Elder Ethan Crisp

heres a few notes. if you´re wondering why i´m not capitalizing its cause this keyboard i´m using is really messed up. so there you go. anyway, i dont have the mission address with me so i´ll have to write it down and i´ll have it for you next week. just a note: its takes forever for me to get letters cause i only get it when my zone leaders go to the mission office and that´s like one ce or twice a month and i don´t know how to send mail yet so i´ll have to get that figured out too. and i don´t know about the package thing--its seems to me that missionaries get their packages pretty easily. one gets em all the time so i don´t know. REally the only thing that the book says about musis that it has to be uplifting and invite the spirit. I´d like a good Mormon tabernacle choir cd maybe some like instrumentals or something like that. No cheesy seminary ones haha.

so my second week here was pretty good. The work isn´t very good here in san blas. There´s like 15 or so really active members and that´s pretty much it. The deal is its really hard to getto church because most every one doesn´t have a car so we can only really contact around the church and there´s not a lot of open people there--there´s a lot of Jehovah´s witnesses so that tells ya a lot. We have a few real interested investigators but they all have like big problems like getting to church and stuff. Its hard here and its super ghetto. But i´ve got a/c so that´s good. spanish is really tough--i can´t understand what the people are saying still and its even harder here because the people are like farmers and stuff so they don´t speak clearly at all. I am doing my part though in teaching and contacting as much as i can. We don´t teach very often which is kind of a bummer. But we´re trying. Its super hot. It rained quite a bit last week though especially yesterday. The way it works here in Mexico is we have breakfast and then the big meal is lunch (dinner is like pb and j´s). In spanish we learned "almuerzo" for lunch--here they call it "la comida" whcih means "the meal" and we go to members´ houses to eat. so yesterday we were goin to an appt like 30 minutes down the freeway and we had to get a ride and we were stuck in the back of a pickup truck and it was pouring. We got absolutely drenched. It was fun though.

It´s kind of a bummer that i don´t have any cool stories. We have baptismal dates for a grandma and her granddaughter both named Norma but they live far away and haven´t been able to get to chruch. They´re like our only real investigators. The first sunday they couldn´t go cause another granddauther was sick and then yesterday the bus that has come every sunday at the same time forever didn´t show up. Its kinda frustrating cause they can´t get baptized without goin to church. satan works really hard here in san blas. We just gotta work harder. I´m gettin a bit frustrated with the spanish thing--i´ve had to stop and remind myself that its my third week, but its still kinda frustrating cause i know all the doctrine and what i have to say in contacting and bearing testimony and all of that but i don´t know how to say it in spanish. Like i was bearing my testimony yesterday in sacrament meeting cause one of the speakers didn´t show up (there were 22 people at sacrament meeting :/ ) and i just had to say "i can´t say what i wanna say cause i don´t speak very well" i literally said that (in spanish of course) but I think i´ll be okay.

anyway sorry i can´t write more but i really dont have much to write. amy would love it here though. Its super hot and its dirty and there are a boat load of cockroaches. Elder young and i have declared war on them and are trapping up to see how long they can live. We had one under a bottle for a week and a half and it was still alive. That´s fun. anyway--tv/video is legit so ben´ll have fun with that. senior year is supposed to be easy--except when you´re stupid and have calculus (like me :( ). anyway i´m loving it here even though i can´t speak spanish and have no one to teach. This is the life! Love y´all!

oh and i forgot to talk about where i am today--i´m in los mochis for pday which is one of the most americanized cities in Mexico. I ate at Carls Jr today for goodness sake and there´s a walmart and a mall. Its loco. anyway i just thought i´d throw that in buy :)