This week was another one for the books! Our progressing family went to church this week so it looks they're all ready to be baptized later this month! Most of our work has been with them, along with visiting members and less-actives that live in our area. We have a member family in our area, the Cortez's, that feed us dinner essentially whenever we come over (which is about two times a week). They usually take us down the street to buy some hot dogs from the street venders and we hang out with their three kids that are all younger than like 6 years old. They just bought a pup chihuahua the other day too so when we went over there it fell asleep on my lap for like two hours haha. Anyways, you can say the work is going well and my area is pretty great.
I've got a story to tell you guys (for once haha). So on Saturday, our mission money came in and we were down to our last scraps of the last mission payday. So we have a combined 11 pesos between the two of us and we need to take the bus downtown in order to go to the ATM and pull out our money. Downtown is about three hours walking's distance or like 15 in bus so of course we decide to take the bus. Only one problem though, buses cost seven pesos per person, we we're three pesos short. So we're inside our house just freaking out trying to think of a way we could either find, borrow, or earn those three stupid pesos (worth about a US quarter by the way). We just decide we're going to walk down the street and hope to find some coins laying in the street or something, I honestly don't know what we were thinking but that was our plan at the moment ha. We just keep walking for like 40 minutes until we decided that the only way is to hitckhike and ask someone for a ride. Just our luck, this huge guy and his friend pull up to the gas station to fill up his tank so my comp asks him if he's heading our way. He replies to us by saying that 'if you guys buy me a coke in there I'll let you hop in back and give you a ride.' We ask him what size of coke because like there's tons of different sizes and whatnot and he says, get me the one for about 10 pesos. We go in to the store, we look at the coke, and it's an exact 11 pesos, just as much as we have haha. Whew... So we buy it, give it to him and hop into this tiny 5-passenger, beat down Toyota and he says he'll give us a ride there. At this point my comp and I were sort of freaking out because I mean they really could have taken us anywhere they wanted and we didn't know them at all. And we're almost there and then he says, hey wait I need to go grab my daughter from this neighborhood real quick so we go on this like 20 minute detour to grab his daughter but EVENTUALLY we make it there to the ATM haha. It was quite the adventure and looking back at it I have just about no regrets, I'm just glad we had enough money to buy that coke haha.
Well that just about sums up all the dumb and great stuff I was able to do this week. My comp and I are getting along great, the apartment we're in is definitely the best place I've been in so far on the mish. The members here are great, that family that took us out to carne asada a couple weeks ago took just my comp and I there again to eat after our weekly English class and everything is good there now. I'm really enjoying my time down here, I kinda just wish I could stay here for the entire mission haha...
Anyways, I love you guys! Take care.
Con amor, Elder Thayne