Monday, September 22, 2014

Living the Mexican Life

Hola!

This week was great! One of the members we are really close with gave me the nickname "Koli Poki" this week, referring to the movie, "The Other Side of Heaven" and the main character in the movie. Koli Poki goes to a foreign place on his mission and while there can't understand the language and is constantly getting sick and having things happen to him.  The member told me that I reminded her of Koli Poki:).

Eating pig head last week may have made for a good story afterwards, but it also made for a very sick stomach! I have been sick all week but luckily we have still been able to get a pretty good amount of work done. We only ended up staying in the house one day this week. This week I have learned a lot about forgetting about myself and focussing on others. Especially on the days that I feel really sick I have been able to practice forgetting about myself and how I feel and focussing on my investigators and what I can do to help them.

This week I had a pretty strange experience. One morning when I woke up I had a weird taste in my mouth, so I decided I would brush my teeth.  After brushing I was rinsing my mouth out with water when I noticed that the water I had been rinsing my mouth with was coming out black!  I looked at my toothbrush and saw that it was black too! I went over to the mirror and when I opened my mouth I saw that my tongue was completely black! My first thought was that I had some strange disease. Then I had the thought to look on the warning label of the stomach relief medicine I had been taking. Sure enough I looked on the box and it said that having a black tongue is a normal symptom from the medicine and not to panic.  Too late...I had already pushed the panic button at least 3 times before I read the box :).

My other panic moment of the week took place in the bathroom of the home of one of the family's we are teaching.  After I had finished using the bathroom and was about to leave I remembered that the rules are different here in Mexico, the toilet paper doesn't go in the toilet it goes in the trash can.  After realizing my mistake I went out to look for a way to fix the problem. I found a door that went outside into a jungle of tall trees and found a nice stick to take back and solve the problem with.  After I was finished me and my companion left the house and headed to our next appointment.  While we were walking I told her what had happened and she thought it was hilarious.  She said, "Oh that's why you took so long...I thought you had fallen in!" (Which is something that is actually very possible here in Mexico by the way.):)

Also this week we went to the Union Juares for a day to start working with some people there. It is about a 45 min ride from where we are to the Union Juares and is a very curvy road up the mountain. The streets are like hills and are straight up and down, it felt like a hike to get from one appointment to the next.  Also it is very high up on the mountain and there was one point while we were there that the clouds settled down on the streets and the houses so the fog was really thick. So for part of the day we got to walk around through clouds which was really cool.

Unfortunately Mary's baptism didn't end up happening this week.  It had to be postponed for a little while because of some family things so we are hoping to get things worked out within the next week or so so that she can be baptized as soon as possible.  We also have another investigator named Anna who accepted a baptismal date for October 18th so we are excited about that. :)

I wish I had time to update you on everyone of our investigators but there is just not enough time for that.  We have several awesome investigators though who are doing so great.

So that was life here in Mexico for the week.  Things are going great and I am loving it here!  I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you next week.

Love, Hermana Peine

Sister Shelly Hansen, the YW president in my home ward asked me to write a quick note of advice to the YW in our ward.  Since I don't have much time I am sending the advice I think is the most important. This is my advice;

Every one in this world is looking for happiness but they don't know where to find it.  The problem is that people are usually looking for happiness in themselves.  On my mission I have learned that if you truly want to be happy you must forget about yourself and focus on others.  You can spend every day for the rest of your life trying to make yourself happy and it may work for temporary moments of happiness, however if you want true and lasting happiness do something for someone else and make someone else happy.  Forgetting about myself and focusing on helping others has made me happier than I have ever been. 

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