Christmas and New Years in Culiacan, Mexico!

December 22, 2014

Dear everyone:

I don’t think I’ll write a lot this week because I’ll call you guys on Christmas. I think we’re gonna call around 11 or 12, so stay tuned around those times! We had a pretty good week. You’re right, Elder L. is really shy, but he’s a good guy. Pretty smart though. He went to BYUI and we have the same major. I’m hoping that we’ll have a couple more baptisms soon. That would be awesome. I’m sure well have them. I just always make myself nervous.

I’ve seen Kaleb quite a bit lately. We took a picture together, and it’s so weird because we keep calling each other Kaleb and Jake. ahah But were getting there. His Spanish is pretty good. I’m sure he´ll pick it up fast. We had our Christmas party today. Lots of awesome games, food and PIÑATAS! It was a blast. Our zone sang 2 Christmas hymns and for one we sang “BUM BUM BUM” and bobbed up and down. It was hilarious and it looked pretty cool. 

The packages got here so thanks a lot! I’ll be sure to open them for Christmas. I don’t think Elder L.’s family sent him anything so I’ll probably buy him a little thing in secret so we can celebrate Christmas together, or I might just open them now. Ahah. I don’t know, you guys tell me. 

That’s awesome about the Seahawks! Ugh, my throat kinda hurts so it’s hard to focus on writing. We’ve found some pretty awesome new investigators that are progressing really well so I’m excited for that. What else did we do this week...? Not a lot, I forget ahaha. 

Love you all. I’ll call you Christmas! I’m really excited to talk to you all!

Take care

THE Elder Latimer

December 29, 2014

Hi Everyone:

I forgot my cord for my camera in the house so I’ll send the pictures next week. ahah. I have a couple really funny pictures we took one of the “last supper” as missionaries. It’s pretty hilarious. There are like lots of saints her that people worship and my goal is to become famous here so that there’s a “Santa Latimer.” ahah. We had a pretty awesome week. And yes NYE is huge here. Way bigger than Christmas supposedly but I don’t think we get to stay out late for that. Edwin is gonna get the Aaronic priesthood soon so hopefully he’ll be able to baptize his wife soon. 

Elder L. (new companion) is a great guy. He’s really sincere and a hard worker, but he’s a little bit awkward. ahah. And it’s even harder not to be awkward in a language that you don’t understand. He’s quiet so he’s learning a little bit slower than I think he should. He’s a really smart kid when we sit down and study Spanish. He understands all the rules and grammar and stuff, but then we leave the house and it sort of just goes out the window. He’s awesome though. He always breaks out laughing for no reason because he remembers funny things that happened a long time ago. And he ALWAYS laughs if you say the word “poop.” haha

We had a pretty good week. Got some new awesome investigators and put a couple of baptismal dates so were hoping to see those soon. The area is progressing pretty well here. Im hoping to have some more success soon. And some investigators gave us ties! So I have like a butt load of ties now. 

That’s amazing that the McArthurs have a dog! I’m gonna mess with it so much when I get back because Ryan always teases Oliver. I also decided after my mission I’m gonna buy a pitbull or some other big dog. I love playing with them here. I’m not sure if there’s any new news. It’s been pretty calm here. Tell Josh that dishwashing is the worst and you get no respect and get paid the least.

That’s awesome about the Seahawks! That would be crazy if we did a 2peat! Is the bandwagon still full or do people not care too much anymore? Also I completely lost my voice this week! After i talked to you guys I couldn’t talk for like 3 days so that was interesting ahah. I called the mission doctor and she sent me to the hospital and I get there and they look me over the and doctor just looks at me and is like “We’re gonna give you a shot in the butt okay?” And I was like, “What! The problem is in my throat not my butt!” But apparently that’s what you do here in Mexico. Ahah. It was pretty funny. It hurt pretty good too though. So that’s definitely something I didn’t think I’d experience in my mission.

I can’t really think of anything else new. Things are great here hope everything is going well there as well.

Love you all take care!

Elder Latimer

January 5, 2015

Dear All:

This week was pretty fun. People shoot guns a lot here on Christmas and NYE so that was cool to hear. Some members gave us ties as presents! They like hollowed out beer cans and put the ties in them then gave them to us while we were eating with them. Ahah. It was super funny. He took them out of the fridge and said, “New year, new rules Elders!” It was pretty funny. I still have my beer can on my desk. I use it as a pencil holder. We had some decent lessons, but not a whole lot of progress because most people left for vacations

It was interesting this week, On NYE I got prompted to contact 2 people in the street and I thought they were gonna be awesome because I’ve been praying to find new people to teach who are ready to hear the gospel. The first lady completely rejected me saying she believed in Jesus and I was like, “That’s what the church is called, the Church of Jesus Christ. Do you want to talk about Jesus Christ?,” and she said “No,” because she has her own doctrine. And I was very, very, VERY tempted to say, “This is not my doctrine, but it is of Him that sent me,” but I didn’t think she would think that was funny. The other one was a guy sitting alone looking sad so I went up and talked to him, then after like 5 seconds of talking a drunk guy interrupted us. He said we his name was Penguin from 8th street, and if everyone ever messes with he´ll kill them, and we can sleep in his house whenever, but he doesn’t wanna hear anything about the bible. He said that about 8 times. ahah. But I told that to my district leader as a joke. I was like, “The Holy Ghost lied today. He told me to contact 2 people and they were both total duds and didn’t accept us at all.” But he said something interesting to me which was the Lord wanted to see how obedient I am, which I thought was interesting. 

I miss wearing normal clothes. I’m thoroughly convinced more than 90% of the battle in the mission is doing what we do in church clothes. But I’m learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Also these computers we’ve been using suck really bad so I can’t send pictures again. I have some really, really cool ones so I’m excited for you all to see them. I really wanna go to the temple. I’m sad we don’t have one in the mission, and the members have to drive like 12 hours to the nearest temple. It was weird. I had dreams like 3 nights in a row about endowment sessions. They were pretty detailed too. I’m surprised I remember what I do, seeing that I’ve only ever done like 3 sessions. 

I’ve been studying diligence lately. My new year’s goal is to study a Christ-like attribute every month, and then hopefully by the next year I’ll be perfect and get translated into heaven... apostasy. But I was reading in Jacob 5 (allegory of the olive tree) and in verse 49 the servant is talking and seeing that not a lot of good fruit has grown, he asks a question that I really like. He says something along the lines of, “What more could I have done for my vineyard.” And the Lord says to him, leave it a while longer. He doesn’t give him any specific instruction or revelation but he tells him to keep doing what he’s doing. And after that it says various times that they worked diligently, with all their strength. Then towards verse 70 they say that they began to see the fruit grown in a great degree. 

I really liked that because I felt like that recently I want to have more success and more baptisms, and I feel as though I’m doing everything I can. But sometimes the key to missionary work is the work. And if we keep doing what we’re growing the fruit will sprout at some time. So that’s what I’m hoping for right now. ahah. I guess that’s my spiritual thought for the week. 

Not a whole lot more happened this week. UMM, we had a bunch of huge boxes in our house from when the furniture got here and I was too lazy to crush them up so I lit them on fire in the back yard. It was huge!! Luckily the houses are all made of concrete so I couldn’t burn it down even if I wanted to. In Spanish there are 2 words one being caja which means box and the other caca which means poop. and my companion told our district leader we burned a whole bunch of crap in the back yard last night, that like made my day ahha. 

Thats kinda a bummer about Jace and Jonathan that theyre not really enjoying school. I hope it gets better for them. And Jared just straight up asked jordan if he got dear johnéd and was like super incensitive about it ahha. kinda funny because its classic jared but i feel bad for jordan. also ryan and hannah, theyre dropping like flies!

January 12, 2015

Dear All:

This week was pretty decent. I have no idea what is going on with my camera again. There’s a ton of pictures on it but when I open it up on the computer it says there is nothing. I hope I figure it out. I got to shove my companion’s face in a cake because it was his birthday. It’s so funny. He’s so innocent. He asked me, “hey isn’t it a tradition here to shove people’s faces in the cake?” And I said, “No, that’s only in southern Mexico, but you do have to bite the cherry off the top of the cake first.” haha! He has too much trust in me. I obviously shoved his face in the cake. Haha. 

We had divisions which was fun. We found a super prepared family. We got a reference that lives in our street, so we went and knocked on the door and they invited us right in. We only taught for 5 minutes but it was amazing. We started teaching about the plan of salvation, and they were very, very interested, and they had every single question that this plan answers. Then we invited them to give the closing prayer and the daughter offered it and it was awesome. It sounded like she’s been praying for years, even though she had never ever prayed before. Then they gave us like 8 lbs of oranges and some lunch meat. ahaha crazy!

But we came back the next day because we had put an appointment with them, and she wasn’t there at the hour we said we’d come over. So we came back an hour later and she answered the door crying. It looked like her lips wore swollen like someone had hit her. But we talked for like 15 seconds so I couldn’t tell for sure. I hope not. But she kept saying, “I can’t talk right now. I’ll look for you. I’ll look for you.” She sounded pretty scared too. I hope everything is going well. I’m afraid to go back though because if her dad or someone is hitting her because we visit her, I don’t wanna create a problem for them. But her mom walked passed our house this morning while we were cleaning and waved at us and said, “hi” like everything was normal. So I really have no idea. We’re gonna wait a day or two before we come back.

We had an amazing zone meeting, I learned a lot. And President promised us that if we teach 40 to 60 lessons a week well have a baptism every week. I know we can do it. I just need to teach shorter lessons. It was pretty awesome though. We went to Sam’s club today to go buy a crap ton of food and I saw some new movie previews in the tv section. You guys have to make a list of movies for me when I get back. I hope Joe gets into BYUI too. It’s so much fun there. I’m sure he´ll get in. I know a lot of not so smart people there, hahah, and he’s a smart kid so he should be fine. 

We kinda hit a slump in our work, but I’m ready and excited to get back into it and meet our goals. I like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8KgnS7BUog

I’m trying to think of funny stuff that happened this week. Nothing really. We’re making good progress with a couple people, especially Rigo. He should be baptized very soon. He finally realized how strong his testimony is. His JW friends planted weird ideas in his head. He asked us why all Mormons are rich, and I was like, “What Mormons do you know who are rich?” and he paused for a second and was like, “oh, that’s true. I guess none.” But just has like little doubts like that. He told me he knows that it’s 100% true so well see a baptism very soon. That’s so awesome to hear about the Seahawks! 2peat!

Hope everything is going well. I’m gonna look for a Mexican computer nerd to help me send these pictures. Love you all!!

Elder Latimer

P.S. My companion got sick, so I took him to the hospital, and they put him on an IV for like 3 hours then we left. Then I puked my brains out that night. But I’m all better now.