i guess ill start with Christmas eve. we did a lot of walking and not a lot of teaching since mexico cheats and opens their presents on Christmas eve. we were told we had to be in our houses by 8 instead of 9 because people get crazy at night haha. all night there was fireworks and loud music, the house next to us had some good 80s rap and mariachi band so i didn't sleep all that much. the next morning i woke up to the music and the fireworks but no snow and Santa didn't come, which made my comp sad. at 11 we got to go eat with a bunch of members from Utah that stayed in a trailer park. it was the most Utah food I've had in a while, funeral potatoes! green jello! and everything else haha. it was nice eating right on the beach but i would have much rather been in snowy Utah. after we went to call home. skype was being weird but after a while we got it to work and seeing the fam was the best Christmas present ever!!! after we went and ate with other gringo members in a hotel, we had steak and mashed potatoes and gravy!!
on Saturday the members brought presents for the poor members and investigators here. so we took them around to the members we thought need the gifts the most. the last house we went to was in my area and i lead 20 gringos into the sectors. the sector is so compact that their aren't any roads, just side walks, and there's barley any light. before we went in i told them i wouldn't bring my children in here but they told me partly why they are doing this is to show their kids how lucky they are. it wasn't easy but we found the house and all 20 of us went in to this little cement house and gave the family clothes and toys and sang a song for them. it was a pretty cool experience. Sunday was pretty normal. and today i got the wonderfully amazing and fun opportunity of washing my clothes by hand. best 2 hours of my life haha. i still don't know when we are getting our washer back but i hope its soon haha.
i hope everyone has an awesome new year!!! miss everyone tons!
Elder Pizzie
A few more things from Anthony while we were chatting back and forth through email:
ANTHONY: you might think this is funny Kaitlyn asked me if i felt like Nacho and this is what i said to her:
i'm sick of these duties, keys duty,uhh transportation money duty. i think its time i need to find some better duties!!!!!!!!!! and when ever i eat with members i always think " cant we just have like a salad or something?" cuz the foods always nasty
MOM: Hahahaha too funny! Suddenly a salad sounds really good huh
ANTHONY: anything normal. pig leg isn't too bad but marlin is soo nasty and they expect you to eat the fat of the meat too. plus they only ever give us a spoon too eat with! do you know how hard it is to eat steak and chicken with just a spoon!?
Email from December 22nd
Im dreaming of a "sweaty" christmas!!!!!!so this week was a lil rough but ive had worse. on thursday we decided to ask a new sister to have a lesson with jorge number 3 ( we have 6 jorges so we just number them) who we are really excited about. the lesson went great but at the end jorge told us he doesn't want the lessons anymore. so that kinda killed the day for us.
saturday we had our multi zone christmas party which was awesome. each zone had to sing but because my zones got a bunch of singers , my comp included, we had to sing three with santa hats!!!!!! as you can imagine i was not the most excited ginger in mexico but i lived. after, the pres and his wife spoke and then we had KFC. KFC mexico is not something i suggest but its free food so of course i stuffed myself. then we played games. first was musical chairs and it was the craziest game of musical chairs ever! everyone was shoving each other and one girl kicked an elder to win hahaha. the second game the last 2 people were the mission pres wife and a good friend of mine. one the senior missionarys yelled "do you wanna go home son?" hahah he let her win and is still safe in the feild haha. then we played the funniest game ever haha i dont know the name but basically there was two teams of nine each person had a number and in the middle was a rag, and the mission pres would yell out one of the numbers and the two people with the number would run out to get it and bring it back to their side, the missionary who didn't have the rag just had to "touch" the head of the person with the rag before they got back to their side. well the sister went first and their was a lot of tackling and pulling hair hahah one girl actually broke her arm which was sad but then they had the elders do it hahah. it was so much fun, the elder who had the same number as me was this skinny soccer player and he just tried to grab the rag and run every time but i just tackled the elder every time.
after that we had piñatas and cake. it was a pretty fun day.
on sunday all the gringos came to church and invited all the missionarys to dinner on christmas, so im pretty excited for that.
today we went to a museum/theater in the morning which was alright. then we slept the rest of our time off since we didn't have anything else going on. tomorrow we have the ward christmas party, on Wednesday we get to have dinner with a member but work as usual and on Christmas we get an hour of skype then work as usual, so lots of fun stuff i guess haha.
so christmas in mexico is fun! this whole week their has been fireworks at all times of the day and night, little kids like to throw little flash bangs at us in the street, the first time it happened i thought we were getting shot at haha. also they celebrate christmas on the 24 and party more on the 25 and have the day of kings on the 7 of jan.
so things are awesome down here! miss every one lots!
Elder Pizzi