We received the following email from Elder Olivier on February 24.
Que onda mi people,
So I got transferred out of Ignacio Mejia and now I'm in Atlixco de Las Flores! It's one of two pueblos mágicos de la misión, the other one being Cholula. My area is called Alta Vista and it's really high. It's also almost the zone closest to the volcano Popocatepetl and we can pretty much always see it from our area. We're not in the flower season yet but I'll most likely be here for that. Pretty cool.
But yeah it's been a super huge culture shock so far coming from Ajalpan, the middle of the desert, to the middle of Altixco which is super suburban and green. I told my comp that the first house we walked into was super rich and fresa cause they had tile floors and brand new couches and he kinda just looked at me like I was a super weird gringo. Then I found out that every house here is like that jaja. So I guess this is a pretty wealthy area.
My comp is Elder Murillo from Chihuahua and he's super dope we get along great. We're constantly laughing but also breaking all our bones and getting really sun burnt from how hard we're working and how much we're outside walking. It feels really great to work hard and see immediate results from it cause the last area I was in was super hard and the work went pretty slow. But here the people are really great and super receptive to the gospel. Also the members here support the missionaries more than I've ever experienced in my entire life as a member of the church which is awesome. But Atlixco is pretty great in general I'm pretty much instant friends with everyone I meet here. I've decided to become a Mexican. I am now addicted to really spicy food, mole, chicharrones con Valentina, corn tortillas, and Coke. Also it's the best when the tomale carts pass by.
Also had the opportunity to help teach english classes in the church this week which was pretty cool. They asked me to say a prayer in English since I was the only native speaker there and it was pretty embarrassing cause I found out in the middle of the prayer that I had no idea how to do that in english and accidentally slipped into Spanish like 5 times. Pretty weird experience. I guess that's what I get for making fun of return missionaries for asking to pray in their mission language. Turns out it actually is pretty difficult to switch back.
My spiritual thing that I'm trying to work on is humility and obedience. I've found that blessings come when we humble ourselves and be more obedient to God and his commandments. Also when we realize that every blessing that we have in our lives is from God and we should be grateful for that. It can be pretty easy when you have success as a missionary to think that you did all of that yourself, but really the only thing you did was be willing to be a tool in God's hands. And I think that applies to every kind of service even outside of missionary work.
We have some pretty awesome people that we're teaching but imma wait till next week to update you guys on that I think cause we just barely found them all and we still don't know a ton about them yet.
That's it for this week though and I hope you all are doing great!
Elder Olivier
Fotos:
1. Random Google image of the view from my area. Working on getting my own picture of that but the weather hasn't been that pretty yet.
2. Me on top of a giant hill in my area. There's like three hills like that that we climb everyday around 5 times ish.
3. A low quality picture of a high quality companionship
4. All the missionaries in Atlixco, ft. people from the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru.
