corbata por 5 pesos

hey

so this week was good. we had people at church and had fun working. well some cool thigs happend this week. so here we go.

niños dios: i dont know if this is just a mexico thing or a world wide cathlic thing. but here the people have a baby jesus statue that they dress up evry febuary. they dress them in all kinds of special outfits. then on the 2nd of febuary they take the ¨"baby God" in their basket to the mass in the night. and they present the little baby to the virgen. it kind of freaked me out seeing hundreds of people walking to the church with little fake baby jesus in their baskets. i saw one guy standing outside of a church with the baby raised over his head like in the lion king when they present Simba to the whole pride. its pretty funny how people just dont understand that in the 10 commandments it says to not worship images. like a lot of people say here " evryone has their way to do things"

bici: so i havnt told you this before but in my area i have seen this same guy riding his bike arround for a while. not real surprizing no? but the intresting thing is that he has one leg. yup. one leg. he is missing the whole other one from the hip down. not a lie. and he gets around pretty good. i was pretty impressed and still am. i have yet to see that in the states. props to that old fool.

corbata por 5 pesos: so this isnt too rare here in mexico. but its still pretty good. so this week i found two amazingly great deals on ties. one tie i found on the street. some guy put oout his stuff on the ground and i saw this sick blue and orange tie. its an ING tie. so i bought it. 10 pesos. less than a dollar! i was pretty stoked. so i wore it to church and thhis member told me that he has been loking for that tie for years cuz it costs 400 pesos in ING. that made me even more happy.

so i also found a sweet blue tie that i absolutly love also on the street for 5 pesos. about 40 cents. im pretty sure i will never buy ties ever again in the states. ill just come to mexico to but all my ties.

los cambios: so last night we called to find out a bout changes. and i knew it was coming. im getting changed. Im going to the Zone Culuacan. but the zone leaders didnt ask well enough and i dont know what ward im going to. i guess i will just ask my new companion whats up? so i was kind of ready to leave this area. i have been here since august. 6 months. i kind of got board of the area. it would have been cool to be with my kid another change so i could teach him more but what are you gonna do.

court: whats up? are you too cool to write me now that you are going to go to BYUH? love ya. write me.

lifes a garden dig it. im sure diggin it. love ya lots keep in touch.

elder skaggs

2 Mistakes

February 2, 2009

hey evryone.

how are thisngs going? good? i hope so. evrything is cool here in mexico. this week some weird stuff went on and we made two big mistakes. well not really big but stupid.

first mistake we made was we decided to cut eachothers hair. without having any experiance at all. but we thought wioth the machinie we could cut it easy. well the macine actually didnt work so we decided to cut our hair with only the scizers. wow big mistake. i actually did better than i thought i would. but my comp thats another story. he was pretty confidant going into it but i ended up with a big chunk of my hair gone. but now it doesnt look too bad. i think we wont try that ever again.

the other mistake that we made this week. we decided to move rooms to the second level cuz it has a bathroom inside and whjere we were its outside. so we moved all our stuff up to the second level of the house we get setttled in and go to sleep. when we wake up in the morning we found yellow infested water seeping out of the wall of the bathroom. oooops. it smelled like a dead person had been living in our wall for 3 months. so we decided to move back down to where we were. you know for healths sake. lets just say i got my fare share of excercize those two days.

so this week was good. we had 4 new people come to church. but the lame thing is that the other people that we have been working with and have come to church once didnt come. that was a bummer. but we will see haw this week goes.

so this week president doxey really scared me. so we had confrence and interviews. the interview went good but a little too good. Prez Doxey told me that he has alot of confidence in me and that im one of the kind of missionarys that he wants here in the mission. with transfers in a weeek that has made me think allot and im kind of scared that he will make me a leader. thats fine if the Lord wants it he knows i can do it. but i would love to stay with my kid and do work here in Iztapalapa.

today we played soccer in a local indoor feild. today is a holiday or something and no one had to go to work. so there was alot of people plying. we played retas or whoever wins stays on the feild. and there was some amazing players. i played goallie. i have gotten alot better at goaliie. i dont have the ball handling skills to play in the feild so i play goalie or defence. its way fun and im pretty good at defence.

i hope you are all doing good and that you have a good week. keep in touch. i cant write individually so ill try to answer your questions in my big email. love ya

elder skaggs

11 Months

Jan, 26th, 2009

hey,

this week had its ups and downs. so ill let you know how it went day by day. sale

tuesday i completed 11 months in the mission. the member that we ate with threw me a party. kind of. we just ate and had a cake. it was pretty good. they smashed my face in the cake. i knew it was coming but it was fun and tasted good.

wed. we had a mission confrence. yup the whole mission 180 missionaries. we had the area president Elder Mickleson come. it was really cool and i learned alot about the atonement. it was a really good experiance and was fun to see all of my buddies from my gen and other fools i met here.

thursday. the BIG day. my b day. i woke up and opend my package. then i made myself french toast. it was cool. then we left to go work. we worked reall hard and tought abubnch of lessons until after the food. then we just went to the house and relaxed all night. just kidding. after the food we passed by for some investigators and went to the church where we had a baptism. it was cool. i got to baptize on my birthday. that was one of the things i wanted to do on my mission. cool huh?

friday. we worked all day until the night wen we went to the church for a activity. the members were suposed to bring their friend and family who arnt members. so we get there and there is no one. about 15 people showed up and no one brought their friends. all of the investigators that we invited bailed. lame.

sat we worked all day.

sunday we went to church. we had invited allot of people that said yea ill go. but only one came. that was a bummer. but the baptism (claudia) got confirmed. so that was good.

today we played soccer in the morning. that was fun

i hope you all are doiung good. love ya keep in touch,

elder skaggs

Dead Papa...

hey

this week was good. we kept working hard and our hard work actually payed off. we had 6 new investigators come to church for the first time. and there is another family of 3 that couldnt come because of an emergancy. so we could have had nine people there. it was way cool. the ward has grown alot here lately. we had 115 people at church which is way high. usually we have like 85 90 topps. so this last week was cool. me and my comp gave talks and kind of railed on the ward for not giving us refrences. so we will see if we get some this week.

so this week mi papa died. which means that my first companion (dad) went home. thats weird. i cant belicve how fast the time goes by here on the mission. also Alex goes home in 44 days. he was kind enough to remind me. thats crazy. i remember wen he called me wen he was just about to enter the MTC. now hees coming home. and tomarrow i complete 11 months in the mission. that scares me a bunch. i am almost halfway done. i want to add an extra year cuz i dont want it to end.

this weeek was cold. it actually rained. that was weird. cuz right now its not the time of rain. this whole week was cold until yesterday and today. its back to being hot.

love ya lots and hope your doing good. keep in touch,.

amor y dedos

elder skaggs

sup?
this week was alright. my comp and me worked like little japeneese kids work in the sweat shops. ooppps i hope i didnt just affend some of you who are going to jap-town on the mission. but seriously we worked really hard this week. my comp and i both did our 70 contacts in the week. which is verry rare that missionaries actually do what the president asks. we set up a bum load of lessons and almost all of them fell through or the people who actually listened to us dont want to change or come to church.

well this past week on the 6th was "day of the 3 wisemen". so here in mexico they have christmas and then on the 6th they celebrate when the wisemen gave Jesus gifts. all of the little kids buy special reyes magos baloons and tie their note with all the gifts they want and let it go. the balloon goes up into the sky and the wisemen somehow get it and bring the kids all the gifts they want. its kind of like writing to santa clause.

o another wierd twisted thing here in mexico. the tooth fairy dosnt exist. instead they have a little rat that brings the kids money when their teeth fall out. yup thats right a rat. i really dont undestand where they think theese things up. maybee part of the government spends a bit of money to pay people to think of ways to ruin and destroy holidays and traditions. who knows,?

well my kid is doing pretty good. he works and does his contacts. he is a bit weird. i guess its cuz he is from such a small town. he dosnt know how to use internet. today i was tring to help him but he was impaciant and shut it off. his first p day. we played soccer at the church and he had to go to the bathroom. he couldnt wait 5 mins and did his thing on a tree in the parking lot right next to the feild we were playing on. that was funny.

well i hope you are having a good time and having success in all that you do. love ya lots and keep in touch.

amor y dedos
elder skaggs

Jan. 5th, 2009

hey,

how are things? things here in mexitown are great. as you know i just got a kid. which means that i am training a new missionariy. my kid is elder Zapata and is way cool. he is from a little town (if you could call it that) in Tamoulipas. he has lots of desires to work and follows my advice. He actually contacts. which is cool because my comp Solis who has a year and a half in the mission wouldnt do it. we have been working really hard and should see the results soon.

so this week we found 20 new people to teach. it was way good. i think the best week of finding people in my mission. but the bummer is that none of the m came to church. we need to keep practicing the lessons together cuz my comp just goes on rambling. he gets really excited to talk to people and just dosnt stop and he confuses peopple. but he will learn to control himself and make his lessons more simple and effective.

well this week was good for me i hope it went well for all of you. this is the Lords church and work. I love Him and His gosple. if we trust in Him he will help us through our trials and when we pass them He will bless us likle crazy. Love you all adn keep up the good work. keep in touch.

amor y dedos

elder skaggs

Navidad

hey evreyone,

so this week was really busy and allot of stuff went on. On wed. 24th i went on splits with Glenn my comp fom the mtc. that was cool we worked hard and got alot done. then the 25th we had our christmas party with the zone. it was alright. we ate food and played soccer. then we went home and went to call our families. it was nice to hear from the fam. and it seemewd really normal while i was talking but after it just seemed like a dream. weird.

cambois: so last night we found out the changes. i thought i would go but no. im staying in the area. my comp is going to chalco and im getting a newbie. elder zapata streight from the mtc in mexico. so this should be a pretty interesting change. i think it will go really well and we will have alot of success.

so more random things from mexico.

we were walking up this main street called periferco at about 2 in the afternoon and we looked ito the median and we see a guy walking down the middle. and we looked a little closer and he was peeing right in the middle of the median in brod daylight, i was so shocked. i laughfed allot.

also when i was with glenn we said good afternoon to this old guy sitting outside of his house. and he answered saying "navidad navidad! navidad!" me and elder glenn just started busting up. imagine if you said hello to someone in the states and they answered you by saying christmas! christmas! christmas!.

also on sunday we were at church and i saw some white people walk in. like legitamate whities. i even asked myself what are they doing here? so i talked to them and found out they are from idaho. the guy works at byu idaho and knows Bill Riggins well. that was pretty random that white peolep came to church in mexico and that they actually know someone i know.

well i hope you all had a feliz navidad. love ya

amor y dedos

elder skaggs