¡¡¡Hola Familia!!!

It’s good to hear from you all!! It sounds like everything is going good.

This week has been crazy we´ve been busy. I just finished my first transfer here in Mexico. It’s crazy to think that I’ve almost been here for 2 months, I only have 626 more day’s before I come home, the mission pres told us to count them so I am. So I’m sending a picture home of my first district, my comp is on my left, he has the peace sign thrown up with his hand bandaged. I have one more transfer with him, and then I’m officially trained and ready to go out on my own (without a trainer).

My comp is cool his name is Elder Figueroa he’s from Bearacruse Mexico, loves soccer, somewhat knows how to cook, doesn’t speak English, is obedient, patent, and the mission Pres thinks a lot of him. The first week or so was tough, not only because it would take forever to communicate but I’d never know where we were going or what we would be doing there once we got there. The first day was the most serial, it was funny I was so lost all I did was follow in my comps foot steeps, I was so surprised that night when we ended up at the apartment again.

Spanish is coming. It seems slow to me but I get complements all the time for it after people find out how long I’ve been studying Spanish, and some people who say ¨I don’t speak English¨ after I try to contact them in Spanish, it’s really funny when that happens. One of the things that I wasn’t expecting when I got here was that the mission president doesn’t give us a language study in the morning. He said that we will be speaking Spanish 24/7 so we wouldn’t need it. That is true. Somehow I’m learning the language. I would have loved to have an hour or so to study grammar, the stuff my comp doesn’t know. It’s been an awesome help to have a companion who doesn’t speak English, He´s good at remembering English vocabulary even though he can’t speak very well, and its help a lot with the accent an saying stuff right. But like us with English he doesn’t fully understand the grammar and why word order is how it is. Which, to be honest I couldn’t explain the English grammar to him, trust I’ve tried. But all and all he’s been a lot of help with the language. I’m starting to understand most of what people are here, but I still can’t get around some peoples accent, my comp has even had issues understanding some people. But all and all Spanish is really coming; the other day one of the American Missionaries said that my Spanish was really good for only being in Mexico for almost 2 months. He even said that I’m a Spanish speaker. But I still have a lot of vocabulary to learn. Thank you for all your prayers.

Food - food has been a new experience for me here. Nothing tastes the same here. Not anything, even if it’s an American product like sprite and looks exactly the same, the taste is different. The only exception I think is the candy bars. I’m sending a picture of some Mexican tacos; they are nothing like anything you can get at any of the Mexican restaurants I know. All they are is a tortea about the 5 inches wide with some meat of something laid on top with some I think onions and something else green. And that’s it. They cost about 7 pesos on the street. My favorite is the ¨tacos al pastor¨ (the red one in picture DSCF9036). I’ll have to take a picture of how they make it because I can’t really describe how they do it. But they have tacos made of everything you can think of, chicken, beef, pork, eyes, brains, and intestines. I had a ¨taco de tripas¨ (the brown one in picture DSCF9036) or a taco made of intestines. I didn’t mean to but I didn’t know what ¨tripas¨ meant in English until after I had ordered it. The reason I ordered it was because it looked like bacon and wanted to try new stuff before I declared al pastor as my favorite. So I pointed to the stuff that looked like bacon and said what’s that he said something I didn’t understand so I said ok ill take one. Then I looked at my comp and he was laughing and that’s when I found out what I had order. It didn’t taste that bad and it didn’t kill me even or make me sick. And they usually have some sort of salsa or hot sauce with it. and Saturday I conquered what one my American friends said was the hottest one they had in Mexico, I think its jalapeño, and I didn’t even go easy with it. I tested it and then layered my taco with it. It was hot and was hot for a very long time after I ate it.

So to say the least I have learned a lot about cooking for myself here. We went to Costco and bought a huge bag of instant pancake mix. So we have had a lot of pancakes, and eggs and bacon sandwiches. We eat lunch with the members, and they feed us a tone here like a 2 to 4 course meal, so we usually don’t need much of a dinner, just breakfast.

¡¡¡¡¡thanks a tone for the Package!!!!!!!! I got everything!!! Thanks especially for the backpack cover it saved my butt. The day I got the package it rained a ton, the roads were like rivers. Thanks for all the Notes candy and cleaning stuff.

Thank you for all your prayers

Love you forever
Elder Steven Tray Sorensen

Hola!!

We had a baptism this week, his name is Juan Daniel. He’s a cool guy. He proves that you don’t need to know Spanish to contact people. He was walking up the street carrying a box of fruit when the idea came to my mind to ask him if we could help him. So I did, I tried to say ¨do you need help? ¨ In Spanish but I didn’t change my voice right so he understood it as ¨you need help¨. He stopped, looked at me and started talking. I didn’t understand a word but I pretended I understood. He just went on and on and on, eventually my comp Elder Figueroa came and rescued me. Juan asked for one of our pamphlets, so we gave him one about the Restoration, and set a date for when we could come teach him.

After we went our different ways, I asked my comp if we were really going to go and teach him. Because something just seemed off about him. I’ve talked to drunks before and we haven’t gone to teach them because they don’t really mean (or remember) what they say when they are drunk. When I talked to my comp I found out that he was sober. I am getting better at telling when someone is drunk or high. He had lived a rough life, but was now only smoking normal cigarettes. This is awesome because it meant he was actively trying to change his life.

So when we went to teach him he was excited to see us again and to get to talk with us. He had read much if not the entire pamphlet we gave him. And he wouldn’t stop talking. He was so excited to learn more but wouldn’t stop talking long enough to for us to teach him, so we had to interrupt him a ton to teach him. But he was thirsty for the gospel. So we invited him to church and told him that we would have a friend of ours (the young man on the right in the picture) come and pick him up and take him to church he said ok, but wasn’t there when he went to pick him up. It kind of bummed me out a little. So latter that next week we went and talked to him, and gave him a Book of Mormon. You should have seen it. He was so excited when we gave it to him; he kicked himself back into his chair and shouted for joy! It was cool.

So we made a goal for him to quit smoking and get baptized he was really excited about that. We told him that he needed to come to church before he could get baptized and told him where the church was and what time he needed to be there, and set everything up for that. But he didn’t show up again. We really got bummed out about that, but with about 20 min left of sacrament one of the other elders said ¨isn’t that your investigator? ¨ It was. He found his own way there which made my day. So we invited him to come and watch a baptism that was for Mariana and her mom. He thought that was awesome. He even asked if there was a way for him to get baptized sooner.

So the next Sunday we went to pick him up. Because of General Conference we were meeting in a different building. He wasn’t there. He had left and gone on his own to church. We didn’t know what church he went to because the building was different. So we went and tried to hunt him down. We were a little freaked out. But somehow he had found his way to the stake center and was waiting patiently for Conference to start. The baptism was awsome we had a member baptize him because for some reason the Mission Pres. wants members to baptize.

We finished up my first transfer I still have the same comp and the same area because I’m new.
Love you forever

Elder Sorensen