Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Hello!

Another week down and I'm 3 months old in the mission and almost finished with my first transfer! After this week I will be half-way done with my trainer and starting my second transfer with Elder Guzman.  It was crazy for me to think that Troy hit his 1 year mark a few days after I turned 3 months old.

A week ago in church the bishopric told all the families in the ward that they need to do a better job at feeding us so we had lots of dinners last week.  On Monday we had the best tacos I've ever had in my life that the Gomez family made for us.  We had some other awesome meals during the week as well.  I love Mexican food so it's been awesome having real Mexican food.  And everything is spicy too, which is great because I love hot things.

I  got my hair cut... by a girl.  It was weird being around a girl in a setting where I'm not trying to share the gospel with her, although I did end up doing that.  She asked me lots of questions like "what are you doing later?", "are you married?", "do you live by yourself?", "what do you do when you're not teaching?” etc.  I couldn't tell if she was just curious or trying to flirt with me but Elder Guzman told me it was the latter because she took an hour to cut my hair when it should take 10 minutes and because she shampoed my hair for free which I guess normally costs extra. It was interesting though, I used it as an opportunity to tell her about what missionaries do and the message we share so it all turned out alright.

We were able to give a blessing to the son of one of our investigator's (Carolina’s) friends who is 2 and has leukemia and has to have a really risky transplant done this summer. That was a cool experience and we're hoping we get to start teaching her too.  One of our investigator families - familia Guzman - has been progressing a lot this week.  We taught them the plan of salvation which they really liked and a lot about temples.  Iban's mom was an awesome lady and died without being baptized or the gospel.  The pastor at their old church told him that she was going to hell because she hadn't been baptized which he didn't like at all.  When we taught them the plan of salvation and told him about baptisms for the dead they really liked that.  They are really interested and learning a lot but still haven't come to church because the dad works in the pulga (flea-market) every Sunday and so they can't get to church.  We are still hoping that they will find the desire and the means to get to church.

I was on exchanges with Elder Torres this week and we got a reference from a member to visit their neighbor across the street so we decided to go visit them.  There was a yard sale going on and the people who lived there weren't there so we started talking to the lady in charge of the yard sale.  She didn't seem really interested and we decided to ask to say a prayer with her out of nowhere.  While we were praying she started crying and told us after that she knew God had sent us to her to say a prayer for her.  We talked to her and her husband for another 45 minutes after that.  They told us how they had pretty much lost everything; jobs and their house and were looking for work and somewhere really cheap to live.  Everything that they were selling at the garage sale was their stuff and other things that the lady who lived in the house had given them to sell to make some money.  We never found out where they lived since they don't have a house but they told us they do the same yard sale every Thursday-Sunday so we will be going back to see them and to teach them this weekend! They are being prepared right now to accept the gospel and we can definitely see it.

We also found a new lady named Amelia.  Elder Guzman and I both felt like we needed to tract a specific street and the very first door we knocked on was Amelia.  We talked to her for a long time and she told us how her family didn't like what the book of Revelations says in the Bible and a lot about herself.  We left her with a Book of Mormon and set up a return for Sunday (yesterday).  We went back and taught her all of the restoration which she really liked.  She told us all about how her and her husband don't like how people worship saints, and the crosses and everything people focus on about Jesus' life that isn't actually about him (like focusing on how he died, his parents, or little things he did instead of the main message of why he came).  She loves to talk and pretty much told her about everything in her life and also gave us a return for this Saturday.  She is awesome and we are really excited to keep teaching her and to start teaching her family.

The other interesting thing that happened this week was Cinco de Mayo! Unfortunately we don't get to go to all the parties and celebrate but people here definitely celebrate it.  Almost every car had Mexican flags flying or covering the hoods of the cars.  Everyone was playing their music even louder than normal and people were selling Mexican flags and shirts everywhere all over the city.  Sunday they closed down the big streets again and had a parade which was pretty cool, that we saw driving by.  Everybody was out over the weekend and there were bbqs and parties all over the place.  Saturday night there were a lot of fireworks which we thought were gunshots at first but normally the gunshots don't start until about 11 and it was only 6 so we walked outside and realized they were fireworks.

My Spanish is continually getting better and I am loving the work out here.  I hope everybody is doing well, however I'll never know unless people send me letters (:

Les Quiero!

-Elder Gaskill


John did sent home some photos, but most were of the MTC.  I did post a photo with his MTC companions and a photo with his current companion, Elder Guzman in the side bar.