Another week gone in Jilotepec Mexico

On Tuesday we went to Tepeji again for district council and some exchanges. Kind of. After we all ate Elder De La Cruz and Tippets had a 3 hour long zoom meeting with their ward and me and my comp literally sat there just messaging people and stuff. After we only had time for one lesson but me and Elder De La Cruz (a Dominican kid) went out and taught a family. Later that night a family had invited us to go eat with them. The guy there was an old, fat man. He was literally the funniest guy I've met though. He literally could've been a comedian. He told hilarious stories and his shtick was roasting new missionaries or “the greenies” so every 5 seconds he would roast my companion and Elder De La Cruz which was hilarious.

On Wednesday we went back to Tula to have our interviews with President Holtom. He’s a super great person. It was probably the most comfortable I’ve felt in an interview in an entire year and I felt like I could be 100 percent about my progress and my weaknesses with him. The ride to Tula back to Jilotepec ain’t fun though. It takes forever and the seats are so close together your knees have to be shoved to one side super close together or digging into the seat in front of you. The latter option is a tiny bit more comfortable but the poor back of the person sitting in front of you is the only problem there. We only had time to make a visit. We walked pretty far to see some lady named Sandra who we’ve been teaching and her family. Her husband is a semi-truck driver so he’s not home a lot but he was there. Nice guy but the semi drivers sometimes go a bit off the deep end being away from home for so much time.

Thursday was good but in the morning there was no signal in the whole town so we couldn’t communicate with anyone until we went to a members house with wifi. We ate some good mole for lunch and then we went to go teach the kids we were gonna baptize but now we can’t cause their dad said no. On the walk over I had to chuck a rock at a dog cause the thing was getting dangerously close. Later we went to to visit some lady in the ward who’s son and his girlfriend were taking the lessons. Who knows if they’re interested but we went anyway.

On Friday we had to go in a “taxi colectivo” to go to the members house to eat. These are taxis but they only go to certain places and the pack too many people in them. It's like a combi or bus but in the form of a normal car. My whole leg had fallen asleep during the ride and when I got out I nearly fell over. The ride back wasn't too great either. I was sitting in the passenger side in the front and when the back seat is already full and someone else wants to get on the drivers just put an extra person in the front seat. So I had to scoot over and was basically just sitting on the clutch the whole time and the driver could barely move it. Later we went to go teach some recent converts in the area and came home.

Saturday we were kind of all over the place. We left in the morning to find someone we'd contacted on a bus but we never found them. Walking back, we decided to buy some cow head tacos. There was two large bowls of salsa on the taco cart and my companion asked the cook if they were spicy. The cook said it wasn't so we both put a ton of salsa on them from both bowls. I went to go sit down by my comp who was already eating and just saw the poor kid just red in the face and crying not being able to speak for the spiciness of the salsa. The spiciness got to me too and I had to run to a store and buy a large water. Some people who aren't members but who we've been teaching had invited us to a carne asada in their house. Their “house” was more of a brand new, large, mansion. They had a pool and a bunch of stuff like that. As a missionary, I've always felt a little uncomfortable in places like that but it was super nice to invite us. They had a lot of questions about Joseph Smith and the life after death. I realized I was talking so long all the meat on my plate got cold and fly ridden. But it was a good chat. The only thing was is that one of the guys badly interpreted the first vision and thought I said Joseph Smith prayed to a tree. Later that evening we went to a far place in the area called “kilometer 107” I’d never been there before and their ain't much to see. We went to a small, lonely concrete house across the street from a large but empty soccer field. Last week we met a lady in the street who was a member but she’d been inactive for a few years and was somewhat new in the area and had no idea where the church was. She had a 10 year old son who wasn't baptized. So on Saturday that was the house we went to visit. The lady’s name is Nancy and her son Moroni (you’d think with a name like that he’d already be a member) she also had a daughter there and her mom. They were really nice and they told us the sad story of her daughter who died and all the mom wanted was to go to the church and bear the testimony that the daughter wanted to give but didn’t have the chance. Closing the lesson we invited them to come to church obviously expecting them to say yes after the story of such a deep conviction they’d just shared. They said though that on Sundays a ton of people go to the soccer field across the street and for them its a great opportunity to sell snacks and they likely wouldn't go to church. Sigh. I suppose the profit of chips and cookies is more important than a dying girls testimony. Oh well. They were actually a really nice family and we'll keep visiting them. We had to leave fast though cause there aren't a lot of buses that pass by km 107 and the last one passes at like 7. We left the house at 6:50 ish and ran to the main road. We made it in time, the bus passed, and it didn't even stop for us. We walked about a mile to go to another potential bus stop and we got there just 10 seconds too late. We had to call the branch president to pass for us and we ended waiting there a good few hours and got home pretty late.

Sunday was church. We had various people come. None of the new people we're teaching sadly. After church we were invited to go eat up a mountain in a forest with a family in the ward. The forest was cool but it gave me a bunch of nostalgia cause I felt id just gone up one of the canyons the salt lake valley and then I remembered I was in Mexico, a bit far away. It honestly felt like places we’d gone camping before but with a Mexican twist. There was a small hike we made and it had a cool mountain view. We were there a while but we got back we had time to visit 2 more people. We went to go see a family we’d done service for a few weeks back but they weren’t home. Then we went to go see a recent convert named Mario but he was sick with Covid and so we couldn't enter.

Anyways bye.

1-4. us at that forest yesterday