April 27

Hola,

Well, it's that time again.  Changes, or whatever you want to call them, have come to the mission Chalco, and this time around Elder Ortiz and I are not safe.  In fact, we both have cambios.  (Take that English, I'll just use Spanish.)  I think I explained this, but if not, they changed recently how they do the cambios.  Now they just tell us our new zone, and we find out what area we are going to, and who our new companion is, when we get there on Tuesday.  So, for now I only know that I'm going to a zone called Lehi, which is in the stake Solidaridad.  And Elder Ortiz is going to Chalco, again.  So, I'll let you know all the details next week when I have them, but for now you can know that my mission is still a series of changes.

Well, other than that, everything is more or less the same here.  The whole mission is getting exited because Elder Bednar is going to be coming to the mission on the 15th of May.  It looks like President Crickmore is pretty worried about reverence, with good cause.  For some reason, when you get together a group of about 180 young adults that are, for the most part, pretty good friends, things can get a little bit irreverent.  Still, we've gotten better recently, and I think we'll be on our best behaviour with an apostle coming to the mission.  They are also focusing a lot on punctuality with this one.  In a letter that he sent to the entire mission, President Crickmore said that they're going to shut the doors half an hour before the meeting starts, and they're not going to open them for anybody.  Basically, I'm going to make sure we get there early.

That's about it for news today.  Sorry, I draw a bit of a blank on what I can say when I'm going to have cambges.  (There, perfect Spanglish.  (Or would cambfers be better?  Tell me what you think I should call them.))  I did in fact hear about the earthquake in Nepal.  I also saw some pretty impressive images from a volcano that erupted in Chile.  I don't know if those ones got to Utah or not, especially because it happened right when the earthquake hit Nepal.  Both of those events made me worry a little bit more about being so close to an active volcano, but I know that God protects us, and that I just have to trust in him and everything will be OK.

Well, I think that's about it for me.  Kind of a short one today, but I promise I'll have more to say next week.  I love you, and I'll write you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long

Hola,

Surprise second letter.  I'm just writing because a call literally just came in with some news.  I'm going to be training a new Elder this cycle.  So, yeah, I'm going to be a dad!  And I'm going to opening an area.  Fetch.  (Oh, fetch is the official english expression that all the missionaries, including the mexicans, use.)

OK, I love you, and I'll write you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long

April 20th - Dogs and Fleas

Hola, 

Well, another week has come and gone, and with it, I'm officially on the downward slope of the mission.  As far as what I did the day I finished a year, I must admit that it kind of passed by without me noticing.  From what I can remember, I didn't even realize until the day after it had passed.  And no, I haven't burned a shirt yet. I don't know where, but a couple of my shirts have disappeared in the last year, so I don't really want to intentionally destroy another one until I get a couple new ones.  That's on the list for next month though, when the money comes.

As far as this week goes, it was pretty good.  We keep working, but it can be a bit difficult to find people in home here sometimes.  Still, it's a beautiful area.  Now, as far as my day in the life, or whatever you want to call it, I've decided to use Tuesday.  So, we left our house in the morning, and went to our area.  We spent a lovely couple of hours trying to find addresses that the sister missionaries left us, with little success.  Then we went to the food.  (That's how a lot of our mornings end up.  More people are in home in the afternoon here.)  Anyways, on Tuesday we ate in Ameca, like always, and I honestly don't remember what we ate.  (I do remember that on Wednesday we ate nopal and avacato soup and chicharron, or fried pork skin, and zucchini cooked in salsa.  It ranks among the weirdest things I've eaten here, but just for the nopal soup.  Chicharron is pretty popular here.  Anyways, that has nothing to do with Tuesday.  I just felt like sharing it.)  So, after we ate, we met up with our neighbor, Gibran (it's pronounced like he bran), who is a member and who agreed to help us with a lesson, a guided visit of the chaple.  So, we went to the house of the investigator, whose name is Janeth, and then we went to the chaple in Amecameca. We got to the chaple and started out explaining the name of the church.  Then we went to the sacrament room, where we explained the importance of keeping the sabbath day holy, and the importance of the sacrament.  Then we showed her the rooms in the chaple, explaining what we do in each one.  We ended this in the room with the baptismal font.  (It's kind of nice that all of the chaples here have a baptismal font, not just the stake center.)  In this room we explained a bit about the importance of baptism, and authority.  Then we ended the visit in the sacrament room with a prayer.  (What I just explained is the general format of a guided visit.  (I don't know what a guided visit is actually called in English.  Guided visit is the translation of the name in Spanish, visita guiada, or VG for short.  If you find out, let me know.))  After the guided visit, we returned to the area.  We had an appointment with some investigators that we have been teaching with the senor missionaries that are also working in Ayapango, the Finks.  But when we got to the house, we didn't find anyone in home, so we went on the search again.  We spent another couple hours looking for someone, with little luck.  Finally we went home when the sun disappeared on us.  (That's why the highest number of lessons that has been reported from our area in a week, even before we got here, has been twelve.  Basically, this area is a bit more difficult than normal, but we're doing our best.)

That's about it for me this week.  You are right, Amecameca is pretty strange at first, but it's a good strange.  It's a pretty interesting, and surprisingly busy place.  Especially in the center there are always a ton of people, in particualar when there is a fair going on.  And there are a lot of fairs here.  It's almost impossible to get a good look at the center because it's almost always completely full of people selling all sorts of things.  But once you get out of the center it's actually pretty calm.  I do hope you get the chance to see it in person some day.  It's something you have to see with your own eyes to properly appreciate.  Oh, and if that mexican restaurant wasn't selling rabbit, it actually wouldn't fit in too well here.  Pretty much all of the restaurants in this area sell rabbit. I'm not sure why that's their thing here, it just is.

Well, that's it for me.  I love you and I'll talk to you next week. 

Love,

Elder Samuel Long

P.S.  I still don't know how Mother's day will work as far as calling home goes.  I'll let you know as soon as I know.  I don't even know where I'll be then, so we'll see what happens.

P.P.S  I haven't had Mac and Cheese and Chili here.  It's possible to find them for sale here, mostly in walmart, but not too many people eat that kind of thing here.  It's on my list of things to eat when I come back.

Oh, I also wanted to send you some pictures. 

These are some of our new neighbors.

And this is actually a picture from my last area.  This is one of the fun stories I'll be able to tell about my mission.  Basically, we got a lovely infestation of some little devils known as pulgas.  But you would know them better as fleas.  Basically imagine having mosquitos that never leave you, and that get under your clothes, and you'll get a picture of what it was like.  A fun couple of weeks that was.  I'm free from them now though, so that's good.

April 13

Hola,

Well, another week has come and gone, and I'm now three days away from completing a year in the mission.  I can definitely say that this has been one of the most incredible years of my life, although it doesn't feel like it's been a year.  In fact, it feels like I've been gone about a week, and a lifetime at the same time.  I guess that's how time works in the mission though.  Sometimes I don't even recognize myself because of all the changes I've seen in myself.  And I've still got another year here.

As far as this week goes, it was pretty good.  We had interviews with President Crickmore on Wednesday, which are always good.  (In part because Sister Crickmore always brings brownies.)  It was kind of weird though, because the last time we had interviews, I was with Elder Ortiz, but in Ayotla.  The only bad part is that the interviews always take a long time.  We were supposed to have our interviews from 12 to 12:30, but we ended up finishing around 2.  Still, it's always nice to have a chance to talk with President Crickmore about how everything is going.  He has a way of helping you see everything in perspective, and has a great spirit around him.  Actually, as part of this interview we started talking a bit about you guys.  Don't worry, I didn't tell too many embarassing stories.  And since I've already explained part of Wednesday, I'm going to cheat and use it as the day that I explain all that we did.  So, after the interviews, we went to the food.  (I honestly have no idea what would be the right word to use here.  In Spanish we say la comida, which is the food, or the meal.  However, neither one sounds right to me.  If you can think of the right word, let me know.)  We eat pretty much everyday in Amecameca with the sister missionaries, and this day was no exception.  (I may have mentioned that before.  If so, sorry for the repeat.)  Anyways, this day we ate lentils (which are surprisingly common here in Mexico.  It was a surprise for me at least.) and mole with ground beef and nopales.  After we left there, the sisters gave us a surprise change of plans.  They told us that they had made an appointment to work with a less active young man who had started to show interest in serving a mission.  However, when they mentioned it to President in their interviews, he told them that they had better not do it considering that he is male, and they are females.  So, they asked us to take him with us to our area, and to work with him there.  (Oh, one of the unavoidable facts of life in the mission.  If the sister missionaries ask you to do something, you're going to do it.)  So, we went to meet him, and afterwords we went back to our area.  We got there at about 5 (sister missionaries take a long time to eat) and we went to a lesson with a less active member named Josefina.  Her neighbors are investigators, so we talked about being an example.  After that we went out looking for somebody to teach.  First we passed by the house of pretty much everyone we know, and afterwords we started looking for some adresses that the sister missionaries left, but without too much luck.  We did this until about 7:30, at which point we had to take the young man, Emillano, back to his house.  So we went back to Amecameca, dropped him off, then went home.  (I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but we live outside of our proselyting area, which makes things a little bit difficult.)  (Oh, sorry again for all the parentheses.  I think I get a bit distracted sometimes.)

Other than that, everything has been pretty good.  Elder Ortiz and I got a bit sick on Saturday, but we're both feeling better now.  I love you, and I'll talk to you next week.

Love, 

Elder Samuel Long

April 6

Hola,

Well, I know I've said it before, but one of life's inescapable truths is that change is inevitable.  So, if you can't tell from that, I've had some lovely special changes this week.  Although I've never had them quite like this before.  First off, I didn't change companion, just area.  Elder Ortiz and I have left our area in Ayotla, and we are now in a small pueblo named Ayapango, close to Amecameca.  And that's the second weird thing about these changes:  this is the first time I've been in one of the zones of the mission for a second time.  Still, if I'm going to repeat, I'm not too upset to be in Amecameca again.  It's also kind of weird because we traded areas with some sister missionaries, and the house just has a different feel to it, and more long hair than I've had in any of the houses I've lived in in the mission.  Oh, and the ward where we are working has another pair of sister missionaries, and we eat with them pretty much everyday, which has been kind of weird to get use to.  Still, there are worse fates in this world, so everything's good.

Other than that, the obvious news would be general conference.  When we got to the chapel, there was an area with conference in English, and the sacrament room with Spanish.  So I decided at first to watch it in Spanish, but then I realized that the translator was from Spain, and their accent is pretty weird so I decided to go to the English.  And then President Packer started to talk, and I almost went back to the Spanish.  I love his talks, but he hasn't gotten any easier to understand recently.  Anyways, I really like conference this year.  Like you said, pretty much the entire first session was talks about the importance of the family, and this was a theme that kept up through the entire conference.  There were a lot of really good talks though, so everything's good.  I really loved Elder Bednar's, which was about worldly fear vs. godly fear, and Elder Hollens, which was about the atonement.  But I always love theirs, so that's no surprise.  Other than those talks, one of the Seventy, Elder Wilford W. Anderson, gave one that I loved about the music of the gospel.  He started with a story about a doctor who worked in a hospital near an indian reservation.  He said that one time an old native man walked in, and he asked him how he could help him.  At first he was silent, but then the man asked the doctor, "Do you dance."  The doctor figured that he was a medicine man, and told him, "I don't dance.  Can you teach me how to dance?", to which the man replied, "I can teach you to dance, but you must learn to hear the music."  He then talked about how in the gospel we often focus on the dance steps, or the commandments, but at times we forget to listen to the music, or the blessings.  He explained in particular that it is important to teach those around us, in particular our children, to hear the music of the gospel.  He talked about how, if you don't have music, dancing can feel very uncomfortable and awkward, and that it is the same in the gospel.  If somebody can't hear the music, they may not understand why we do the dance, or in other words, if they can't see the blessings, they don't understand why we keep the commandments.  Anyways, that was one of my personal favorites, and I recommend that you read it when you can.

Well, other than that, things are as normal as they can be here in the mission.  I've been here in my new area since Thursday in the night, and I really haven't had a chance to do too much there thanks to the conference, so we'll see if I have more to report as far as that goes next week.

It sounds like you guys are having a pretty good time down there in Green River.  (Or up there for me.  It's weird thinking of Green River as up, but I guess it would be true for me right now.)  I'm glad that you get some time to get out and do things still.  I'm still amazed that dad can find new birds, because I'm pretty sure I know of fewer species of birds that exist in the entire world than dad has found just in Utah.  Still, it seems to make him happy, so I hope he keeps having luck with it.

Oh, and the end of mission date was given to us in the MTC, so there's that for you to wonder over.

OK, I love you, and I'll talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long