Birthday

Well my birthday was this week and in Mexico they do birthdays right! It started when we were talking with a member Thursday night about a food we could eat for my birthday. I asked about turkey..they call it guajolote here. They said you have to buy the whole bird and kill it and then serve it in mole. Soo....with my birthday money from my family I bought a guajolote!!! He was a beautiful bird and pretty big for his age (only one year old). Anyway this bad boy was quite a beast and it weighed like 10 kilos. That's like 22 pounds I think. But yeah so we went to this little pueblo to buy my guajolote and nobody has a car so we had to haul the thing in a taxi like 10 minutes and I'm pretty sure it pooped on my companion hahahaha. Anyway we killed it and cooked it up in mole and ate it together with this family. The leg was too big to fit on the plate. I was also given a cake from the branch president and his wife and well we went to his house for his birthday (the 12th of January) and I smashed his face in the cake....so he had to get revenge and do me the favor. Cake in my nose for like 3 days was not fun.

This week was awesome and I really love the mission. All the awesome experiences I wouldn't trade for anything. Something really cool that happened this week was we were able to teach these two older people. I think I wrote about them before but I don't remember. They can't read but we are teaching them and they really really want to be baptized. Only thing is they have to be married first... They were missing lots of paperwork and it seemed like it would take another three or four months to get it all.. Well we went to teach them one night and they told us they had been talking and that they really want to be baptized. That they had been listening to their Book of Mormon on tape one night and they both began to cry. They new this was true and that they needed to be baptized. I don't know how it happened but some miracle of their papers and we pretty much have them all in. One of the papers from Xalapa came in two days. Normally it's waiting almost a month for this paper. We have a plan to get them married in the next week or so and them a baptism date for the 7th. It's amazing to see that these people really have changed and want to follow Christ's example, and for some reason everything is coming together to make that happen. I know this is blessing for this family.

Also, I was reading in the Book of Mormon this week, I was reading and studying about Lehi´s vision and it really made me think. Where would I be in this vision? Would I be holding tight to the iron rod? Would I be in the great and spacious building? Would I be partaking of the fruit? (sorry I'm reading in Spanish so I'm trying to remember all the stuff in English). I know it's easy to fall away, and see the ´happiness´ of the world and want to follow. But I know that true happiness only comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ and living the principles of his church. He loves us and is always there for us when we do fall away. For that he suffered for each one of us. so that there is a way to leave the dreary wasteland and come back to the straight and narrow. I know this is the true church. I know that our loving Heavenly Father answers our prayers and that he is always there for us. I know that Christ is my Savior, that he died for me. That he made it possible to live for all eternity with my family. Stay safe everyone and I hope you are enjoying the snow!

Love,

Elder Babcock