¡Feliz día de Independencia de México!

Hola a todos, and happy Mexican Independence day! At least I think its today. They might just start celebrating tonight. We actually have to go home early tonight because there will be a lot of drunk people in the streets, or at least that's what I understand haha. Also it seems like all of the drunks here can speak English. It's kind of strange. Anyways it was a good week here in Tlaxcala. Still a lot of walking, and a lot of rain this week too. We also had some great lessons and taught a few new people.

Mexican Independence Day - (Actually September 16)

So with our two newer investigators Joel and Hermanlinda we are making good progress with them. We taught a good lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about baptism and attending church. It was really good, and Hermalinda actually showed up to church! Joel coudn´t because he was working, but it was very nice to have a her and another ´´investigator´´ (9 year old son of a member) at church. Now we just need to get all of our other investigators attending! It´s especially tough for us, because our investigators need 5 weeks of attending sacrament meeting before they are eligible for baptism, so if we don´t have investigators attending baptismal dates fall, and then they can´t get baptized until the next change even if we feel that they are ready. But we are making progress, which is good.

So also after that lesson that we had with Hermanlina y Joel we had to walk back to Loma Bonita (the area that we live in) from El Rincon (where Joel-Hermanlinda live) for another appointment. It was a half hour walk and it started dumping soon after we started walking! It was the most rain we´ve gotten since I´ve been in Mexico! It was also pretty crazy because in our area there isn´t very good drainage on the streets so the water just kind of flows with them. We were soaked, but then our next appointment fell through so we had the opportunity to go home and change. Also a couple days later it rained pretty hard in the early afternoon but then stopped. However later that day we had an appointment in El Rincon and when we got out there one of the streets was completely flooded! It was litterally a like a little river! Since we didn´t want to wade through it we bushwacked through a some corn and fields to get to our appointment. That was pretty exciting, we saw some pretty big spiders on the way, too.

Sunday was also pretty exciting. Apart from having 2 investigators at Church we had divisions as well. I had the opportunity to teach two lessons with new investigators by myself and members. It was a good experience and it really put my Spanish to the test. It was good however, the spirit was there and the members helped me out too. That´s another thing, we have been working a little more with a Hermano that lives near our investigators in El Rincon and he has been so helpful. He has a combi (van) and gave Hermanalina a ride to church because its a long way to walk and she´s pregnant. The members here are very good, they are very upbeat always willing to help out. I feel very blessed to be serving in the ward I'm in.

Well, I hope you all are still doing well and enjoying the end of summer and beginning of fall. They tell me the rainy season is almost over here, but we´ll see. Con amor

-Elder Hartvigsen