Hey Family!

My first week was awesome! I am actually serving in Calexico, California as my first area. It is 2 hours east of San Diego and literally on the border of Mexico it is about 113 degrees Fahrenheit most days and there are no white people lol but luckily I am serving Spanish and English so I get a good mix. All the food is of course awesome Mexican food. Calexico is an extremely poor town and probably top 5 most impoverished in all of California.
I live in the Mexican ghetto called "La Garra". Luckily I have a car full time and our area is kinda big. It is a really nice car, it is a 2013 Chevy Cruz. My Companion's name is Elder Bone, i call him Papi Hueso lol we get along great. He is from Ogden, Utah and has been serving in Calexico for 6 months and loves it here. Oh and on our first day we went and got a 'California Burrito' which is a huge carne asada burrito with french fries inside of it. YUM! We also had a large thing of Horchata which is my favorite drink in the world by far! It was really cool because Elder Bone paid for it! All in all I absolutely love Calexico and the people are absolutely amazing and I know that God has prepared these people for me and I have witnessed so many miracles all in this past week. We do a lot of work with reactivating less active families and that is what is tough. There were like 20 people in Sacrament meeting started and about 60 when it ended. Oh since I am 150 miles away from the Mission Office I only get mail maybe once every 2 or so weeks :( so email will probably be better. Oh and we don't go tracting in our mission!

 

So June 14th was a pretty awesome day!

     It was about 115 degrees outside, but dropped down to a nice, crisp, 99 degrees around 9 pm. It was freezing! ;) That night we had an awesome ward activity for Father's Day. The food was super yummy and the members are pretty funny. I met a lot of members and they are eating me up lol. What was really cool is that we met the Garzon Family and they are such an awesome family. We then were introduced to their friends the Garcia Family who weren't members of the Church. Junior is about 13 and really likes baseball and math. We got to talking to them and you could definitely feel that they felt welcome. Well we invited Junior to go on a church tour and he accepted. We started to walk around and he really loved it. We walked into the Chapel to conclude our tour. We stood there and we explained what went on in the Chapel. I then felt prompted to ask him how he felt. I asked him and he immediately put him hand to his heart and said that he felt happy and his face lit up and he said he feel a warm feeling going through his body. It was absolutely amazing. We told him how that was the Spirit of God and that when he get that warm feeling of happiness, love, and peace it is the Spirit bearing witness to truth. We walked back and then got his family. We invited them for a tour and it was awesome! We once again ended in the chapel and Junior shared his experiences with his parents and the feeling there was awesome. They told us how they have been searching for a Church and how the dad has known Mormons in the past and how they were really nice and down to earth people. So we are meeting with them this Friday :)

    Yesterday was also really good!

We went and saw Juan, he is 17 years old and he is an MMA fighter and Motorcross racer. He has been reading the Book of Mormon and really likes it. We shared with him a Mormon message with a Jamaican Bishop named Chris Cook. He loved it. He wants to know how the Book of Mormon can change his life. It was really cool because he said that he has been praying about our message and feels that it is true. He also loves the idea of there being a modern-day prophet that can lead and guide him today.

Well I gotta go and please keep me up to date on everything! :) :):):):):):):)

Elder Hays