HOLA FAMILIA!!!!
Soooo I LOVE MY MISSION and I LOVE
MEXICO. Oh my gosh, I am having so much fun and I have so much to say. BUT I
LOVE IT HERE! Seriously, I am so happy and thrilled to be serving a mission. My
comp and I laugh every day.
Yes, I got your package and it was
the greatest thing ever. Seeing those hand sanitizers was like Christmas. Haha.
Those things save me cause we shake hands so much and you just have no idea
where they’ve been. And I have been really good about picking up after
myself... at least trying to be. :) And I am taking a ton of pictures,
hopefully they work and come through.
We do have one small problem
though... I love the food. Seriously, it is much better than I thought it would
be. It’s different, and I’m craving some yummy normal food, but it’s all good.
Haha. I love tostadas! They’re way better than the tortillas. Whoever said the
tortillas here are amazing and better, are wrong. I miss home tortillas. The
ones here are super dry and aren’t quite as good, but hey, it’s food.
I absolutely adore my companion. Her
name is Hermana Ortiz and she is great. She’s been out 8 months and we laugh
every single day. It’s awesome. We have bikes here and she crashes constantly
and it’s hilarious. We constantly make fun of each other, in the best way of
course, and have a blast. She’s from Ecuador!!! How neat is that... oh and she
speaks 0, yes 0 English, so I’m learning Spanish real fast... ;) yay.
So the street we live on is called a cerrada.
Pretty much everyone lives on one of these. It is a street that has a locked
gate on the outside and a dead end on the other. Yes dad, very safe. :) Haha,
but as far as feeling safe, I have felt safe the entire time here and been
totally fine. There was a dog- fight, but even then it was fine.
Oh but one thing is that the guys do
honk and whistle at me. It’s a daily thing, but I don’t mind. They call me
guera here instead of gringa, in which I am the only one within miles. But hey,
people wanna talk to me, so it’s all good. The hardest part of it all, the mish
in general is curbing my fiery feelings. When guys (of all ages) whistle at me,
I wanna yell at them, “I AM NOT A DOG, DO NOT TREAT ME AS SUCH”. But then I
think, Jess, I mean Hermana Anstee, you are a rep of Christ, so then I just
sing Jimmy Buffet’s “Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on” and I’m ok. Do as Jesus
would, and sing Jimmy, am I right? :)
One funny thing, ALL THE HOMES ARE
THE EXACT SAME. No seriously. Exact same. Ours too. You walk in and there is a
open area and then there’s stairs to go upstairs and then past the stairs is
the kitchen and up the stairs is your bathroom and two rooms, which, my comp
and I have our clothes in different rooms, but sleep in the same one. It’s pretty
nice. Every family has a TV, of course, and cell phones. And everyone has a
couch. We have a table and squeaky chairs. Looove it.
But one thing that’s fun is all the
homes are the same, but everyone tries to spiffy it up - either painting a tree
on the inside (just got done helping with that!) or colors on the outside. It’s
all an attempt to be different and I absolutely LOVE IT. Oh my, I just can’t
express how happy I am.
All the women greet each other with a
kiss on the cheek and a hug and sometimes a handshake before all of it. Kinda
different and I’m trying to figure out when you do what. I definitely have had
some awkward pauses and moments where I didn’t know what to do and also close
calls of actually kissing some women... so yeah. Love Mexico. Hahahaha.
Um, we definitely don’t have warm
water, so we borrowed a little metal thingy that gets super hot and you plug it
into the wall and it heats up and you put it in the water and it warms it up. We
get a little cup and pour it on ourselves. Have I said how much I love Mexico?
Seriously it’s actually really fun.
I love teaching people and there’s no
pressure because people know I don’t speak Spanish and that I am trying so hard
and they just laugh at me. A lot. But I love it. I adore the people here. Everyone
is willing to talk to us and no one has been super rude. The way they say no is
rather than give us their real address they give us the wrong address of where
they live, and we go there and it’s not them, but then we find out it’s another
family and teach them, and now their son is coming to teach with us this
afternoon. Funny how the spirit works that way.
It rains a ton here and I LOVE IT. I
wore my rubber boots and my coat and my umbrella and was the happiest camper in
the world. Seriously, I played in puddles and my companion just laughed at my
childishness. Haha. It is so fun and everyone loves my boots and say they’re
gonna buy some. Yeahhh trend setterrrrr.
They have the cutest babies here -
just sayin.
But they don’t have the best singing
voices. Awful. Seriously. So I feel right at home. :) Hahahaha.
They also have terrible teeth.
People are telling me they wanna
learn English, but won’t ever get up the courage to tell me what they know, but
here in a little while I might be teaching some English lessons. I am working
with my comp to teach her English, because it’s a good thing and the mission
president wants me to. So yay. It’s fun to hear her say words... absolutely
hilarious.
I am in Tecamec, in an area named Bosques,
by the way.
So we are super close with a specific
family in the ward named the Corona family. They’re the ones we are painting a
tree on the wall for and they’re the ones I cried with when I bore my testimony
that families can be together forever. Yep, gets me every time. But anyway,
they are super kind to help me with words and Spanish and stuff, but yesterday
they asked me to say the prayer in English so they could hear it and I FORGOT
HOW TO PRAY IN ENGLISH. It was awful. I had to really think about it and even
during the prayer I said por favor instead of please. Haha, the struggle is
real.
The days feel like weeks and the
weeks feel like days. We are working so hard and I love it. Every minute, every
second, every hour of the day (ay ay ay ay - for jeni townsend) we are working
toward our purpose. It’s the greatest thing ever and I go to bed exhausted and
so happy. I sleep like a rock.
Oh, at church, not everyone wears
dresses, so that’s interesting. There are guys and girls in jeans and I thought
about dad and how he’d dig it here. Mom too, I guess... ;)
The mish is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE
MTC. Holy smokes. I love and miss my MTC peeps, but couldn’t wait to get out.
The mish is incredible and I LOVE IT.
Ok well, I love you guys and I love
hearing how everything is going. Thanks for the package. I was a cool girl in
town because I already got a package. Haha. I love and miss you so muchhhhh.
Hug each other for me and know that I
am incredibly happy and living it up and working so hard! The church is true and
I am loving life. Thanks for being the best parents ever and know I love you
more than words can describe, to the dark side of the moon and back. Mwah, mwah,
mwah. Tell Buddy I love him too. I pray for you all in Spanish every night, so
if blessings aren’t coming it’s my bad, because I’m probably not saying it right.
:) Haha.
Love you. Really. Can’t wait to have
an update next week.
MWAH
Hermana Anstee!!!!! :D
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