Elder Cox's Second Letter from Tampico

Hello family and friends,
So I ran out of time last week and I hope I don't this week. I was explaining some of the not so fun stuff in my mission, and I was about to explain the more exciting things but I ran out of time, so if sounded like all I was doing was complaining. I do apologize. I do love it here. Things here have been great. I'm struggling right along with Spanish and hope it will click someday. Til then my comp has to explain to the investigators what I am trying to say. No one understands my Spanish. It's pretty fun how bad it is. Oh well. It'll come. So good news, it rained a lot last week. Well that is good and bad. Cooled off just a little bit, not so hot. Still humid. But when it rains here, it rains here. No joke. It rained and rained. Needless to say each night we would come home completely soaked. At one point we couldn't go outside it was so bad. It was fun. Another fun thing is the buses. Taxis are alright but not so much fun as the bus. The buses here stop anywhere you want on their route. So they are pretty good at stopping on a dime. You literally jump on and jump off. You give your change to the bus driver, he is driving a stick shift, weaving in and out of traffic, and giving you the change while you try to walk to your seat without falling over. It's pretty fun. Needless to say i think they think the bus is a race car, because they sure drive like it. Almost anything goes here. Literally almost anything goes. It's an eye opener. It's exciting.

Well on another topic we had a baptism last week and have at least 2 more this week. A young man by the name of Gerardo. He fell through last week because we were waiting on permission from his mom. She finally gave in and allowed him to be baptized. We had the interview Friday and he said that his mom wanted to come to the baptism but could only make it if it was at 8am on Saturday. Okay great, that means my comp and I had some work to do. We had a fun time trying to track down the bishop for keys and get the font ready. We finally found him and he had no idea where the keys were. They hadn't had a baptism in 9 months. We finally found the key and the water didn't work. After some time we finally went up into the attic and found a broken pipe. Oh no. This is not going well I thought. We jimmied it and made it work and then we had water. But it wasn't warm. Checked the water heater, no gas. Well looks like its going to be luke warm because it'll be setting overnight. By about 10p that night we had it about halfway to where we needed the water to go. Great. That means waking up early and starting the water very early in the morning. We woke up and headed over there and the bishop was great, he had already started the water again and so we were on track. Come to find out because of the short notice of the time, (the baptism was supposed to be at 7p), the speakers for the talks couldn't make it. I ended up giving a talk in Spanish about faith and repentance and the bishop's wife reluctantly gave one on baptim and the Holy Ghost. Luckily I obeyed the prompting to bring a talk I had written in Spanish on faith. I didn't know why but I brought it. Wow glad I did! i was able to give that and it turned out okay. Unfortunately we did all this for Gherardo's mom and she ended up not showing up. We were a little bummed. but oh well. Elder Gonzalez ended up doing the baptism because Gerardo wanted him to. Great I thought, I'm safe. Nope, the following day on Sunday I was to do the confiration. Ya, that was interesting. A little difficult in Spanish. Needless to say the blessing part wasn't perfect and it was rather short. Nothing grand. Well at least afterward I did feel the Spirit and knew the confirmation was accepted before the Lord. That was nice.

This week we have 2 baptisms, a brother and sister, 14 and 11. Yacer and Lucero. I am doing the baptism this time and my comp the confirmation. Should be a little easier. ha ha. They are great those two. I'm excited for them. We have at least 5 baptisms next week hopefully. Four of them a family and 1 is a father of another family. Those 5 are wonderful people who are searching for the truth and finally found it. Things here are popping. I love the people here. They are willing to listen to you even if they don't know you. You say we have a message of Jesus Christ and they say they want to hear about it. We teach  a lot of 1st lessons. I guess I'm blessed to be in the barrio. My comp said his last area was a bit ritzy and he had no success. I find that interesting the difference of people just a few miles away.

Oh today was great. Elder Gonzalez and I went to the temple. We did a session. That was fun in Spanish for me. I understand a little bit of it. The temple president is from Arizona. President Udall. Nice man. Speaks very fluent Spanish and was super helpful to me speaking English. The temple is very beautiful, especially compared to what is around it. I love the sweet Spirit there. I hope that I can bring my converts to the temple one day, which is so close. No more going to Arizona. Some I have talked to remember making that trip to Arizona. Wow the sacrifice some make to be sealed for time and all eternity. Well that is about it with me. I'm loving Mexico. Hot and humid and I don’t understand anything around me or where I am but for some reason it's okay. i miss you and love you all so much. Thank you for you kind words and prayers. I can feel them everyday. Thank you for all who have helped me be here where I am today. I will forever be grateful to you.
 
 Love always,
 Elder James Cox