May 14th-21st, 2012

hey fam,

hey guys!!! thanks for all the updates and news, keep movin forward. hey mom before i forget, could you e mail me a list of everyones birthday and other important american holidays i can´t seem to remember too many of them haha. that´s cool to hear that the brother blades served in tierra blanca, that´s where my mtc companion is serving. the fruit is very good here. i absolutely love the fruit drinks. i´m not sure how all the hermanas make them but they are really good and refreshing on a hot day. my favorite is agua de orchata or agua de pina. ooh so good. well dad we have district meeting every week and zone conferernce every threeish months. we had interviews with the president this week as well. i sure love him, he´s a great mission president. really self sacraficing. his wife is great with all the medical stuff as well. they had to leave a daughter behind to come be mission presidents. it´s amazing to me the faith the people down here have. the members make such unimagineable sacrifices for the lord. it´s really strengthened my testimiony to see it and how they are blessed for it. it reminds me of a story that happened this week. we have been teaching a little boy and we needed a member to accompany us to a lesson with this boy, so we asked a recent convert named abraham, he´s nine years old, to come with us later that day. he was very eager and willing to help and to tag along with the missionaries. he´s a really cute pudgy kid haha. but so three o clock rolls around and we go to pick him up and he is in the process of trying to attach a mug of water to his little bike cause we were in the hottest part of the day. sweat dripping of his pudgy face, he had combed his hair and put on shoes for the event, trying to look his best, and my heart just melted because he was so willing to help us. we told him that we were going to walk and that he couldn´t bring his bike but he still was excited to help. after about the first quarter mile he had drained his water and was struggling a little bit but had this look of determination i won´t forget. well we taught the lesson and he bore his testimony and i was so proud of him. afterwards i told him that he´s going to make a great missionary one day and his face just lit up haha. oh and also we bought him a snack on the way home for his troubles haha. it´s just one little example of how the people here are so great and self sacrificing for the work of the lord.
but i´m not too fond of the jehovas witnesses haha. we found a lady and were teaching her, and she refferred us to her neighbor and so we were teahing two families that lived right next to each other. everything is going great until one day we pass by and the lady says, i am not going to read the book of mormon anymore and i´m not going to be baptized and i don´t want you guys to come back. well low and behold her son is a jehovahs witness in cancun and she had called him to get his opinion about religion and he told her lots of lies bout members of the church. then this lady tells her neighbor all the same stuff and the neighbors proceed to tell us that now they´re not going to be baptized either! it was really frustrating. i think it was elder ballard that said the devil established that religion with the sole purpose of halting missionary work. aaaahhhh. they sure do love the bible though. oh and also i´ve been getting really sunburned so i had to resort to using an umbrella hahaha i feel like a dork with it but don´t have any other choice. it´s pretty classic though, my companion loves to make fun of me for it haha. well i´m going on exchanges tommorrow to the city of aleman and i´ll be with an americn elder so i´ll get to speak some english!! spanish is coming along, still frustrating but i´m working on it. gets better every week. well that´s about it, i´m going to try and attach some pictues again so hopefully it works this time. well i love you all and of course pray for you very much and i wish the best for you this week! love ya!

love elder broadhead