Hey everyone, still here, late but still here. We had a fun day, finally got permission to go to the famous “centro” and check it out. We went to a huge market of artisan stuff and I bought a lot. Got most of my souvenir shopping done. But it was exhausting. In Mexico shopping means battling over the price a lot. Some times they see that you are white and hike the price up. Some of them even got mad today when they realized I speak better Spanish than they and I told them they were just trying to rip me off. Who are the racist ones? But it was fun. After that we went in the big cathedral and saw a bunch of apostasy. It is a super gloomy feeling there, nothing like a chapel or less the temple. We had some fun encounters with drunks and people are starting to get a little crazy when they learn I’m from Arizona. They say, “Oh so your a racist”. I just say practice what you preach. All my white buddies are saying Arizona is gonna start world war 3. Sounds pretty crazy over there, I just hope they don’t cancel any flights!
This last week was hard. On Wednesday and Thursday we had to return to the house so I could take a quick nap and recover energy to keep going and on Thursday I got sick. In fact I threw up at about 11 at night. To my memory, that’s the first on my mission. A half hour later we got a call from a family in the ward to go to the hospital to give a blessing... there is a R[ecent} C[onvert] family in the church that the mom and the daughter got baptized about 9 months ago but the dad was a very intelligent man and fought with the missionaries over doctrine and never really accepted a lot of things. But he was sick, had a lot of serious ills that the doctors never could really take care of. His name was Abdon and when I knew him for the first time he was bed ridden. I only saw him standing once. We always visited with him and did little passbys. On Monday I was informed that he fell in a slight coma and that they had taken him to the Ticoman Hospital. He had become a dear friend but we couldn’t get time to go see him but visited his daughter in their house Thursday. So on Thursday night when they asked us to come to the hospital even though I was sick we went. He was pretty bad, not very responsive but not in a coma. We gave him a quick blessing and his breathing slowed and he seemed more calm. We left and returned to the house to sleep. They then informed us that he passed away at about 3 am. The next day was hard because we had ZL council. The GA[general authority] didn’t show up cuz he was sick too, but it was good anyway. The next day we had a small service for Abdon with some members and took him to his burial place. I learned many many things from Abdon. I will miss him even though I knew him so little time it seemed like. I’m glad we followed those spiritual impressions to visit with him. Today even though it was p-day we visited with his wife and daughter for a while, it was peaceful and rewarding for me. It’s a good thing they have the gospel. They both are ok and calm with a hope that he will accept the gospel on the other side. I told them that he won’t escape Elder Solomon cuz there´s one over there too, not just that... but a Sister Solomon [London]! The good thing was the last people he wanted to see on his deathbed was his family and the Elders.
We are going to marry some people tomorrow so hopefully we will have some baptisms this week. To end one funny story. We were waiting with Elder Vary and his comp to do an interview one morning (him and his whole district baptized by the way) and we were sitting on a curb by a chapel and we saw a huge pile of pigeons going crazy in a group, obviously fighting over some food. There were a lot. So what is the natural reaction of a boy? Me and Elder Tuft took off towards them and they all took off... spectacular. Then we see and hear some one running towards us yelling. A crazy lady was yelling, “How could you do that?! You guys come from the church and you are scaring God’s creation!!” ...Sorry my halo kinda slipped... by the way I hate when they pull out that church crap when it has nothing to do with anything. So we sat there while she yelled some more and I gave some smart alec responses and Tuft tried to explain us out. After we walked back to Elder Vary and Elder Guttierrez they were laughing and we had a good laugh about it for a while. We then decided not to scare birds cuz if you do the pigeon guard will get ya! Anyway 11 days left... can’t believe it. Ok pray hard, see you soon!
Love you all,
-ELDER SOLOMON
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