Wesley's Letter 2-4-13

Hey got news, I forgot to bring my camera cable so I won’t be sending any pictures this week. But the good news is that this week we baptized 2 people, one named Santos and the other Leonardo, both are recovering alcoholics and both are legit converts. Leonardo told my comp in the baptismal font, after getting baptized, that he had “forgotten everything” with tears in his eyes.

Santos was one of the first people we met here. He’s actually the ward mission leader’s brother. His daughter was listening to the missionaries and her father Santos was against it. After about 2 months of not letting his daughter progress or go to church she lost her enthusiasm and stopped trying. Later when we arrived, he’s the one that was basically begging us to baptize him. Haha we`re also working with her but now she lives in some other small pueblo that’s kind of far and its hard to get a hold of her.

So these last few weeks I’ve had some seriously hilarious experiences. Yesterday the bishop permitted us to take some of the chairs from the church to put them in our house because these last 4 weeks all we’ve had were our hammocks and the floor. So we brought the chairs in another trici-taxi. That was pretty funny, us both and 4 giant chairs in a tiny trici.

So one dumb thing about Motul, basically there are no stores or shops with any fixed prices. Everything here is family owned, and the reason its bad is because none of the prices anywhere are labeled, so when the people see me enter the shop they figure that I’m just an oblivious rich tourist that has way too much money. So whenever I ask for the price of something they always kind of look at me for like 10 seconds configuring how much they could sack out of this dumb Gringo. But what they never seem to get is that I’ve been living here for more than a year and I get the ropes of how much things should cost and how the market works. The really sad part is that when they say the ridiculously high new price and I know they raised it just because I’m American. I ask if there is any way to lower the price to about the normal price where it should be, and they keep playing the "Oh I’m sorry there’s just no way, I can’t go any lower than where it is now", but I know they’re lying. So in the end I end up not buying it and they end up not getting any sale out of it. Now I’ve just gotten to the point where if any one tries to raise their prices on me I decide to never go back and buy from them again. And another sad thing is that it happens in basically EVERY STORE UGGGGGGRRR.

Anyway I’m all outta time PEACE
SMIT

Wesley's Letter 1-28-13

Sup Dawgs,

Good news, things just keep getting better and better here in Mo-(too cool for school) eh yo! So I’m psyched to hear about the Crickmores getting more and more prepared for their mission. I’d be psyched if they ended up being Merida’s mission presidents. And it is actually a possibility because president Salinas is ending his mission in June. It’s also good to hear about our new stake president.

So news around these parts, Opening an area is hard in the beginning but gets better as time goes on. I remember the first day we got here, we came in an 80s Van and upon arriving we asked, " So is this Motul?"
So yeah, in the beginning we were pretty lost, but little by little things have been going up. This next week we are planning to baptize 3 people. And in the weeks that follow even more. I am really psyched about this area. It’s pretty exhausting at times. This last week we had barely bought our refrigerator, and the way we got it home is we mounted it on one of those tricycles and we peddled it home haha!

Also the last week or so people have been getting all hyped up about another holiday about the Virgin de Guadalupe which is kind of cool to see some of the traditions the people have here. But one thing in particular that I’m not a big fan of is that every morning for the last 5 days a marching band has been passing by in front of our house playing the same song at 5:00 am haha! It does do a good job of getting your attention and reminding you about the holiday that’s coming up.

Anyway this letter this week is going to be shorter than others.

Peace,
Smith