thanks for the cleavland update. it sounds like you had a realy good time. i realy miss spending time with my family.
my ward here has an interesting culture to. almost all the member have been members of the church for less than 5 years. and mexico has a different culture in general. every one is less formal about everything, witch i like but sometimes people dont give much thought about how other people might feel about somthing. for example crying babies usualy stay in the chapel. and if you are ever in mexico, be prepared to deal with ridiculous drivers that speed and pass all the time. the only traffic laws are the multitude of speed bumps at intersections and where ever people might go to fast. it works fairly well. thats cool that you got to see kristen and her family. do you have any pictures? ive been running with my friend elder sanches in the mornings. feels great to be able to do that.
my spanish is getting better. i can understand ost things. i heard that president moson promised missionaries that if they read the book of mormon in their mission language, they would be fluent by the time they finished. im in 1 nephi chapter 13 and i already can understand better then i could before. my speaking still isnt verry good. somtimes my comp has to re teach things that i said but it getting better. i can contact people without much trouble.
when i get home ill cook some food and teahcyou how to eat it without silverware. just tortillas. sometimes we get soup without spoons just torillas. there are tortiarias that sell them on every coner. every corner. we only have an electric burner and one pot so we cant realy cook much. its funny the tricks satan uses the create hatred of the church of christ. we got asked if we recieved money for eahc baptism. the church across the street warned its members about us beeing a cult? thats awful. i wish i could show them that scripture in the acts that says if this work is of man it will fail. so dont fight against it or you might be fighting against god.
we found lots of new investigators this week. great week till saturday. the sisters had a baptism first thing, and i did it. but a lady came with her kids. right after the baptism, she said she was going to the store, and she left her kids. we had to wait with the kids for four hours wile we tried to figure out where she was. she eventualy showed up again adn casualy took her kids adn left. then no one was home for our apointments. and no one came to church the next day either. its okay though. things are going well.
today we wnt back to the weathly members house and played socar and stuff. then we went to a beach. its realy touristy. ist cool having mountains right on the edge of the bay but its too touristy for me.
did hilary win for the democtats? if she did youd better buy an asult rifle so she dosnt try to take your bible. or freedom. and a pick up truck to carry it.
it hasnt rained since ive been here. i gues it rains for 2 monts strait around agust. that sould be enjoyable.
half our ward is tourist. there is this one old guy that lives here and gives out 500 pesos to people every sunday. i got it twice. he wont take no for an answer. send some pictures. i should write val now.
have agood week and get dad to type a little next week.
love you.
ben

i dont know if im happy mccain won or not. thats less important then the lords work any way.
it was a great blessing having good kids in the stake. i hope same has good friend in the stake. lessons are always different. most of the time my companion say everything then will look at me and ill try to teach somthing and hell re explain what i taught and then move on. its humbling. my spanish is terrible and somtimes my progress feels realy slow. and my companion always talks to our investigators forever. i feel like we waste time doing that but its okay. our president said that in our area we shouldbe baptising weekly but we only had one last transfure. it can be realy frustraiting.
there is this one 87 year old recent convert that we visit alot. she has tons of calothic virgin images. and we always try to get her to take some down but she got realy mad at us last week.
i gues things are suposed to be hard though. so il keep studying spanish and sitting through lessons that i cant contribute much to. well have fun with sal. i didnt get pictures. try again i didnt even know you were sending some. did you go to the church leadership confrence? our prez told us to. it was weird beeing told how to raise kids. things are good. just pray for my spanish.
love ben

news from ixtapa

could you send me val and dans email adresses?
mccain might win? thats way cool. romney is pretty cool too. either way, things will be alright. the cacus sounds crazy. i wish i could follow things better i might change my mind who i want. and mom its obvious that chaves and clinton trying to take god out of the bible so some one has to stand up to them.
how much time do you spend with your calling in the releif society? it sounds fun. hows sterl doing? things are good here. we had a kid with a baptismal date fall through. he thought that hell should be a place with fire, pitch forks and little red devils. it was weird, he was beary testimony that he knew that hell was like that. we havnt taught him again yet. its getting warmer every day here. but it doesnt seem like we made much progress last week. its okay though. we are working hard. and my spanish is slowly improving.
is val happy? ive been praying for her. shes subing now thats cool.
how is dad? the house coming along good? we had a slow p day. we were going to go to this cool state park in the jungle but for some reason it didnt happen. to bad. maybee next week though. you know that verse where paul says that women shouldnt talk in church or cut their hair? alot of people take that seriously here. should that even be scripture? i need a good answer. there might be a many jehovas witneses here as members of the church. they are awful to teach. the belive that the bible is every thing and that even excepting a book of mormon and praying about it is blasphemous. they tell all of our investigators that since it doesnt say the name joseph smith in the bible, he cant be a prophet. im still trying to stay in shape but jumping rope gets old. maybee ill try running up and down the stairs this week. i had to watch gordon b hinklys funeral in spanish. i was too bad because i didnt under stant a whole lot. elder uckdorf is the new counceler though? i wouldnt have thought that. its cool though. i miss you and love you. make dad write me another e mail.
love ben