May 6, 2013

Ok so our assistants didn't communicate clearly, our real P-day is on Monday. This first week was super crazy. I hardly understood anything that was being said my first day. Luckily the assistants are American and can translate for us. There were six Americans that came and 16 Latinos. The first night we all slept in the mission home which was super small and crowded. The next day we went to the church to meet our new companions. My new companion´s name is Elder King. HE IS AMERICAN!!! I was happy about that so now I can atually communicate with him. So...for my first area. I am located in Juárez. So I will now be in the Juárez mission instead of the Chihuahua Mission. Oh something really cool. I am the very first American to serve as an 18 year old in this mission. So that will be something really cool to tell people. So yeah I can only take out bits and pieces of lessons that we teach. I can almost always understand the topics of the conversations that go on here, but its still really hard to understand what is being said.

So our living conditions are actually quite nice we have warm water for showers we still dont have AC so that will be hard in the summer considering it gets up to 113 degrees here in Juárez. It is super dry here so I am always getting thirsty. For our water we get water jugs that are full of clean water, and every home gets these jugs. So we almost always have clean water. I have plenty of food to eat. We eat at members homes each day for lunch. I have been working my way up with the chile. Elder King told the members to do a little at a time, so I dont get sick. One thing I have eaten here which is actually really good is called ¨chicharron¨ which is fried pig skin. Its super popular here, and it tastes like popcorn. We eat alot of things similar to American food here like hamburgers, and hot dogs and fries. I also eat beans and tortillas here alot too. The tortillas here are amazing!!! One thing thats super funny that they call us here is wedos, not gringos, but wedos, which means like white blondy. One word they always use here which is now one of my favorite words to say in spanish is Suave. It means here ¨Sweet, or Cool¨.

So our President challenged us to all find two families to baptize in May. within our first week we found two families we are hoping to baptize and one of them has a date set up for them. Its amazing how revelation in this mission works. The Lord will provide a way for this work to come to pass, I know it. With one of the families we were just walking down the street on our way home and a litte girl came running up to us and said come teach us. So we followed her to her house and taught her and her mom about Jesus Christ. We taught them again lesson 1 and after teaching the mom told us she wants her kids to get baptized. So we extended the invitation and her and her kids accepted to be baptized.

We are really excited for these up coming weeks right now we are preparing to go to Casas Grandas, there we are going to meet Elder Christopherson. He is going to speak to us and then the mission is going to be split. There is some pretty sweet stuff going on in this mission. It may not be the highest baptizining mission in the world but its is such an awesome mission.

One thing thats really weird about bieng in Juárez is I can see the United States. Its super weird seeing El Paso every night walking home. Another thing thats weird is they play american music here all the time. I see it as the Lord making it harder for me on the mission because you know how much I love my music.

The best thing for everyone back home to do is just email me because it takes forever for the mail to get here.

So we dont skype in this mission yet. We will have to see what the new President says so we only call home. How it works is we call home from one of the Church phones and then you call that number back and then we talk. We only have 40 min. to talk so we cant waste time. I call home on Sunday (mothers day) and I will be calling at 4. The time is the same here as it is in the USA.

So the talk that Elder Holland gave in the MTC I actually have it and I read it alot I still want to read his talk ¨Feed My Sheep¨. But I love that talk and I have it all marked up. My mission has not been easy I can tell you that. I know I will not experience what Jesus did in his life, but as Elder Holland said in life we must take a few steps down the road with our own Cross. One thing that you said can be super hard with life losing a loved one. But I know that with surounding love of others, and with the help of the Savior we can be lifted up. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is about Jesus walking on the water, and how he called out to Peter. I see my mission as this same thing, my savior is calling upon me to follow him and step and walk on water. But the only way I can do it is to have faith in him. I know that when I start to fall into the water or I go through hard times on my mission that he will be there to lift me up and help me.

I know this church is true and I am proud to be on a mission.

Love,

Elder Thorpe