 |
Mexican Sugar Skulls for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)¡Feliz Día De Los Muertos! |
This week feels like it went by in the blink of an eye! The
days are starting to blend together, and it feels so crazy that I´ve already
been in Mexico for a month. I have learned a ton of Spanish but I know once I
go into the mission field in a few weeks it will be a whole other world filled
with slang and faster speaking. But, I am getting excited! Here in Mexico,
everybody is celebrating Día de los muertos ("Day of the Dead" or Mexican Halloween). Yesterday was
the kids day, and tonight are more fiestas for the adults. Yesterday we saw
this house on the mountain side with strobe lights and music blasting and my companion and I starting to have our own dance party haha. Our teacher dressed
up as Minnie Mouse and gave us candy, how sweet! She is really energetic and
funny and we always have a blast in class!
Our district has been making more Latino friends and they
are hilarious! We eat have been talking with our friend Elder Gonzalez and
played volleyball with their district yesterday and it was a blast. This week
our good friends Elder Crapo, Elder Turley, and Elder Burk, who love to play
ultimate frisbee with us, left for their missions this week. So that was sad. But we
have been making more Latino friends and they are so fun to hang with! Also, Elder Watson and I have made really good friends with the janitor named
Adi in our building and he has a really awesome personality. He´s a member of
the church and his wife is a teacher here! We love to talk to him in the
mornings and he always makes us laugh. Unfortunately, we couldn´t find Roberto
to talk to him again! My companion and I are gonna work harder this week to
make more friends with the construction workers before they leave.
I finally found a fellow beatboxer! His name is Elder White
and he actually went to my companion´s high school. So we met up after the
devotional and exchanged some beats and he was pretty good! It was great to
finally feed my craving for beatboxing haha. Then, as I was talking to him, I
saw a good buddy of mine from elementary school - Elder Zane Atwood! It was
crazy to see him almost 8 years later! He is serving in a northern part of
Mexico, right below Texas. It was great to say hi to him!
Today has been such a spiritually uplifting week! On Sunday
we were able to watch a Christmas devotional from 2011 given by a member of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder David A. Bednar. He talked about the
"Character of Christ" and how in his most difficult moments, Christ
turned his love outward and served others, whereas the natural man would turn
inward in our times of darkness and pain. He also mentioned that the greatest
convert on your mission will be yourself, but you need to turn outward and love
the people as the Savior did in order to find yourself. I am so excited for the
time I have these next few years to truly develop the character of Christ and
put off the natural man (Mosiah 3:19) and extend the love of Christ to those
around me! Later that night, we listened to another devotional from a few years
back given by Elder Jeffery R. Holland. It was really powerful! He spoke about
the way missions are assigned and the inspired revelation from God that is
received to know exactly where every missionary needs to be. I know that
somewhere in Minnesota there are families who are waiting to hear the message
of the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in Spanish! Also, he talked a lot
about how this is not just a 2 year calling, but the start of my eternal
journey to become more like Christ and be an instrument in the Lord´s hand in
helping bring eternal joy and salvation to his children here on Earth.
~Elder Bolinder
 |
| Elder Bolinder and Adi - Mexico CCM |
 |
| The District - Mexico CCM |
No comments:
Post a Comment