Hola from Teotihuacan!

Hello Family!

It was sooo good to talk to you in the airport. We landed on time in Mexico City, went through customs and we were picked up by the secretaries. They took us to the Temple where Presidente Hicken was waiting for us. We left our suitcases at the chapel by the Temple and went to the Mission home for dinner and interviews. My first meal in Mexico was pizza! People drive soooo crazy here in Mexico, I really thought we were going to get in a crash, but we didn´t. The mission home is about an hour out of the mission. Presidenr Hicken is awesome, the one thing he said was his goal for us by the end of our missions was for us to have a rock-solid testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They told us that our mission was different from all the other missions because our mission has millions of people just waiting for the truth. They have the numbers to back themselves up too.
The lapel pin you saw was the lapel pin for the mission, all the elders have one.

The mission Home is in the rich part of Mexico City, our mission is not in the rich part of Mexico city. We spent the night there and had training all morning about different things that we have to do in the mission like finances and stuff. Then we went to the Temple again for assignment and to receive our trainers. My companions name is ELder Llanos, he is from Lima, Peru. He doesn´t speak English. He is a really good elder, and we have been working this week. He´s short, but walks really fast. We have been assigned to re-open the area of Teotihuacan, it is about an hour and a half out of Mexico City. So after we got assigned to our area, Presidente talked to individually about our area. It had been closed for 6 months because the members had not been helping the missionaries enough and because there is a shortage of missionaries here they pulled them out to put the missionaries in the place that would be the most effective. I sent some pictures, me and my companion, and the view from our apartment window in the morning. We live on the street Pemex, half way in between San Juan and San Lorenzo. Teotihuacan in the municiple name, and the others are the names of some of the pueblas that we work in.

Our area is ginormous! We walked 5 hours one way and still didn´t get to the end of it. It is not all city, because we are pretty far out from Mexico City. There are a lot of dirt roads, and everything is really dusty here. We live about a 15 minute walk from the chapel, which is pretty nice.

O by the way, Kolby can have those shoes if he wants.

After receiving our assignments the mission van took us to the bus central, we got out on the side of a super busy road, wound our way through the bus central and got on a bus. After 45 minutes we got off with all our stuff and got on a really old bus/taxi thing. It was really old, had skull stickers on the windows and a statue of the crucified Christ hanging in the front. Welcome to Mexico. After a half an hour we got off in San Juan. The Bishop picked us up and took us to the apartment, then to a dinner appointment that was waiting for us. All the houses here are really small and old. All of them have huge gates in the fronts, and they are really close together. This house was no different, and it was on the military base that is in San Juan too. A sweet little sister cooked for us and she had two kids there with her. No one here really speaks English. The first real meal I had in Mexico was beans and eggs. They put Chili´s on the eggs and it was super spicy. My mouth was on fire by the end of it. Sorry I´m not putting enough details but I don´t have much time.

The next morning I got up and went to take a shower and it was ice cold! Like really really cold. We don´t have hot water here, or we didn´t until we bought the gas tank and connections. To tell you the truth, this really is work. I love you guys and miss you all. I am a little homesick, but I need to just lose myself in the work because I am where I am supposed to be. The Spanish is frustrating at times, people talk way fast so I only understand 60 percent, and people don´t really understand me yet. Enough complaining though. God has blessed us and we are working hard. He will take care of us. We had a family of 4 show up all by themselves on Sunday! Letters take 2 weeks, packages take 2 months, so it takes a while for things to happen here. I never realized how much I love each of you before I got out here. Tell Darci thanks for the letter. I love you all so much and pray for you everyday.

Love From Mexico,

Braden