Baseball Connection

Hey all! I’m doing great just excited to go out to the field. It’s going to be hard to adjust with the free food at the CCM, someone making it for us, having A/C, having a nice bed to sleep in and having clean water to shower in. Oh just to tell you I haven’t taken a warm shower since the morning of August 1st when I was getting ready to leave... just for your information. So be grateful for warm showers!! 

My lessons are coming great! They are getting better as the days go on. I’m waiting for Spanish just to hit me that I can speak it fluently. I just can’t be afraid about making mistakes.

My splits went amazing and they were so fun. I got the best companion that was from Sandy. He played baseball for Alta and he's been on his mission for 18 months. When I first got to the place that we met all of them, I looked at him and he looked really familiar. Then he chose me to be his companion and after talking we made the connection of baseball. We talked about baseball a ton! I was the first companion that he had that liked baseball. He actually knew a lot of people that I’ve played with and he has a scholarship to UVU, which I’m totally jealous about. He was fluent in Spanish and he told me just to never stop studying because some missionaries become fluent with the language and then they just stop studying. He said to never stop and try to master the language. We went to a place called Manguito, which was also known as the cement building. It was a huge place that had a ton of little apartments that were stacked on each other like levels. The stairs were really sketchy because either they were missing steps or they were tiny. Then you had to duck down to climb or you had to turn your body sideways to get through to the door. The houses are tiny maybe two bedrooms, a bathroom and a really small kitchen/ sitting room. No glass windows just all cement that had adjustable blinds on them. The walkways to get through the house were tiny maybe two of me wide. It was hard for me to see them living like that because I just came from a place where we had A/C, windows and rooms that we can play in. I know it’s never going to get easier for me to see people who live like that. We yelled in people’s doors saying Salodos (means like hello) and they would come out and we would have to introduce ourselves and then try to make an appt. for the following day or so. We contacted 20 people and taught 8 investigators. It was a great experience to get out there and talk to people and for the most part, I could understand what they were saying. My problem is trying to speak the language so I had to say the opening pray and then bare my testimony at the end. 

To answer your question, soccer here is not the cool thing here. Baseball is but you surprisingly don’t really see it very much because it is an expensive sport to play. So you usually see more basketball and a little game where they use big bottle caps and then hit it with a stick then if the bottle cap stops before someone gets it its a run but then if they catch it before it stops then its an out. I can’t wait to play that game with the little kids. It’s going to be a lot of fun!!

Well this is my last email from the CCM and then I will be out in the field. I can’t wait to get out there and start to really try to speak the language and pretty much force myself to do it. You won’t here from me for like a week and a half because I am moving out of the CCM and going to the real world and getting a new companion. My P days move to Monday so you wont here from me tell next Monday. So don’t get worried I’m not dead, just missed a P day ha.

Love, Elder Medrano