Semana 21: ¡Viva la México!

Hello everyone!!! Hope y'all are doing well. Feel free to shoot me an email whenever, I would love hearing from you! This week has been CRAZY! For all of you who don't know yet, I AM IN MEXICO!! It is so nice and refreshing to finally be here. I am serving in the center of Xalapa in the Animas Zone and let me tell you, I love it here. I am learning so much and the people here are incredible and so ready to accept the gospel. 

My New Companion Elder Ruiz

Tuesday night I said goodbye to my companions, Elder Wilson and Elder Culebro, they are both so amazing and I am going to miss them so much. They are phenomenal missionaries and they both know how to work hard. One of the senior couples picked me up and I spent primetime with the Assistants, Elder Mecham and Elder Jensen. They are way chill and really fun to talk to. 

President and Sister Vest! Im gonna miss them

Wednesday morning has got to be the craziest day of my entire life haha! I woke up at 3:20am and got ready for the day. My mission president and his wife, President and Sister Vest picked me up and took me to the airport. They had a long discussion (lecture) with me about being a lifelong disciple and implementing the things I learned in this mission over in Mexico. They taught me a lot of amazing things and I am so grateful for the time I had in New York even though I was pretty excited to leave at the same time haha! I flew from Syracuse to Charlotte, North Carolina and from there to Mexico City. The Mexico City airport has got to be the most confusing airport in the world. It is not set up well at all. I got lost 10 too many times and I can usually navigate myself around an airport pretty well. I spent 5 minutes trying to explain to this security person that I needed to get on the train to get to terminal 2 but I didn't have my boarding pass to show them because it wasn't printed out. FINALLY they let me go through and I got to the other terminal and somehow found my way to the check in desk to print out the boarding pass. Then I had to help all the other missionaries figure out how to do it as well because I got there before everyone else. We then all flew to Veracruz where we were greeted by our mission president, President Perkins! He is from Utah and is learning Spanish as well so that made me feel a lot more comfortable. He is a Utes fan though so I am going to have a little chat with him about that hahaha! We drove 2 hours to Xalapa and we had dinner in the mission president's home. There were 8 other missionaries that flew in with me and it was fun to chat with everyone and get to know each other. The Sisters spent the night in president's home and the Elders went to this random apartment to spend the night. This apartment was HUGE. It could literally be a frat house. There were like 22 beds, 3 bathrooms and 5 floors. It was so sick. There were 12 of us who spent the night there, it was a party. 

Xalapa Gringos

The next day we went to the stake center in Xalapa and had a big missionary welcome. It was so fun. I got to meet some of the natives and practice my Spanish. We went over some of the rules and stuff. My companion is Elder Ruiz and he is from the Northern part of Mexico. He speaks almost no English at all and the language barrier is a little rough sometimes but we get along well.  He wants to learn English and eventually attend BYU! He says I went from 20% fluency to about 65% fluency in just a few days! He thinks I´ll be completely fluent in 3-4 weeks! Fingers crossed! So after that huge meeting, we went to our apartment and got settled in. Our apartment is so gross. Mold everywhere and the sink is more black than white and the tile may as well be dirt. But it is very humbling and I enjoy the simplicity. We had dinner at the Bishops house and the parents didn't eat so that we could and that was very sad. People here love the missionaries and will give everything to them. Missionary work is way different here than in the States.

Tacos are mad cheap here

We put someone on date for baptism for January 17th! He is way elect and understands the importance of the Gospel. We hope that his wife and daughter will be baptized soon after they just started joining in on the lessons yesterday. 

Viva la Mexico

I had a pretty awesome experience at our zone conference on Friday. Sister Perkins shared a message about truth and she invited anyone up to the stand to share a scripture they love about truth. At first I was like "heck no I can't speak this language and I don't even know what to say". But the Spirit prompted me to go up and share... so I did. I shared Alma 18:33-34 and I could not tell you what I said because I don't even know what I said, but after, like 15 missionaries came up to me and asked me how long I´ve been out for and they were shocked when I said 4 and a half months. They also told me that I spoke perfect Spanish and they felt the Spirit so strongly when they heard me speak. The Zone leaders and the Assistants all quoted what I said throughout the rest of the conference. The gift of tongues is real.

The City

I just want to close the email by saying how grateful I am to finally be here in Mexico. I have learned so much from my mission in New York and I am ready to implement them here and to teach the missionaries here how to effectively find, teach, and baptize. I love God so much. That love has grown 100 fold since being out on my mission haha! I know that this is exactly where God needs me to be. Thank you so much for everyone who still reads these haha. But I hope you all know how much I love you. I don't know why I am so lucky to be one of the first missionaries to get to Mexico quite yet, but I know there are people here who need me. 

Les quiero mucho!!!

Elder Scown