Emails received August 26, 2014

7:50am

     Ok, so a lot more stuff happened this week, so hopefully you will enjoy reading this email more than last week's.

     I think it's important that you know that I completely forgot to bring any type of shower sandals, so in the apartment I either walk around in dress shoes or no shoes, and I usually chose the latter. So on Wednesday evening I was just walking around and talking with my apartment mates, totally oblivious to the shrapnel skewn about on the floor. I took a step, and then I felt something sharp go into my right heel, and I thought it wasn't a big deal. I walked over to my bed and, to my dismay, looked back and saw a trail of bloody footsteps-of just right footprints. So then I had to sit down on my bed and dig out the piece of glass or whatever was in my heel, all while dripping a ridiculous amount of blood on the ground. Now, at this point I had not even thought about pain, blood, or anything like that. I like to think that I´m a logical thinker, and logic brought me to the conclusion that my foot would get infected with some weird Mexican bacteria, and then my foot would have to get amputated. But I´ve never been exposed to any kind of Mexican bacteria before, so of course my body would have no way to defend itself, so the infection would make its way into my tibia, and then jump up to my femur, and then I would have to get my leg amputated at the hip. Then I thought about how cool of a surgery it would be, and that I would totally ask if I could stay awake and watch it. Then I thought that even though I would only have one leg, I would get some massive leg muscles from hopping around all day every day. So after that, in real life, I put a sissy sticker (band-aid) on it, and then a layer of extra strength waterproof duct tape over that. I then rallied some of my faithful district members, and we set off on a quest to find Fernando (our maintenance guy for the apartment) . He was on the third floor, and once we found him, I had a pretty sweet conversation with him. In Spanish. First I told him that I need a really big favor of him. Then I told him what happened, and that I didn't have any kind of sandal to wear around the apartment, and that I would be forever grateful if he could hook it up with some footwear from the outside world. He said of course, and then he realized that I have American sized feet. I eventually traced my foot onto a piece of paper so he knew which size to get, gave him like 200 pesos, and told him that he was essentially saving my life as a two-footed human. He came back the next day and told me that he went to a few different stores and he could only find one pair that was big enough. They're freaking awesome. I'll send a picture later today, but they're gloriously ghetto fabulous Mexican sandals. So that's what I've been wearing around the apartment since Thursday, and every time I see Fernando I tell him that he's a stud.

     Next order of business: Elder Madsen related activities.  So there's this service in Mexico that sends packages to Missionaries in the CCM calledmydearmissinoary.com, and Elder Madsen told his parents about it, but he told them about how he was really sick too. By that time he was feeling better, his parents had ordered him from this website a massive amount of TUMS, Pepto Bismol, apple sauce, and other "get well soon items." He was really excited when he got his package, but when he opened it, he just looked at it and didn't know what to do with it. (By the way mom, my package came on Wednesday.) And on Friday, he received another package very similar to the first one, and he was just frustrated this time, because he had no way to tell his parents that he had gotten better, and that he didn't need any of this any more. It was pretty funny, but of course he didn't think so.

     I've been reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish, and at first I had the English right next to the Spanish, and it was going REALLY slow.. So I stopped for like a week. Then I started again, but this time with a Spanish to English dictionary instead of an English Book of Mormon. It went a lot easier for some reason, and now I'm to the point where I could recognize whole phrases and know what they meant. But wait, there´s more. Now I don't need to translate into English in my head. I read it in Spanish and it stays in Spanish. It's amazing. And it's the same way when I talk now. I know what they're saying, and I know the response I want to say, and it's all in Spanish. I'm not to the point of dreaming in Spanish yet, but my companion told me that I was sleep talking a few nights ago, and I was speaking with a gnarly Mexican accent. So I think I'm pretty close to dreaming in a foreign language. Which is flippin sweet. 

     All the days are exactly the same here, and we're trying to make them as interesting as possible, but that's not very possible when your whole day is planned out for you down to the minute. But everyone knows that if you feed teenagers alphabet soup, that they're gonna have a good time. Elder Rich and Elder Germann have the really strong kind of relationship where they just make fun of each other all the time. So of course Elder Rich labored for like 15 minutes and borrowed letters from other missionaries to spell out on a napkin that he subtly slid over to his companion "I hate Germann." That is probably not very entertaining to you, but we are so deprived of humor here that we were laughing for like 15 minutes. It's kind of sad when we think about it, but we're having a good time here.

     We can't wait to get out of here, and we only have two weeks left! We're all antsy to get into Chile, and that's like all we ever talk about. We are getting better at teaching our progressing investigators every day, and we have had two since the second week. It was pretty hard at first because we can only speak in Spanish, but I think me and my friend are ready to go pro. It's really weird, because I've been thinking about the gospel in Spanish for four weeks, and then a few days ago we had an exercise in English, and I had no idea that I was saying. I guess that's a good measure of progress, but I seriously could not do it in English. I had to think about what I wanted to say in Spanish, and then translate it to English and then try to say it in English. It was pretty rough, but I made it through with some broken English. Also, whenever I say something in English, I stutter a lot, and I can't really get my thought across very well.

     Because all the days run together here, I'm not entirely sure when this happened, but I thought it was pretty cool. It was right around dinner time, and our district was walking to dinner, and we felt maybe two drops of rain. But it does that all the time here, so we didn't think anything of it. Then, once we got inside and got our food, we looked outside and it was HAILING! We couldn't even see across the street, and we just stayed in the comedor until it stopped hailing. But when it stopped hailing, it just started raining even harder. We ran to our apartment and got our coats and umbrellas and stuff, and it was just crazy. It did't let up until 11:00 that night.

     As much as I washed my hands and took all the precautions I could, I got sick yesterday. I woke up with a little headache, but I thought it was just from sleeping on a 3 square foot area for seven hours. But as the day progressed, my headache got worse, I got the chills and aches, and I felt really bad. I decided to go back to the apartment after lunch, and it was a very good decision, because about an hour later, I had begun regular trips to the baño. I slept for like 6 hours, and then some of my district brought me some dinner, and then I slept for like 10 more hours. I woke up this morning feeling a lot better though, and I haven't had to run to the bathroom today, so I think I'm mostly better. I've been drinking a lot of water, and I still have a headache, but I feel way better than I did yesterday.

     Well, I'm gonna respond to individual emails now, and I'll send pictures later today.

 Love,

     Elder Hamilton

8:47am

Dear mom,

     Haha yeah, I took lots of pictures, and I´ll send a lot later today after I take more. Yeah, my package was awesome! If I got another one, I would want mostly the same stuff, and maybe some pop tarts if you're feelin it. Whatever you think. Anything is awesome.

     Alex emailed me haha, and he said that he's been emailing the wrong address this whole time, and that hes really sorry and stuff, and it was pretty funny. 

     So I told my district the story of Bosley, so if you could send me some pictures of his progression into a beautiful chicken, 12 people would love you very much. Also, can you send me a picture of that redneck picture in our hall by the stairs? Just send me a whole bunch of pictures. It'll be easier for me to get things once I'm in Chile.

     I'll talk to you soon.

Love,

     Elder Hamilton

These pictures don't really do it justice how much it was raining the other day. It was pretty crazy.

Also, there's some random LEGO hands sticking up out of the ground somewhere outside of the CCM grounds.

Elder Madsen and I took a walk around the whole CCM today. I bet you didn't know that Mexico City built a statue in my honor.

We found a tractor, so we kind of had to do this.

And here I am in the eerily Utopian society that is the CCM. This is on the property, but it looks like its own little town. It's weird.

Here are some pictures from right outside the massive fence. Classic Mexico City. Exactly how I pictured it.

Here's my letter to Fernando for him to hook it up with some sandals from the outside world.

And here are the sandals in their full glory.