First Week

Dear Family, This week has been one of the craziest weeks of my life. When I first got here they interviewed all the new missionaries and then sent us off with our new companions to our areas. I am in the Tuxtlas Zone and the city we live in and do most of our teaching is Lerdo. The first two full days here I was on exchanges with one of the zone leaders because one of our families was being interviewed for baptism and it took a lot longer than they thought it would. I was with an Elder Collyer in the city San Andres. Elder Collyer is American and is an amazing missionary. He only spoke in Spanish to me and made me speak in almost every conversation with any contacts or investigators. We had lots of lessons and contacts but mostly it was just walking and talking in the rain (because it rains every day in San Andres). On Thursday I finally got back with Elder Flores (my companion) and started our regular schedule. We had days of almost all contacting and days of almost all lessons. Everyone here is willing to listen, to listen if not believe. Saturday we had a baptism, which was awesome, but only two people in a family of three were baptized. The youngest is close with her grandparents who don´t like the church and influeced her a lot. On Sunday I confirmed one of the investigators a member of the church all in Spanish. It was stressful to say the least, but I could really feel the spirit helping me. Today we don´t have much time to anything because we have to do all the shopping, washing clothes, and cleaning between 11 and 3 because we get done with our studying at 11 and have to head to a district meeting in San Andres at 3. Although we wouldn´t be doing much even if we had free time because we aren´t allowed to play any sports. A while ago too many missionaries were getting hurt so the mission president said no more sports. The Spanish for me is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I understand almost all the words that people say and can put together the rest of the sentence easily. My speaking struggles a bit but the people really try to listen and even when they don´t understand they pretend like they do. It has been a real blessing for me to be able to communicate as well as I am doing and I know that it is because of God. The temperature probably averages around 94 degrees but it is super, super humid. We are almost always sweating. It gets hot enough here that we are allowed to wear hats if we want to. The bad thing is that nobody has AC down here, only fans. During lessons I cherish the few seconds of fan time I get. Zika is a massive problem down here. Everyone we talk to either has it or someone in their family has it. This week I was part of 5 blessings of health (in Spanish) and that was only a couple of the people. Don´t worry too much though because every time we see mosquitos we put on an extra layer of repellant. Our daily schedule: We get up at 6:30 and workout for 30 minutes. We then iron our shirts, shower, and get ready for the day until 8. 8-9 is personal study, 9-10 is companionship study, 10-11 is language study, and 11-12 is when Elder Flores teaches me how to be a missionary. We then go to lessons contacting the whole way trying to get investigators until 2. At 2 we have lunch with a member (which is always amazing food) and then head back out and walk, contact, teach until 9. At 9 we return to the house, plan for the next day, and get ready for bed. 10:30 is lights out. You might have noticed I didn´t put a time in there for breakfast and dinner. That is because we don´t have a time set apart for that. If we do eat breakfast or dinner we do it while doing other things. There have been days that lunch was my only meal. I am starting to make a schedule for us for eating in the morning and at night, so hopefully during my next email I won´t be hungry. Most of the time for our workout in the mornings we do a bunch of abs and pushups but today I got my companion to go running with me and I am going to try to do that more often because it is an actual workout. There are literally dogs everywhere here. Almost everyone has at least 2 dogs and there are dozens of strays running around in each town. Most of them are the tiny annoying ones that bark at everything they see but there are some that are nice. I don´t touch any because a lot of them look like they have 5 different sicknesses. One of the members in our ward has a monkey and a few families have cats and birds. In Lerdo there are cars that drive around with massive speakers attached to the roof of the car that are about half the size of the car blaring advertizments to the world. We will be in the middle of the lessons and all of a sudden you can´t hear yourself think much less what the investigator is saying for about 5 seconds. They also have homemade ice cream here called "nieve de coco", It is amazing!! Elder Flores nicknamed Lerdo the city of "motos" because there are probably more motorcycles and mo-peds than cars. After church yesterday we saw an 80 year old member crusin' down the street in his Sunday best on his mo-ped. It was ligit. Saturday morning we spent cleaning the font and filling it up. When we were done filling it up the water was yellow! We went and bought blue water coloring but when we put it in it turned the water green! We then tried to drain the font but then the pipe got clogded so the water wouldn´t drain anymore. We then started scooping out the water in buckets for the next hour and during that our phone fell in the water and the microphone on our phone broke! We finally just filled it back up and our investigators were baptized in a greenish font. That was a day but the service was amazing and I felt the spirit all day. This whole week everything that has happened, good or bad, I have been happy about. Even when we aren´t talking to anyone or the whole font experience happens I am cheerful the whole time and laughing about everything. My companion is the same and we have been having a great time with each other. I know God loves me because he has been helping me every second of every day in more ways then I can count. And for that reason I decided to always be happy in every situation. This week during one of our lessons we were teaching some new investigators about prayer and we asked the investigator to say the closing prayer and during the middle of it she broke down because the spirit was so strong. We could all feel the love for her and her problems and that God wants to help her. Love you all, Elder Payne