April 27, 2015

SO I GOT CHANGED TO TAMPICO AFTER MY FIRST CHANGE! Which is super uncommon, to be moved to a different area before your training is over. I had a great time there though. This week, I got sick again, but overall it was alright.  We finally figured out why I was sick all the time though!!! We took a look at our water supply to our house (we put a white bowl in the tap and shower and looked at them both) and we found a whole bunch of parasites and worms and such swimming around in there!!! We don’t drink the water of course, but when showering sometimes water gets in your mouth by accident.  So we were about to change houses, but the landlords were like, “Nooooo! We'll fix it!”  So we are giving them 2 weeks and then we were gonna change houses, which I thought was going to be the fulfillment to the revelation I received two weeks ago about whether I would move to a new area to help me not be sick during the next transfer period.  I got the answer that I would be changed, but then when we were gonna change houses in this area I thought maybe that was what God meant by yes.  So I discarded the thought of changing to a different area. (Ok, I still thought I would change, but I was less sure of the answer I had received.  But now I found out that yep, I've been changed to a different area! Woo! And I didn’t tell you guys about this 2 weeks ago because when I prayed to know if I could tell anyone, God told I needed to wait until it was fulfilled to tell anyone about it. But it happened and that's super cool right!

Elder Braithwaite mixing masa

OK so the culture shock coming from Huejutla to Tampico is so real. There are so many cars here and there are door handles and there are actual grocery stores. People eat out and it’s not expensive …all these crazy things.  I kept thinking it's gonna be so weird when I come back to the US and all this will be multiplied by like a bajillion is what will be considered normal.  I love it here though. It's really flat as opposed to all the mountains I have been sloshing through in my last area.  It's also the most dangerous part of the mission.  Huejutla, since it’s just a little town, basically the retirement home of Mexico, everything is really tranquil. But here, the military is everywhere, there's no police because they were all corrupt a while back so the military just came in. Isn't that crazy! But don’t worry. We are all really protected and cautious.  It's just such a change!   Elder Braithwaite and I made pancakes last night, but instead of pancake batter we used cake batter and it made the pancakes really good, haha. 

Oh, I forgot to tell you all about how when Elder Braithwaite was sick and I was stuck inside all day, I started to go crazy. You all know how I can’t be inside for too long or else I start to go nuts. AND on top of that, he was sleeping the whole time, which is reasonable, but I had no one to talk to! It was awful! I started to lose it and prayed to Heavenly Father that I would feel the presence of a friend, just to help me make it through the day without going insane, and guess who I felt in the room next to me? Grandma Vicki! I could almost hear her telling me to hang in there and that soon all of this would help me to be who God wants me to be. I think it is one of the kindest things God has blessed me with. I could just feel all the love and care He and all of you and Grandma Vicki have for me.  I wish I could express the amount of comfort that brought me.

2013: Our last Christmas with Grandma Vicki

I love you all. 

I Love you Mom and Dad!

I love you Dallin, Eliza, Bethany, Harrison!

Have a Great week!

A video of a dog and some chicks at an investigators house before a lesson... haha!