Mexico City!

Well, i am in mexico and i just realized that the spell check is in spanish so this will be terrible spelling wise.  Well i spent monday night in the mission prezs house and had some awsome food.  i will try not to talk about food that much but it is so good.  you should already know how most of my traveling went i would give an accont of it but i dont even remember half of it.  the best thing was when the plane was landing it banked so that i could see the city out the window. this place is huge ! i thought i would hate the city but its is the coolest place. we went to a meeting to figure out transfers and stuff, they would call a elders name and then his new comps name and they would figure out that way.  well i heard the name Richart and i thought that it was me so i started to stand and it turns out that that was my comp cause my name was called right after. he is awsome he is latino and knows only a little english. so thats good cause i wanted a comp that would help me not use english. he and i listen to a lot of the same music and like alot of the same stuff so we get along really well.

About Mexico, this place is a dump! the streets are a monstrosity the cars are too.   mom could never come here, she would have to adopt a couple dozen dogs if she did.  they are every where and most of them are indistiguishable because they are the mostly mutts.  i don't quite know what what is going on most of the time, the only white people i have seen are missionaries. every thing has been graffitied and i like  some of it, it is acctually realy good but most is just crap but not as much as you would think. i want to say that no one here knows how to drive except that i have not seen an accident yet and there are just different rules. there are like five stop signs that i have seen and three traffic lights. they regulate the speed with speed bumps that are huge.  and for some reason alot of the cars are VW´s.  tell pete he can get another 100,000 miles on his car cause his was not as bad as half the cars here. 

The people are amazing they work harder than most any one in the U.S. and they do it with out complaining.  they all try to help me with spanish and some know a little english but when they speak english i cant understand it cause i am listening for spanish and the accent is so bad i think they are saying something in Spanish.  

 

As for me, i am doing great. i am starting to understand what some people say but at the beginning of the week i didnt understand anything.  after awile of listening to real spanish i can understand.  when i start a conversation it takes me a while to start to undertand what they are saying.   i absolutly love this city  and some of the people.  i started wearing the potato tie pin and it was like a magnet for people to start talking with me and gave me some thing to talk about.  i can almost describe all of my job in spanish now.  It's great cause i needed some thing to talk with people about other than the gospel.

 

Spiritual things:

 

well we have two families investigating right now. we are not allowed to knock doors or walk up to someone and start talking on the street. one reason is almost everyone will let you in to talk and they had a huge problem with baptizing people and never getting them to church again so i guess this fixed that.  we only get new investigators through refrences so alot of what we do depends on how willing the members are to work with us.  the first week we only taught like 4 lessons with non members. alot of the people we teach are less actives.  which is fine with me, they are used to missionaries and like to feed us. as for the investigators, one is a family with two sons and they seem to be receptive to the gospel.  the mother's father was sick or something so we taught about the plan of salvation that seemed to comfort her, i haven't taught the other famliy yet but we see the son around town every once in awhile, he and his mom went to church with us on sunday and he went and played futball with us today. real futball. not the American thing. but we are kinda in a slow spot right now cause no one is home until the evening so we do a lot of wandering to members and less actives houses. they all want to feed us. one less active girl that we got to go to church on sunday has a daughter that's almost the same age as evie she is so cute and funny.  

 

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting already which aparently is abnormal cause the other missionaries i talked with had been out for 9 months still haven't.  I wrote my talk on the dia de reposo and my companion looked at it and went and wrote me a new talk cause mine was unintelligible. it said the exact same thing just in correct Spanish.

 

We met with a family last night, they have been members for almost a year and they are really excited to go to the temple in Dec. i can acctuly talk with them, they were taught by a missionary from Idaho and they have alot to say to me. one of the sons who is 17 skate boards so i got to do that for awile with him.  the father is really interested in every thing i say, we sat and tlaked about fruit for 45 min. then he told me to bear my testimony on the book of mormon. and then we started  talking about the aztec ruins and how it was possible that the were the nephites and stuff then i realized I was the one talking with him and my comp was talking with his kids. so that was cool.

 

the worst time i have had here was Sunday morning, i woke up and just didn't feel like i wanted to be here and that i was not getting help. but then i went and opened my scrips and there was a passage that i had been looking for since the beginning of the mtc. then i read a note i left for my self for when i felt like that and every ting was fine after that.  

 

Is that better mom? i gave you both info and spiritual stuff in a letter! 

 

I hate it when people tell me it will get harder cause i can't see it getting worse.   all the other missionaries say two weeks in is the worst and i honestly don't think it will be that way. i am going to love every moment here even if i have to force myself too on occasion.

 

so thanks for your love and prayers 

 

Elder Ritchie