Wow this week kinda flew by. Logales is a cool place :) It's like RIGHT on the border. From where I'm sitting right now, I can see it, I could probably throw a rock over the wall and hit someone ..... but i won't do that. They have the coolest little stores down near the border here, definately gonna hit this up when I get back and I'm gonna get myself a sweet mexi cowboy suit haha they are soooooo funnny!! The first time I went to the church I ran into BB, who asked me if I knew Courtney Pratt and then he called her and gave the phone to me soooooooo I waited....but then she never picked up, so, I had to leave her a message hahaha but HOW COOL IS THAT!? So I guess from what I hear, Sister Pratt was like the best missionary ever and everyone loves her. That's sooo cool though that I'm getting to serve in the same place as her! It's awesome here. We drive a lot cause we live kinda far away in this nice apartment/house thing. I think its probably the nicest one in the mish. It has two bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen and a living room, its pretty sweet, except the other missionaries are super messy so I had to do some cleaning up. Every morning I go outside at 6:15 and read "A Marvelous Work and a Wonder" it's super good so far. It's awesome going outside in the morning too. I pull a chair out there and get in my sweatpants and my long sleeve shirt with my sweatshirt and my rain jacket--cause it's kiiiiiiinda cold in the morning, but i LOVE it! and I get to watch the sunrise every morning, and its quiet, and it smells suuuuuuuper good :) On Thursday we had a baptism for Guadalupe, this nice Mexican lady. Her two daughters, Pita and Marta got baptized a couple weeks ago. They have like a huge family, and it seems like we're always visiting someone that's related to them hahah. We always go to Alma's house, Alma is this lady who is an investigator, but like a loooong time investigator because her "husband" is really not her husband yet and the only way they can get married would be to both go back to Mexico cause he's illegal, so that's kiiiiinda lame, and he's not interested at all... but Alma is super awesome, and she's gonna cut my hair this week cause it's been growing since I got out of the MTC hahaha it's super long. I'm gonna try to grow out my Mexi stache too, cause 1. you can't see it and 2. it's awesome and 3. So I can blend in..... all the Mexicans make fun of me....ALLL of them, about my hair and my name and stuff, ya it's just wonderful... but anyways after Guadalupe's baptism we picked up some Little Caesars pizza and went over to Alma's to celebrate. Alma has this little kid Nathan who I always play with. He speaks Spanish so it's super funny cause I can't really understand him. He's probably like 5 or 6, he's funny though...we just play with toys and he chases me around and stuff hahah its great. They love to feed us here. We eat little taco things all the time. We visited this lady Karla in the ward, and she has this little perfume business out of the front of her house, but it's totally legit and looks super nice. It's totally by word of mouth too. But, she has like all the super nice perfumes, and we were trying on a bunch and mmmmm I smell soooo good with the True Religion one hahahhah It smells super good, you should try it :P It's awesome. Then we talked to her about the gospel and cleared some stuff up for her because she's a recent convert I think we're going over to her house for a little Halloween thing with all the missionaries at the end of this month:) So that'll be fun :) I'm super excited to really get into things this week, and get some more investigators and baptisms. The Mexican people are so nice and easy to work with. I hope I get better at Spanish too, pray for me, and pleeeeease pray that I'll get my visa!! pleeeeeeease! cause I really, really, reeeeeeeeeally wanna get to Mexico. There's a new elder here. He's the district leaders companion, Elder LYON. He's in our stake...weird huh, you probably know his family. He went to Torrey Pines, but I've never met him before, weird huh!! but he's a super nice kid. I hope I get to do exchanges with their companionship :) Conference was SO good! I took tons of notes and learned so much. I ONLY fell asleep once too, and it was only for like 5 minutes!!! I'm so proud of myself :) I looooved Elder Hollands talk at the beginning of the morning Saturday session! I felt the spirit so strong during that whole session, it was amazing! Do you ever notice how much trees are related into the gospel??? It hit me Sunday afternoon during the second session when the guy talked about the hollow tree filled with trash, then the guy after him talked about a tree too!! Then we have the "tree of life" and the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" then the burning bush, which i count as a tree :) Then the olive tree, then planting a seed for a tree.... there are like a ton of parables and metaphors that have trees in them!! It's so funny...and I also thought; God probably created some things in nature so that we could one day relate it to the gospel, because there are sooooo many things we can compare trees to in the gospel. I think He created them like that on purpose :) There are a ton of trees too. Think about how many trees there are. It's crazy. There are way more trees here in Nogales than in Tucson. It's way more beautiful here....I'll take some pictures :) Well back to conference, it was just SO good. I loved Uchtdorfs talk and the Saturday morning session was amazing I thought! The talk on charity on Sunday was super good, and I thought it was cool how they really focused this conference around faith, feeling the spirit, and agency and how we use our choices...there's a lot to be learned. I loved it and took like 12 pages of notes!! crazy huh! That's a record for me hahah it was just awesome and I can't wait to get the new Ensign with all the talks in it and study them more. I'll tell ya my favorite talks next time I email probably :) yup, that's pretty much my week, love you all!
Love,
Elder Bertha
