Elder Jack Raymond July 2021- July 2023

  Well I don't know how it's possible but I'm almost done with my first transfer. Time is really flying by haha! Also on the other hand like I mentioned last week... we had another baptism woot woot! It was in the font this time, not the river unfortunately. But it was Still amazing because I was one of the baptizers! Me And my comp both had one niño. They are so cool I love em both. I baptized my boy Kevin, and my comp baptized my other boy juanito. I was scared I was going to mess up when I was baptizing because everyone down here has like 5 different names as their full name, i didn't think I was gonna remember but i did luckily. It was an amazing experience. Also street contacting people down here is alot Harder than I thought haha. For one I don't know the language so It makes It difficult in the first place, and secondly I cant tell the difference between a normal person and a drunk person haha! Apparently the only people who want to talk to us are the drunks ...

  Not trying to flex but we had our first baptism!! It was so cool! Such an amazing experience, unfortunately I wasn't the one to baptize, my companion did. I really wish I did though because we baptized in the river! But don't worry we have a few more from the same family this weekend, and I'll be able to do some baptizing as well, I just hope the font doesn't work again so we have to use the river haha. But my companion had to use my White pants so at least I had some part of the action haha!  This isn't goin to be a long email, nothing interesting really happened this week besides our baptism. That's because I wasn't in my area this entire week. We had to be in Tuxpan, which is our zone, for half the week, Then we had exchanges which lasted the other half of the week. I was up in Cerro Azul for exchanges and was with another companion from my district. Cerro Azul is so cool, the scenery is amazing! It's the very top area of the entire mission. I don...

  Alright so let me tell you a little bit about this place haha. My first area in the mish is Alamo. It's way up North and it took 6 hours in a bus and an hour in a taxi to get there from the mission home. Let me tell ya it's nothing I'm used to at all. When I tell you it's hot, I mean it's hot, and not just hot, if you check the weather it's probably about 90% humid as well. And I lived in Arizona, and this Still feels hotter, I've learned that you just have to be used to being wet all the time, and not just from the rain! But the worst part about all this humidity and heat has got to be the bathrooms!! When you go to the bathroom it's a little room, no Windows, no air flow, and I'll tell you I've never dripped sweat so bad going to the bathroom. But this place is beautiful. It's so green and flourishing, there's a few rivers and streams, it's kind of like a jungle almost. There's all kinda of animals running around, dogs, cats, ...

  If you want a good story you should read this email!  So I in México now! But it wasn't easy to get here unfortunately. When I got to the México city airport I only had an hour layover and I Still had to go through immigrations. And yup, immigrations took that full hour, so I missed my flight to my mission! Luckily I had 2 other missionaries with me that missed the same flight to Veracruz so I wasn't alone. But we didn't know what to do, we couldn't speak the language And we didn't have phones to call anyone Either, so we were kinda hopeless. Luckily there was a former stake president at the airport that day who was able to help us. He let us use his phone to call the mission And he helped us out by guiding us around the airport for about an hour. We had no idea what he was doing But we followed anyways haha. Then he left us because he had a flight. Then we were left alone again And Still had no idea what we were doing. So we tried to talk to the aeromexico desk p...

                                                   ¡Hola mis amigos y mi familia! Guess what time it is? I leave for Mexico in less than a week! My first flight leaves on the 31st. I fly to Dallas first, then to Mexico City, then my last flight is to Veracruz where I will travel in a car for a few hours before I'm actually in Xalapa, I think this is gonna be the most intense travelling I will ever do! But don't worry I'm way more excited than nervous so don't be worried too much. These last few weeks have been so great. I have learned so much Spanish it is amazing. The gift of tongues is sooooo real it's incredible. We have given a lot of lessons to "investigators" and it's going very smoothly. I'm so excited to try it for real. I guess i'll just talk about things that have been going on the past few weeks now haha. I've been listenin...

  So I guess this is my first email. The first week being a missionary has been an amazing experience. Even the first weekend before I was in the MTC was amazing as well. I was able to go through the temple with lots of my family and have an amazing experience, one I will never forget. Then the next day I had to give my farewell talk and I had so much support. It was amazing, I felt so loved, Then I got set apart that Sunday as a missionary and that's when it all started. I started the MTC last Wednesday and it's in Mexico City time which means they are 2 hours ahead of me. Luckily I was able to figure out a way to not have to wake up at 4:30am every morning which I'm very happy about. But it has been a great 1st week, it started out a little slow, but getting towards the end of the week and just a few days ago I started to see me and my companion and my district grow a lot closer to each other and it's getting to be really fun and very spiritual, even thou...