Blake Madsen in Villahermosa Mexico

  Buenos dias, Comó están! This week was good. The days blur together but overall my spanish definitely improving a lot and enjoying successes and failures alike. Having fun learning a lot and the food is always pretty good, always chicken and rice, and some sort of juice water.  Had another divvys or like switching comps for a day with my DL but in my area this time. It was pretty fun we worked pretty hard, its definently a lot comfortable with a white comp to talk in english a bit, but I love the opportunity to have a mexican comp so far, really starting to feel more comfortable with the language, its all about effort and time.  Interesting story about divvys, we went to this members house to bring them to a lesson and some knocking doors but their ex was also there so Elder Sager thought it wasnt looking too good, because this guy hasnt looked at the church at all, but he came along with us to a lesson and he had a lot of questions so my comp answered him and he was ac...

Buenas, Gonna start on a high note here, we finally got a fecha or baptismal date yesterday. It was a milagro fr, the guy found a facebook ad and liked it, so other missionaries called him and referred him to us and Saturday night we called him and he seemed super interested. Back to the rest of the week. We found some people who were interested but we are gonna have to find a way for them to get to church, their problems are usually work or family, but we have faith they can get to church. Not too much success, but like I said we did find some interested people, some lessons here and there. Im gonna be honest, my companion isnt the hardest working guy and its hard sometimes when Im trying to do more, look for more people, especially when he has to do most of the talking, usually, been doing more and more each week. Its getting better fr. Side note the food this week was goood, had a lot more pazol, not even sure how to describe it but its a drink in tabasco, its pretty good. But onto ...

  Hola Todos, This last week was way different than my other weeks. I'll write a quick summary why.  So we have p-day on Mondays and thats chill usually talk to the fam for a good bit and we went and got a massive pizza and I threw down probably like 15 slices and 1L or more of coke. And I got to play some basketball as I bought one last monday. Then right after P- day we started dibbys or intercambios, basically I switched with another elder for a day or so. It was crazy successful, first hour with him and then the next day we had great success. Not really sure how the people we found are doing , but Ill ask him.  Then on Wednesday it was a normal day, not much success here in Cañales but taught some lessons. Thursday we had interviews with our mission president and that took awhile, so we didnt start doing our missionary work until after lunch. Then Friday we had zone conference, super chill. We had to take a bus to the main city Villahermosa, only like an hour ish bus ...

  Hola Todos, The food, its been great. We get lunches everyday and usually its chicken with beans and/or eggs and tortillas. I love it when they pull out the coca, mexican coca cola is really good at least to me, its made with bamboo sugar I think at least. One of the lunches I probably drank a liter of it. The members are so nice, it helps my spanish so much because I can actually talk a good amount with them, and try to understand them. The food Ive been eating at home is usually oats, peanut butter sandwiches, or mystery meat with cheese sandwiches, beans, rice, milk. I'll probably need to expand my food in the house, oh also some corn flakes. One day my comp decided we would get some food delivered. Its delivered via moto, or motorcycle. We both got the same thing, a torta and a lot of tacos. I actually ate my dinner before but still managed to finish my meal. Only two times so far have I eaten until I can't anymore. One of my goals is to eat as much as possible.  Mission...

Hola Todos, First week in the field was great!👍 In the zone Cárdenas, and my area is Cañales its a small town, but a great one. Im going to be here for at least 3 months so thats cool. One thing about this place is it doesnt have any big markets, just a lot of little shops. Only one shop takes a card, super sanchez. So we get lunches from members everyday. Some meals are like little thin peace of fried chicken and something else and tortillas. Always tortillas. We had dinner with members the first two days as well. One was like taquitos with chorizo and queso. The other was tacos with al pastor, lime, pinapple, was so good, the only time i've eaten and gotten to the point where i was so full i couldnt eat anymore. Also they love their juice, always mango juice or another fruit juice. It was pretty crazy to get here.  Got to see the Villahermosa temple when we got here and did all the new missionary meetings and had to say bye to Elder Bowen and Elder Foley. Gonna miss you guys?...

  Hola Todos, Last email of the CCM, going to Villahermosa tomorrow. Gonna be a short one, but a couple highlights. Singing at the sunday devotional as 17 elders(all the elders in our house). Met a lot of people, super awesome people. Especially gonna miss the elders in our casa, great guys. Just excited to go but it's crazy how fast the last month has gone. I've been thinking a lot about joy and how it comes, and true joy is even obtainable during trials and hardships with an eternal perspective and true humility. Here's a verse Isaiah 29:19 --The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. Hope everyone is doing well and I just made a Google photos album so if you want to see more photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ UEbbgsPFEoA2JzVZ7

Hola Todos, Esta semana fue muy rápido. I love personal and language study so fun to do what I want and learn so much. Classes are fun as well I just prefer studying different topics. My Spanish has definitely improved, I can understand a lot more and can talk much better although conjugation while talking will take time to learn.  It was a great week, last Friday we introduced a new district of 12 sisters to our zone/branch, super chill people. Although every Friday and Wednesday we have to miss a good chunk of class as being zone leaders it's been great to meet all these people. That day on Friday we also taught a spanish lesson over zoom, the lady we taught was so nice and she even seemed like she had tears at the end. Not much happened on Saturday until Saturday night when about half of our casa got buzz cuts. So on sunday we had church and our meetings then after that I decided I would get one, shout out Elder Rasmussen he got me right. Unreal experience, so grateful to have e...