Here are some recent pics from Elder Latimer! His letters follow the pictures below:
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June 2, 2014
PROVO, UTAH
MTC PICS
MTC PICS
MEXICO!!
June 2, 2014
Dear All:
It’s crazy hot here,
like over 100 degrees each day,so we sweat a lot, but our shirts don’t really
get drenched because its evaporates really quick. My companion, Elder Hurt, is
from Missouri and has been out for 1 year and a month. The mission president
and his wife are awesome and so are the other missionaries in our district.
They’re all pretty funny, and we get along great.
Spanish is very
intimidating here. Not only because they talk fast in Mexico, but they talk
even faster in Sinaloa (the state), and they talk even faster in Culiacan!! I
can understand the majority of what’s going on, but it’s difficult for me to
answer specific questions because they don’t finish their words and slur
everything. But I’m getting better every day.
My area is called
Bachigualata. It’s in Culiacan but not so much downtown. The members here are
so awesome. We eat lunch at a member’s house every day and lunch is the big
meal of the day here. Also, people hug on the wrong side. Members or other Elders
will hug you with their heads to the right. It’s weird.
It’s super ghetto here!
Everything has graffiti on it, and lots of people put broken glass all over
their walls to keep people from breaking in. A member in the ward got shot last
week when someone tried to steal his truck. People here love the missionaries
though. We say hi to everyone, and we always get invited in for water or juice
or something. The food here is great, for the most part. My first lunch here we
had some gross bean and rice/water soup and some kind of spaghetti. They don’t
use marinara sauce, but overall it was fine. But the next day I got a stomach
infection and went to the hospital. It wasn’t a big deal. The missionaries here
go to the hospital for everything. I was better by the next day.
Our apartment is really
nice. The other day we had two dogs try
to chase us, but one was a chihuahua so more like 1 and 1/4 of a dog. It’s
really funny because you just have to bend down and act like you’re picking up
a rock to throw at them, and they just run away. There are so many dogs here.
We have a baptism date
for this older lady named Silvia. She’s so awesome and friendly, and there’s a
50/50 chance I’ll baptize her. It’s going to be me or the member that referred
us to her, but it doesn’t matter to me because I’m afraid I’d do it wrong in Spanish.
We got two more baptismal dates last night from this older couple whose granddaughter
is a member. We just randomly contacted them and they’re really interested. We
still have to teach them the lessons though but they committed to be baptized
on July 7.
The kids and youth here
are awesome, and I like to talk to the little kids because our Spanish is at
about the same level. I also bore my testimony in church on Sunday. It was
pretty scary but I did fine. Soooo many more people here bear their testimonies
on fast Sunday than back home. When the bishop allowed people to start coming
up literally 20 stood up all at once and walked up. It was like that for a lot
of the meeting.
We teach a lot of less
actives. That’s a big deal here. Sorry my letter isn’t very linear, just so
much has happened and I’m trying to remember it all. I’ll add pictures now.
That’s sad about Jace it makes me feel bad. Tell him I say to
just take an old sock and fill it with rocks and smack the kid with it.
Love,
Elder Latimer
June 9, 2014
Dear All:
Things are great! And
yes, the airport is in my area, I’m feeling a lot better. It’s a pretty common
thing here [getting sick]. It’s not horrible when you get it though. You just
poop a lot ahah. And it’s not that dangerous, at least I don’t feel it is. Everyone
talks to us and is pretty friendly.
That’s crazy about the
shooting at SPU, that would be a scary experience.
This last week I got my
face shoved in cake by some members because it was my birthday last week, and
it’s like a tradition here in Mexico. It was really fun. I love all of the
members and our investigators we get along really well and laugh a lot. It’s
great being here. The language is getting easier, and I’m at the point where I
understand pretty clearly everything that’s going on, there are just some
really specific words and topics I have trouble with because I’m not familiar
with the vocabulary.
I do lots of cheesy
magic tricks to the “ninos” here and they love it. Everyone always asks me if I’m
super hot because my cheeks are naturally rosy. Sorry if I spell a lot of stuff
wrong in this letter. It says I’m spelling every word wrong and spell check is
wack. Anywho, we have like 13 new investigators this week and 8 or so accepted
a baptismal challenge, with 4 of them with specific dates I believe, and the
other ones we weren’t able to challenge. I can’t really go into detail about a
lot of them because we have a lot, but one I like a lot is Hermana Silvia. She’s
this older lady with like 5 chihuahuas which are really friendly. She’s
basically the Mexican version of Grandma Dowd, they look alike and have the
same personality. She’s nervous about being baptized because she has bad knees
and doesn’t want them to get hurt. But she’s super awesome. She did also think
that when we do baptisms for the dead we use their actual dead bodies... but I’m
glad we caught that and got to clear that up! That would be crazy.
Everything is great. I
don’t really have a good picture of myself for the plaque just use the one of
me in front of the map at the MTC. I like that one.
Anywho there’s lots of
puppies here because there are so many stray dogs so it’s fun to play with
them. We also play soccer in the street with the little kids every now and
then. and we laugh a lot the people here love to laugh and have a good time. A
lot of the children are really badly behaved though because their parents don’t
correct them on anything they just yell at them to shut up. Also this week I
saw how deeply traditional some people are, especially Catholics. This one lady
told us that if Jesus Christ appeared in her living room and told her to get
baptized into our church she wouldn’t do it because she’s Catholic. Kinda weird
but a lot aren’t familiar with the bible at all and worship the Virgin Mary,
and don’t know a lot of famous or common biblical stories. But some are very
familiar which makes them easier to teach.
We picked up 2 new
families this week that a member referred us to and they all agreed to be
baptized but we don’t have specific dates for half of them, but they love the
message and are excited about it. We have another family too, a father and son,
the son is really interested and he’s like 22. The dad is pretty interested but
not as excited as the son.
The youth here in the
church are awesome. One priest comes with us pretty frequently to help us teach
so we can have a member present. He’s super cool and we laugh a lot. I have
lots of pictures to send of cool graffiti and a baby gecko I caught!
One of the elders in our
district has like every Disney song in Spanish on his iPod its really funny,
especially “let it go” from Frozen is hilarious in Spanish. I don’t know what
else to write. I’m probably forgetting some awesome stuff but oh well!
That’s great that Jace
is doing better. I miss being home, but it’s so fun being here. The days go by
really fast, and were pretty close with the members and investigators here.
Love,
Elder Latimer
June 16, 2014
Dear All:
That’s crazy about
Jonathan and Joe [they are moving up in school], I was thinking about that the
other day. Happy Father’s day! I was saying we should get to call home then
too. But at least we get to write!
We heard that Jehovah’s
Witness missionaries don’t get to talk to their families at all. There is zero
contact so that sucks. But that’s cool you got to teach a [missionary] lesson
mom! Sometimes you get weird lessons though. Like we've been teaching this
really great family they only have one kid though, and she’s a baby. Their
names are Jesus and Manuela. They’re super awesome. We always teach her with
this member named Yajaira, and her two year old Jose. They’re both so cool and
fun. Anywho, Yajaira had her nonmember sister come so we could teach her too,
and her sister just talked about evil spirits she’s been seeing in her bathroom
for like an hour and she wouldn’t shut up. Ot was pretty annoying. But Yajaira’s
kid, Jose, is super funny. He had his dad buy a whole thing of juice boxes
"por los Elderes!" So he gave us juice boxes and little bags of
Cheetos afterwards. He’s a very thoughtful two year old.
The majority of kids
here are so horribly behaved! Imagine your worst kid in primary or in church then
make that the average child here. The parents never correct them and just give
them free reign. I have too many stories to share about that. It’s pretty
annoying though especially during lessons when they let their kids just run
around screaming at the top of their lungs and don’t say anything. But once
they hit about 10 years they get a lot better.
So since I tell people
I'm from Seattle they all think I know “icarly” because apparently that’s where
that show is set, and last p-day after O wrote you guys we were in Aguaruto and
some kids yelled "hey gringos! Which one of you is from Seattle? I was
like, “me!” and they asked if I knew icarly, and I said were best friends and
they like freaked out. Ahah. I don’t know how word got around an entire
neighborhood that Im from there but it’s pretty funny.
Hermana Silvia just up
and left for Texas for an entire month, so I can’t send a picture, and the
investigators have to come to church 5 times before they can be baptized and
none of our investigators showed up Sunday so that sucked. But I get to baptize
and confirm one of the sister missionaries investigators this Saturday! I’m
kinda nervous to do it in Spanish but it’s exciting. I’ll send you pictures of
that. I have a lot of really cool pictures this week but my computer is
retarded and keeps shutting down every time I try to upload them, so I’ll just
send them next week.
Also the food here is
crazy good, you can buy 8 pounds of bananas for like a dollar fifty! The fruit
is really cheap, and the yogurt here is like milk. It’s so good you can just
straight up drink it. Some members couldn’t feed us the other day because they
were sick so they gave us money and we went and got Chinese food and we got
like 5 pounds of food each for about 5 dollars and like a liter of jamaicah. I
understand why Mexico is the fattest country in the world now. But I’m actually
in pretty good shape right now, because we walk it all off in like over 100
degree weather. Some days it gets pretty gross because we sweat so much, but it’s
pretty normal to sweat through your shirts here.
We committed a couple
more investigators to baptismal dates, but we’ll see if they come to church. A
lot of them either can’t afford it or are just lazy, usually it’s the latter. Also
a lot of kids here think I’m from Brazil, so I kinda just go with it. And Mexicans do not understand sarcasm at all
so sometimes I jokingly tell people I’m from Tiajuana and they believe me, and
it’s not very funny ahah.
We had a storm last
night, it rained really heavy and really hard and me and my companion ran
outside and enjoyed it! Very refreshing from this 100 degree weather. Also we
contacted some lady in the street who was washing her car, and she had this dog
chained up and it jumped at me and tried to bite my face, but I didn’t move for
some reason but luckily the chain stopped it about 6 inches from my face! So
that was exciting. Also, some guy who was selling ice cream called over to us
in perfect English saying "hey Mormons come here I wanna practice english
witcha!" He was really funny. He was born in Mexico but lived in California
his whole life and he didn’t know he was illegal until his ex-wife got him
deported because he told her he wanted child support so he could take his new
girlfriend out to eat ahahhahah. I laughed really hard at that. He said he used
to go to our church he said "yeah man, John Smith and the gold plates
pretty freakin cool!" But he said he’s not interested he just wants to be
a good guy ahha.
People here always ask
us how hard it is to learn Spanish, and we say it’s not that bad and English is
harder. Then they insist Spanish is really hard and English is easy, and we say
okay speak some English then. And 100% of the time they can’t say anything, and
if they can its “hello” or “bye” in a really horrible accent.
Also yesterday at dinner
I paid a sister missionary from Guatamala to eat dog food for 50 pesos which is
like $3.50 ahhaah. She almost puked. It was so funny and I got it on video.
Funny thing was I ate one too for nothing, and it just tasted like a really dry
cracker.
Also we got more
investigators this week. I forgot the number but it’s around 5. It’s gonna be
difficult to get a lot of them baptized because it’s pretty common here to not
get divorced and just start living with someone else. And a lot of people are
too lazy to get married or divorced when it costs like 300 pesos.
My Spanish is getting
better. It got a lot better when I just decide to talk naturally without
translating a whole sentence out in my head before I speak. My companion helps
a lot too. Also we found a tarantula in the street, 3 iguanas, and a couple of
squirrels fighting an iguana, and a donkey. Also I saw the most stereotypical
Mexican thing I have in my whole life! I saw a Mexican driving a tractor in a
white tank top, drinking a beer and eating a burrito. It was so funny I laughed
for about 5 minutes.
Our investigators and
members here are so awesome they always give us random food to take home, and
always offer rides. The other day we were walking back from the opposite side
of our area and the busses stopped running and it’s like a 5 mile walk back and
it was really dark, but this guy pulled over and gave us a ride! He was
catholic and had like 50 rosaries in his car. We’re not supposed to accept
rides but it was that or probably get mugged at like 11 at night because it
would have taken an hour or more to get back. So we were pretty blessed. I wish
I could call home and explain in better detail about stuff here, but it’s
awesome and I love it!
Love,
Elder Latimer
