3 Smiley Missionaries: Mark is ready to get out of the CCM, he is halfway there!!

Starting this off with a funny story.

There are two words in Spanish that mean two different things. la papa (potato) and el papa (the pope), I bet you can see where this is going already. We are teaching this woman about the authority of the priesthood, and since she’s catholic, she asks us if we believe if "el papa" has the priesthood, to which I reply, that no, we do not believe that "la papa" has the priesthood. She started laughing and i wondered why, but she didn’t tell us until after the lesson was over what I had actually said. Fun times in the CCM let me tell ya.

Wowza been out almost a month now and i am ready to get outta here. For the most part I just wanna see what Peubla looks like. We have driven through Mexico City a couple of times and it looks so grimy and trashy but at the same time so cool and unique. I feel like Puebla is going to look like that too so I’m psyched.

We said goodbye to the Latino elders, which was difficult but rewarding. After all the pictures with everyone in the apartment, they turned to us and were like "come to our room in like 5 minutes" so we show up and they have all their hymnals out and they go ok, we are going to sing a song. And we sang "god be with you till we meet again." No one cried until freaking Elder Mendez lost it and then the waterfalls began. Oh well ill see them soon haha

I gave my first priesthood blessing too. Two of the companions in our room are way sick so they asked me and my comp to bless them, which was really nerve wracking for me since it was my first time. But I knew I was worthy and I knew I was doing everything right so the blessing was good.

So I am part of this thing called the “mixed program” which is like I get Latino companions for like 2 hours and everyone in my district loves their companions... except for me. I’m part of a trio because our district is so small and theirs is so large, and one of them was so tired and frustrated that I didn’t understand his slurred Spanish that he just read his book and didn’t help us all that much. The other comp is socially awkward and gets really apologetic if I say that I don’t understand. Our lesson went well though; it was just the companionship study that was so difficult.

Sorry for another long email. I'll try hard to be less specific next week.

Love you!

-Elder Smiley, the younger