why is it that I have suchhh a hard time some days?! Why did our Mission President tell us to be greatful when the mission is hard, and why do the apostles tell us to pray and be greatful for trials? Well, I came to the following conclusion. When you reach the age of about 13 or 14, you start growing like a weed (please refer to my Mother for pictures of Nathan and Tyler) and when you start growing like that, you have what are called "growing pains". These pains, often strong, are associated with the fact that you are growing, developing, and changing, and as painful as they might be, you know that they are the result of progress. This is life. We are developing, changing, progressing, and....Growing. Now, in reference to the mission, I believe that some peoples missions are harder than others, because some people need to grow more than others. I personally have a lot of room to grow because maybe I didnt grow the way, or at the pace, I should have before the mission. In life we learn to tame our physical apetites, to control our minds, and to come closer to Christ, which are all really hard...but all really good in the long run. So when you are having a tough time in your life or with the gospel, just know that these are growing pains. They are temporary, they are refining, and they are worth it. 

Haha, this always makes me laugh

This is one of the smaller spiders
we have found in our house.
Not cool.  How are you gonna
 tell me that they arent baby Tarantulas!?

This is a close up of another one we found.
 I risked life and limb to take this photo.