Vegas!?

Sent:Wed Sep 11 10:28:42 UTC 2013
Subject: Hola!

Hey everybody! 

I cant believe another week has gone by, sounds like the weeks have been going by fast for you guys, but i guarantee they are going by faster for me. We are already on week 4, more than halfway. Crazy. Only 2 more p days!

 So Lotoja sounded overall pretty good! Good job Dad, Josh, and Jeff! Mother, i hope your foot is getting better, I bet that is just super annoying. Sorry to hear about that. 

So i guess the most eventful thing of this last week was on Monday we took a little side trip to Vegas. We woke up at 3:00 in the morning and me and 1 other in my elder in my district went. We were with 8 other elders all going to Mexico City East, except for 1. One of the Elders was a friend of Katie Elgans. So we flew down there and got picked up by a grumpy senior missionary. He drove us to a Del Taco, which is the only thing acceptable for missionaries?, but then we went to the institute building there. Turns out this guy served a mission in the Mexico City East mission so for a couple of hours we just sat there and talked about the mission. He gave us some good information, and some that was just useless because he is just weird. haha but some of the stuff i remember is that the only way to send letters is pouch mail, because envelopes are illegal? You will have to check into that. He said not not ever plan on sending or recieving packages because it is just too hard but the only reason I think he said this was because he thinks missionaries should even write their families because we are not there for them we are there for the Lord, so i dont no if i should really believe him about that, you will proabably just have to talk to the blotters. Um we will probalbly get $100 a month, the new big mexico city mtc is about 45 minutes away from the temple, which is further than I thought. But the mission home is on temple square. He said we probably wont get more than 30 minutes to email each week? But how does he really know. He said not to eat at restaurants with less than three walls, or on the street. He said good food comes with a good mission. Ya right. He told us where to get good groceries, and what stores have american goods. He said kidney stones are common from the water, so we will just drink bottled water. Something else interesting is that he said 70% of mexicans dont speak spanish as their first language. They all speak some ancient aztec language? So he said not to worry because most wont be speaking much better spanish than you. I dont know why but i dont believe him about that. But anyways then we headed to the Mexican consulate in Vegas to get our fingerprints and pictures taken. We got our visas. Yay. We then went back to the institute and listened to the guy talk about the old testament for about 3 hours. Worst thing ever. Haha it was so over my head. But eventually we came home and had a pretty big delay because of really bad storms in vegas but we made it home about 11:00. 

So our teaching is going pretty good, we are currently teaching 2 "investigators." As well as our facebook and skype lessons which are just with random members every once in a while. I definitely have my up and down days with spanish. Some days i will be able to teach a lesson with no major problems, and explain everything pretty decently, and other days i can barely think of the word Hola. Haha. But it is coming along really good. We got our new teacher, Hermana Mckay, and she is a lot different. She says spanish is our lowest priority in the MTC and she doesnt teach much spanish, just mainly doctorine, which is good sometimes, but bad at others. But our other teacher Hermano Wagner teaches us lots so thats good. Hermana Mckay taught at the Mexico City MTC over the summer and said she loved it there. She said her first night there she witnessed a homocide on a walk to walmart, but no other main problems than that. Haha.

We got a new district last week, and they are all pretty cool, even though i dont know them very well yet. Next week we will be the oldest district in the zone, which is crazy because I swear we just got here. 

So I should be set to go to Mexico on the 30th. Something else that I cant remember if i mentioned, is that they gave you a little card signed by Pres. Monson that says your a missionary or whatever and it says that my mission is over on Aug 3, 2015. So I dont know if that is just a random date, or if that will be close because that is definitley earlier than i was expecting. But I will be calling from the airport on the 30th. (Unless the day changes). I can buy a calling card here at the MTC which is just what I can probably do. Lots of families send their missionary a pre loaded pay as you go phone that you can just get rid of after or whatever? But whatever works. 

So i saw conner today! I didnt host becasuse wednesdays are our p days, and we are at the temple when the host meeting is going on. But we ate our lunch outside where the new missionaries come in and I saw him, and talked to him for a little bit. We didnt get to say too much,  but i know that I will be seeing him around. I cant believe he just got here and yet he still leaves before me. Ahh. 

So I dont really have any pictures to send, because quite frankly, there is nothing to take pictures of. Haha I really have hardly taken any because all we do is sit in our desks, sit in the cafeteria, and lay in our beds. But maybe this week i will take pictures of our room, classroom, and what not just so you can see what the CCM (mtc in spanish) is all about. 

I'm loving the dear elders, and all of the other letters you guys have been sending. I love hearing from everybody. 

Well I am going to go change my laundry now, so mother I will be back on in a little bit if you wanna ask me or tell me anything! 

Adios!

Love, Elder Elgan