I’ve learned a ton this week. M y companion has been teaching me how to work when my companion is a slacker. So I’ve gotten to do most all of the planning, gotten to pick where we go, what we teach, practically everything. I’ve realized how much I don’t know, so I’ve learned a lot.

Today the zone leaders picked us to go with them to the Federal District of Mexico. It was really cool; it’s a city that was built on city that was built on a lake. So it doesn’t have a very good foundation, and all the building are sinking, and leaning pretty well.

We also got to Roam around a Catholic Cathedral, it was cool they had some really elaborate designs, and stuff all over. I couldn’t help thinking how funny we must look, a group of 6 LDS Missionaries walking around in there. First off the building is huge, and has tons of random statues all over the place. They have shrines all over the place for their saints, they must have taken years to make, and have cost tons of money to build. Each of them all for a different saint.



 The saints (statues) here are weird, I don’t know that much about them but I catch on to stuff here and there. One of the popular saints (I have no idea of his name, same with my comp) but is always depicted sitting on a horse wearing really rich fancy robs, cutting the cape part off and giving it to some balding old, almost naked man on the side of the road. I have no idea why that earns him the right to be worshiped. But the most beloved is the Virgin Marry, the Mother of Jesus. There are shrines all over the city for her, in all shapes and sizes. That is one of the biggest questions were asked, ¨do you believe in the virgin¨ and we say ¨yes because it talks about her in the bible, but we don’t worship her because the first and second Commandment says........¨ something along those lines.
I’ve learned so much about other religions, Catholic, Jehovah Whiteness, other ¨Christians¨. And lots about the bible, I had no idea how many different versions of the bible there are, for example in English the church uses the King James Bible, but in Spanish we use a version of the Catholic bible not a translation. Then they have the New World Bible for the Jehovah Witnesses (which has entire scriptures deleted), and what seems like a limitless amount for the Christian churches that very in levels of distortion, so we try to use whatever bible to teach them in the beginning but some it would take forever to explain what it says. It just adds to how important the Book of Mormon is.

The cathedral was cool, but in the end turned out to be a large, spacious, and somewhat empty building.
Everything just looks cool in the Federal District, even though it has McDonalds and countless other fast food and moderns shops everywhere. It was fun to walk around and shop for ties. I bought 6 ties for 150 paceos or about 12 bucks ha-ha and there cool ties. There’s lots of cool cheep stuff here. Some of it isn’t pirated, stolen, or knock offs.
About the intestine taco- it actually wasn’t that bad, intestine - I think costs more than good ribs here (which are better than intestine), but the Mexicans love it.
Thanks for all your prayers and support.
Love you forever
Elder Sorensen

Happy Hallowean!!!

Its been a good week. It's weird to think that i only have 2 more Sundays in this change and for all i know i could be a trainer, I doubt it though I'm not fluent enough to train an American, and I have tons to learn about how to teach. My comp told me that the Mission Pres asked him if I was ready to train, I some what hope that Pres was just joking. In 2 weeks I'm officially trained, so who knows what will happen.

We had a baptism this week. His name is Nicasio, he is a older man. My comp was going to baptize him year ago (this is the 2 time hes been here, he started his mission in Jardines too) but Nicasio´s wife freaked out on him, and didn't give him permission to get baptized. So we got everything straightened out with him and got him baptized. I'll sent you a picture if i can get the computer to work, there are very few computer labs that are reliable.

So Tuesday we had interviews with the Mission Pres. It was cool, it was really quick though. I'm new here so mine was really quick. The whole zone got interviewed so it took forever. I waited from 11:00 in the morning to close to 5:00 in the night. So it was some what redundant but that's alright. I learned a lot in that 5 min.

I got to spent 2 days out of my zone this week, because we had interchanges with the zone leaders. It was cool. I got to see what it was like to be a zone leader a little bit, and how they work their area. It was cool. I learned a lot with the zone leader.

You might have noticed that i didn't send you a email yesterday sorry about that, but we had our P-day changed so the Zone Leaders could go to a meeting. So today is my p-day.

The members feed us Tues - Sunday and not on Monday because its our P-day, so we go to make our own food, which wouldn't be a problem, but it was the end of the month and we were out of food and money. (We get money on the first day of the month). My comp had absolutely nothing and i only had $106 pesos or like 7bucks. We needed 28 for 2 buses to get money today. So we had hamburgers. We bought the hamburger from a little slaughter shop like place, that just sells meet. When i asked for the hamburger, the lady threw up a slab of what looked like some sort of really thick stake, weighed it and said this is 1/2 kilo. So I said ok cool, do you have hamburger for hamburgers? To that she said this is hamburger. So I asked something like do you have hamburger meat for hamburgers. To that she some how got the message and ground the beef for us (with adding some carrots) which was about $50. So then we bought some buns and a tomato and with some of the left over bacon we had, made hamburgers. They were really good. It has to be some of the best hamburger meat I have ever had. It was really fresh too. I think she cut the chunk of meat off of a cow leg when i asked for it. so I'm 98% sure that its never been frozen either.

Today the zone is going to DF. or where i went before with all the cool buildings, but this time its not Monday so all the museums will be open I'm really kind of exited.

Well it sounds like everything is going good at home. Keep up all the good work.

I love you guys and think about you daily, thanks for all your prayers.

love you forever
Elder Sorensen