Loving Mexico

Helloooooooooo!!!!!!!

I am so excited to be writing you! Mexico is nuts and i'm finally on a computer where i am able to send pictures!!!! woo hoo!!! But heres a downer.... its an apple imac.... awwwww..... haha! Anyways, I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we did on Christmas. So in Mexico, the "cenar" or eat dinner at like 9:00 at night. Thats EARLY to them! So we went over to the Montanez family's house. This happens to be a family that has only three girls. Fun stuff. It was good though. They fed us a ton of food from 8:30 (WAY EARLY) to about 10:45 at night. It was really nice. I didn't eat anything strange, because the Montanez family seems to think that its funny to only cook me American food when I come over. So we ate spaghetti and BBQ ribs. Still, it was really delicious! Christmas day was really fun too! We had to arrive at the stake center that the whole mission was meeting at (the one where we took our picture), at 11:00 in the morning. That meant that we had to be on the bus by 9:00 because it was any hour trip to the subway and an hour ride almost to the stake center. So we arrived like ten minutes early, and it was really nice, because for the first time since September, I finally got to see everyone from my MTC district. The first thing we did was watch "How to Train Your Dragon" (como a entrenar a tu dragon) in english with spanish subtitles. Then we ate lunch: pizza, ham sandwiches (real ham), and lots of other food. Directly after that, we had a christmas devotional about an hour. That was really nice. Of course it was all in spanish, but I had no problem understanding. Then we spent 30-45 minutes trying to fit 120 something odd missionaries into one picture. After the picture, we watched Toy Story 3 (sorry no cool spanish translation for this one) in spanish, with english subtitles. After that it was about 5:00, and we all started to return home. This weekend was really big and really fun. Not much more happened than that. We have one person on date for the 2nd. We are still struggling to find more investigators, but we are working on getting the members involved to help us find more.

Picture time :)

First picture is me and my companion Elder Franco :D

Next picture is of me as a transformer for a little bit :)

Love ya!

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Mexico City

FAMILIA!!!!!

Oh my gosh! I cannot believe that I am in Mexico!!!!!!! It is so sureal to be here!!!!! Anyways I'll start from the beginning of the journey here :) So the plane landed here in Mexico. I know! Crazy right? First thing goes wrong! They saw something in the Xray-baggage-thingy in one of my bags that they didn't like. So what do they do?? They pull me aside and search through ALL of my bags looking for some type of bottle (because appparently bottles are very dangerous here in Mexico). I kept telling the security guy that the only bottles of anything that I had in the bags were my shampoo and my hand sanitizer. He didn't believe me I guess, so he had the security lady keep searching my bags while he went to look for something else.
As soon as he left, the security lady told me to put my things back and QUICKLY leave so I wouldn't be seen. I did just that jaja!!!!
Everything was okay after that. No problems! So we started driving to the misson presidents house with the APs. BTW! The traffic here is so freakin nuts!!! I will never complain in any kind of traffic in the US EVER again. Its basically a game of lets see who can weave in and out of traffic the fastest. I'm surprised nobody crashes to be honest.
And here, its the bigger faster car always wins. There are no rules to traffic. The police just pull over who ever has the nicest looking car, because that means they must have money if its a nice car. The police definately have trucks with 5 or 6 mounted machine guns in the bed that they drive around in the city. One slip and 6 people are toast (yes I watched that happen from a bus). Also ambulances only come to save you if you have the money to pay for the hospital. Crazy right. Where I am serving right now is one of the suburbs of Mexico City (which is still part of the stinkin city, they just CALL it a
suburb) I'm in the State of Mexico. My zone is the Villa de las Flores and I am serving in the Real del Bosque barrio (which happens to be on a stinkin mountain haha). Anyways this area is pretty much nuts. Cool thing though, I live in the most brand new apartment in all the mission. We have three peacocks that live on our balcony jaja! So great! Our bathroom is outside, downstairs from our apartment. We use a gas powered boiler to shower. BTW funny story.
This morning the lady who we are renting the apartment from was teaching me how to turn on the boiler with a lighter. Apparently I did in wrong, so a blue flame shot out of the boiler (which I was looking into) and scorched my eyebrows, eyelashes, and some of the right side of my hair. Thank goodness though, it still all looks good :P. Anyways, my trainors name is Elder Franco. Guess where he's from mom? Milagro, Ecuador! Ya I thought you'd like that :) He doesn't speak a lick of english, which I am grateful for. I was the only one whose companion doesn't speak any English. We have both been out the same amount of time, which is really neat. He is a District Leader already, because he correctly uses the ways in which we are taught to teach our lessons here in this mission. Such a funny missionary.
We've agreed to teach other english and spanish, because he thinks it would be cool to visit after the mission. We are in an area that was white washed, so we are both new here. We have no investigators currently haha!!! BTW, THIS MISSION IS HUGE AND I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS!!! My area is 5 times the size of the one I was in in Utah. We walk, take taxis, buses, or vans jaja! Usually we try to walk though to become familiar with the area. It's ridiculous all the stuff that's sold on the streets. I won't even mention some.... but I can buy pretty much any movie for $10 pesos (the equivilant of like $1 american dollar). I'm loving being here! I am so excited to call this FRIDAY! THATS RIGHT I AM CALLING FRIDAY EVENING AT AROUND 6:00.
Reason being is because most hispanic families are together on Christmas Eve, so Elder Franco has to call that night too. What would be better though, is if you bought an international call card so I can call you from a members house or the cell phone (which we get today
:P) and then you can call me back on the number I give you.

I Love you all!!!!

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Phone Call

So many thoughts ran through my (mom) head when we found out that Scott had received his Visa to Mexico and that he would be calling before he left the States. Knowing that his flight would leave Salt Lake City at 7:20am and layover here in Phoenix, the whole family was up at 5am waiting for "the phone call". By 7am we knew we were not going to receive "the phone call" until he reached Sky Harbor Airport. Cody and the twins had finals in school and were unable to wait longer.:-( Knowing that he would have a layover at Sky Harbor Airport and with the help of my sister Lorene, we rushed to the airport. We were waiting by the gates at the security check point when "the phone call" came. No...we didn't see him, but it was so good to hear his voice! And we were so close! He has such a love for the Latin culture and is excited for the tacos! His Spanish is very good, but he knows the people will speak faster in Mexico. It was a very short phone call, but completely wonderful and we can't wait for his Christmas day phone call!

VISA...VISA....VISA....YES!

Family....

I GOT MY VISA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I leave tomorrow for Mexico City at 7:20 in the morning. I have a layover in the Sky Harbor Airport! HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!!!!! I got my visa this last monday along with every single other missionary waiting here in this mission to go to the Mexico City Northwest Mission!!!!!!!!!! How cool!!!!!!!!!!!! You can tell I am pretty stinkin stoked!!!!!! This email will probably be a little bit short because I have some packing and shopping to do. Mom, I am going to be buying a 2nd carry-on bag today at Walmart, just to accumulate for extra weight/ if my bags get stolen. I am really sad to be leaving because I will not get to see the people we were teaching get baptized, but I am the same time I am super stoked!

I love the IPod so much! Thank you so much for it. I have listened a little bit to the scriptures in spanish, but find that I learn better when I read it myself aloud. I will probably listen to the scriptures in any free time that I find in Mexico.

About pday next week..... that's a good question seeing as I'll be in MEXICO!!!!!!!

I actually bought somethings at Walmart for my companion because he lost his card, so he will be paying me back before I leave. That's where the money from the socks went. I didn't not return all of the socks, only the ones that other missionaries told me would wear out fast.

I am actually reading Jesus el Cristo right now during personal study. You thought the vocabulary was ridiculous in English? Try reading it in a language that you are trying to learn. It's helping out alot though, and has so many things about the savior that I never even thought about.

Pictures:

First is the Guardado family. They are members that helped us with rides to the temple. They also expect updates on me, so I am going to have Elder Duarte leave them with my blog address.

Second, I'm sure you can guess :)

I love you all!!!!

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Perhaps a Visa in 2 Weeks

Once again Hello familia :)

Well I will start with the good news that I do have. One of the elders who was in my zone in the MTC, Elder Moss, called the MTC and the Consolate last p-day to find out the status of our visas. I should be receiving my visa within the next 1 or 2 weeks, according to what they told him. One of the elders in my district here in the field received his visa yesterday and will be leaving on Monday, so I have hope :D

Transfers are next Wednesday, on the 15th. I get the feeling that I will be staying put because of the fact that we are starting to receive visas now, so it would be pointless to transfer me. Plus it would be super cool to be here for Christmas and also be cool to get sent to Mexico! Jaja I think I'm asking for too much :P

Our investigators are doing super awesome. Alan, who we had been teaching a while back, like in the beginning of October, is finally getting baptized. His dad would not let him, but finally they came to a compromise. He can get baptized as long as he doesn't go on his mission. Apparently he's tired of how good the missionaries are at doing what they do jaja! Just my opinion... But anyways Alan is only 14 so he will have 5 years to change his dad's mind, so no biggy :P Also Sara and Mosiah are doing awesome. Mosiah expressed how much he loves us and he expects us to stay in touch and come and visit him after the mission. Absolutely I will. They have been one of my favorite families to teach. Yasmin, who has kinda been low radar the whole time we've been teaching her, is supposed to be baptized this week. She accepted but we are unsure about it. She has dawged us every day this week, so we are praying super hard for her. Her daughter really wants to be baptized though.

We are going to be baptizing a man named Carlos soon too. He has been going to church for almost 2 years, but he is living with his girlfriend, and can't get divorced from his wife because he doesn't know where she lives. He finally got down to the legal way of doing so, and soon he will be able to be baptized. So far, we have 5 baptisms scheduled for this month and about 10 potential baptisms sometime in the near future.

Mom, I did get my package, and yes I opened my Christmas present right when I got the package. I know, I'm horrible jaja! It excited me so much though. My companions could not believe how loud that little tiny speaker can get.

My knees and my sleeping are doing just fine. I find that I have trouble going up and down stairs jaja! I have fallen down a full flight of stairs 3 times so far (I'm going for a record! :D). Other than that though, my health is doing good.

The members of the branch do everything they can to take care of me. One of them told me that I'm a very deceiving person. I asked why and he said its because when I open my mouth, my spanish sounds amazing and I have an accent like I've been speaking it for years, but then I don't understand everything that they say back, they have to take a step back jaja!

I don't really need much here. If I do need anything I will let you know :)

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Thanksgiving News

Hello,
Sorry last week was really nuts and there was no way to tell anyone that I was going to be emailing on Wednesday. And they changed Pday to Thursday this week. UGH! But everything is all good. I have decided that the snow is only fun when you drive to hours to play in it for the day, not to live, eat, sleep, walk, breath snow.
The baptism was really nice this past weekend. Unfortunately Eduardo could not get baptized because he was in Washington state and they closed down the freeways so he couldn't get home. Funny thing again, we won't be baptizing him this weekend either because he moved out of our area, so now he is another Elders' responsibility! How frustrating, all that working with him and now I can't count it as my baptism :P Thats ok with me though, I'm just glad he is still getting baptized!

Thanksgiving was really neat. Unfortunately, like the moron that I am, I did not take any pictures because I forgot to bring my camera sooooo ya :/ The Smith's have a really interesting Thanksgiving though. They have some of the traditional foods like turkey, ham, yams, and mashed potatos, but everything else they pretty much just make their favorite foods and bring that jaja! I think I might start doing that :P It was really nice though, and Mom, thank you so much for the socks and cereal and M&m's! I ate the whole bag the next day jaja! They were really excited to see what I got! Although, I cannot believe that you would send me a Xmas present and tell me not to open it and expect me to have that strength jaja!

There's not alot going on with investigators. Sara, who I told you about last week, her husband Mosiah, who happens to be a member, his baptismal records got lost. So now we will probably get to baptize him and count it as another baptism. Sara is really excited for that, because she can be baptized with her husband. We also met another family from Arizona who just moved here. Come to find out, they only lived a block away from us! HOW WEIRD! So we have alot in common. We ran into this family when she was trying to carry something heavy in from the car, which was really cool.

This past week has been amazing for Spanish for me. If you didn't know, I have a really hard time understanding what others are saying in spanish, but I can talk alot of it. Alot of prayer and alot of focusing on just listening to every little thing being said to me has really helped me out. I think alot of the problem comes from the fact that with certain missionaries, they talk and don't allow me to say anything, so I have fallen into the very sinful habit of not listening to what their saying at times (NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!). Recently though, since I have been focusing on that, it has been great, and the Lord has really blessed me. Now I pray specifically for the gift of interpretation of tongues.

Exercises..... ya.... its really hard to do them in the morning sometimes haha, but I always make sure I stretch. I think this whole daylight savings junk has thrown off my sleep again so its been interesting this transfer.

Haven't had the chance to go see the temple lights yet, BUT, we are going this Sunday, so I will be sure to take and send pictures :D

There is currently 1 girl writing me. She is the sister of one of the missionaries who is headed to Mexico City Northwest as well. She doesn't write that often either. I am still waiting for my to have some girls from the Stake to write me :)

Pictures. The first one is of Jose Emilio and Maribel, who just got married and baptized. Also in the picture is Rosanelli :)

Second picture is the deadly icicle that tried to kill us :P

I will be sure to take more pictures this next week.

I love you all!

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

PS They nicknamed me Elder Princess