No Tenemos Agua

I hope you all are doing well!! I’ve made sure to take some of my downtime throughout this week as time to write this email buckle up because this is almost certain to be a long one. This week has been awesome!

First, a little bit more about the city!! We’ve been taking public transit most places we don’t walk, or an Uber. My metro card for the subway and metrobus has a batman sticker on the back which makes me feel pretty special everytime I use it hahah but the subway is so packed that I am always paranoid about getting pickpocketed, too many stories from my companion to not be! This place is huge, theres over 8 million people in my mission which makes it the 3rd largest mission in population, but by area it is the 2nd smallest in the world (i believe its 6×12 miles, but don’t quote me on that), behind only Temple Square which is crazy! For an idea of how dense it is, our apartment is in a complex of 35 towers, each of which is 6 floors with 3 apartments per floor! Every dang block is covered in these complexes so needless to say its a densely populated place.

Man speaking of our apartment, this thing is struggling. When I first got here it was absolutely filthy so since then I bought some clorox wipes and a flyswatter and have been going to town on this thing like one of those dudes on This Old House. Its getting pretty clean by now, the issue is still all the dang flies and gnats, which despite my constant efforts, appear in virtually countless numbers in the morning in my bathroom. At least its not cockroaches though (️) so we will deal with the flies. This 8 peso walmart flyswatter may already gave wom tje award for seeint the most action of any flyswatter in the world. My righthand man.

So everything was going great with our apartment and I was making some serious progress on this bad boy until one day we just lost water. Not even a drop will come out of the faucets or shower, the piping in the whole complex is totally dry. That was a surprise, so we texted our landlord and he didn’t respond until we were out at a lesson later and said essentially “quick fill up as many buckets as you can! I got them to turn on the emergency supply for 15 minutes!” But we were at least that many minutes away so no dice there. We woke up the next morning to find that no, we still had no water, but somehow our entire hallway was no joke submerged in half an inch of water. Nothing like walking out from bed into the kitchen to suddenly finding your feet wet, that woke me up quick! After a while spent mopping and wondering where on earth all that water came from, if not from our pipes, we threw all our shower stuff and clothes in a bag and rode an Uber in our pajamas to our Zone Leader’s apartment who let us use their shower! Lets just say I’ve ridden in an Uber in my PJ’s more times this week then I have ever planned to in my life, but you gotta get clean somehow so thats how its been going down.

They turn on the emergency water supply every now and then at random, which means we’ve been able to wash dishes, fill up water bottles, and use our own toilets for just a couple minutes each day. Legend says they are working to reroute some underground piping to refill our cistern, so lets hope that process gets expedited because the first 20 or so seconds of water out of our sinks is very brown and smells bad. Good thing our kitchen sink has a built in filter!

Anyways, enough of that rant, life here has been awesome despite that and I’ve been loving it! We went to this place called Lagunilla last Pday where they have every possible knockoff thing you can imagine all for less than like 15 bucks. That was pretty sick and I definitely plan to get some fake stuff here. Also, like I said a tiny bit in my last email, my companion (who dreams of being a UFC fighter) has me eating 130 grams of protien and 275 grams of nom-sugae carbohydrates a day (that might be exact, but its close to that, I am working to forget all the numbers he drilled into my head) and wants me to bulk up then cut. All it has given me so far is a stomach ache, a severe dislike for Costco protien milk (which I’ve been forced to resort to as my main form of hydration since we gave no water) and a lot of hope that pushups can help me drop the 30 pounds that I am sure to gain hahaha but other than that my companion is actually so awesome and very helpful to have as my first comp in the mission field!

On Wednesday we went on divisions with the two Zone Leaders in our Zone, which is basically where you pair up with a different companion for the day. I went with Elder Casildo who is from Veracruz and doesn’t speak a lick of English so that was some good language learning. Before I continue, I’ll give you a quick breakdown of our mission. So there is one mission with 8 Stakes of the Church in it. Each stake is a zone, and each zone has 2 Zone Leaders. Each zone also has 2 districts that divide it in half, with a District Leader (my companion is the DL for our district) and each District has 2-3 areas. Hopefully I didn’t lose you there. Anywho, Elder Casildo and I went to his area of the Zone, and taught tons of people and it was awesome!!

My favorite part, and probably the coolest experience that I had this week was that we went to and taught some families that live along the train tracks. Its a big immigrant camp, and literal thousands of families have used plywood and tarp to build there homes against the concerete wall that runs along the train tracks. The people here are extremely poor and humble, but are also some of the most selfless, funny, and happy people I have met. While we were there, we were talking to a man and his family who are members and were helping him fix his door. Right then, a huge rain and windstorm hit and no body had raincoats or umbrellas or anything, so they rushed us into there house! It was one room, and we spent the time talking to the kids in their family and helping them stick buckets under the leaks in the roof. Their littlest kid, Leo, showed me his toys and made fun of me in Spanish (at least I think so, he would say something to his sister, then point at me, then laugh when I looked confused. It was honestly so fun!

We heard some yelling further down the tracks, so we left their house and went out into the rain to see what was happening, and ended up fixing another roof that had collapsed because the tarp got too flooded with water. I was the tallest one there so I was moving stuff around trying to follow orders in Spanish. The people were all so thankful and sweet, and it was such a cool experience. We came back later that night to teach an interested family, and they happened to be the ones whos roof we had fixed! They gave us delicious homemade donuts and Mexican coke, and just laughed a lot and it was awesome. Such a cool experience. We had some street contacting that day with some members (a 12 year old boy and an abuelita) and it was great to meet one of the Zone Leaders better and see another part of Mexico City and the amazing people there!

Other than that, this week has been waiting for water to use the laundry machine (I am running dangerously low on clean clothes, and the clothes I have washed have been hanging up, still wet, for 2 days) and a lot of meetings: a meeting for the missionaries who are training us newcomers, training for the new District Leaders (at the super fancy mission home with Hermana Bunrham’s homemade breakfast!!), and our weekly District Council where we meet as a zone, then divide into districts to work on things we are struggling with and areas where we need help. It was so good!

I also tried an Oreo Coke this week, which is actually delicious, and we went to another noche mexicana on friday night with the other ward in our church building!! Then on Saturday we got to visit the temple with our ward, and show our friend Gael around the visitors center. He was so happy to be there and loved asking us questions and already seems to have a really powerful testimony. Unfortunately, we didn’t have tons of success with finding as many new people this week as much as I hoped, a lot of people love listening to us and say they feel the spirit, but then say that they have their own personal religion and don’t want to come to church with us or meet with us again. At least sometimes we get to guve away Book of Mormons to people though! Last night we met an awesome young mom who was so happy to hear what we had to say and was asking all sorts of questions and super excited to learn about the church. She wanrs to be an example to her son of Christ and was so excited about the Book of Mormon and coming to church which was so amazing. Anyways, we’ve been working hard by talking to everyone we see to try and help them feel the spirit, and we’re hopeful with some potential interested people from the members in our ward! Optimistic that next week we can maybe get to know some new people and help them come to Christ!!

On that note of things more spiritual, I had some really good study this week in 2nd Nephi, which is definitely a top 3 favorite book in the Book of Mormon! Even the Isaiah chapters have been awesome to read. Here are a couple things that I liked:

I love how much the early chapters of 2nd Nephi talk about the Plan of Salvation, the perfect Plan that God has for each of His children, the key of which is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. In these chapters, Lehi is giving his final advice to his children. This time in a prophets life is always the part where he drops the most heat scripture. This is what Lehi said to his son Jacob, but I read it like he was saying it to me in chapter 2:

I love the simplicity yet power of those verses. Those who believe in the Son of God, and live after He has taught, will be saved. He has made intercession for us, He is oue advocate with the Father, and how important it is for us to spread this knowledge!! I am so thankful I have the opportunity to do that here.

One of my favorite chapters in the whole Book of Mormon is 2nd Nephi 4, and this is where Nephi glories in God. I feel so much gratitude for my Savior when I read this, and echo the words that Nephi says:

I read all of that while “O Thou Rock of My Salvation” just so happened to be playing on my headphones. I love the lyrics to that hymn, which go hand in hand with the things Nephi exclaimed, about the Lord being our strength and our salvation, and leading us into the fight.

I obviously don’t have words even a sliver as powerful as Nephi, but I want to testify that the Lord is our salvation. He atoned for every person. Yes, atoned for us all, but He atoned for the one. He suffered pain beyond words for YOU, so that you could return to Him and live in a joyful everlasting life with Him. I would encourage you to heed what Jacob says later in 2nd Nephi, to “shake of the chains of him that would bind you fast, and come unto that God who is the rock of your salvation.”

I know that God has a uniquely personal plan for every person to return to Him. He provides us with the perfect Savior, and the restored gospel that shows us clearly the path to return to Him. He will show us our path, He will be our rock, He will contend with our enemies, He will comfort us, and He will deliver us. Turn to Him and trust in His plan! I promise you that it is more powerful, personal, and beautiful than we can understand right now. Because He loves us, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. Let us show our gratitude to Him by following after His example and living His gospel every day, and in every way.

I know He will bless you and magnify your efforts. He will consecrate youe performance unto the welfare of your soul. He will lead you into battle and be your strength.

I love you all so much and I miss each of you. You all are the best and I truly aprefiate all the emails and prayers!! Sorry for the textbook-length email, I guess I had a lot to say about the city, and even more to say about my personal study this week, it was an awesome week!! I hope this email finds you all well, if you actually read all the way to hear that is some serious dedication and I am so grateful for you!!

Ustedes son los mejores. Los quiero mucho y yo oro por ustedes a menudo. Yo sé que Dios y Jesucristo nos aman y tienen el plan más perfecto. ¡Recuerden eso! ¡Hablaré contigo en la proxima semana!

Much love,

Elder Crockett

Pictures!