On The Lord's Errand, A Journal of Elder Branden Astle's Two Years in Puebla, Mexico: April 15, 2013

First of all Branden was not able to email last week because the Internet was down.

Aye mum,

Well I love you so much and just love the life and being alive and speaking Spanish and teaching people and being obedient to the commandments of God. God blesses us more than we can imagine when we are obedient with exactness. I love you mom. I love everyone from home. I'm learning to love more and I realized maybe I didn't do a very good job at that when I was home so I hope you'll forgive me, I love you all so much, I'll be better I promise. Well these last two weeks were really good, apart from not being able to email or read every one's emails either. First, mom I want you to know you are beautiful. Second, tell Kimmy she's beautiful, and that Scott's really blessed :P I'm so thankful for Kimmy being my sister and Scott being my brother. That came to me while I was looking at the pictures. I love my family and I love the girls and THERE?S GOING TO BE ANOTHER ONE!!! I'm so excited I started laughing from being so excited when I read it was a girl and everyone looked at me funny haha. And now I'm crying because I have the best family in the whole entire world.

This week we had my first baptism. Jimmy is a 9 year old. He is amazing. He's quiet but he wants to do what's right so much. His dad passed away not too long ago and his mom isn't a member but she doesn't feel ready for baptism yet. Jimmy smiles so much since his baptism, I know it's the Holy Ghost blessing his life. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be a missionary.

I got the package from Easter mom thank you so much, I really love the ipod I put Mormon messages on it and some of the conference talks, it's really great and thank you for the music you put on it. I loved Matthew's card so much, he is SO good at drawing! and Bobby's made me laugh so much, we had exchanges with the Zone leaders and me and elder Leifson read through them all and we were laughing the whole time. And I understood your letter and loved it mom :) and dad's was so good too and actually all of them made me really happy thank you. I did give away the headphones to a member though, we aren't allowed to have them. But don't worry because in exchange he bought me a backpack, I needed one SO much.

Hey mom I was thinking, do you want to be a missionary? Of course you do. What do you think about Dillon Forbe's mom? I think they would be great.

Lately I have been learning a new dialect and I'm learning to speak it pretty well, it's called nauatl. It's tough because there are a lot of "tl" sounds which is hard to pronounce but I'm getting the hang of it.

The other day we ate 5 times in one day. That's meal and dessert too.

I found a deodorant that smells like snowboarding.... it's dangerous haha

Do you think you could hook me up with singing lessons from Tim? The guy in the Tabernacle Choir. I still want to join one day. I also played during conference haha.

Finally, to end, a story!

We had exchanges the other day with the Zone Leaders. Elder Leifson came with me, he's one of my good friends. In the morning I went to do my language study and I wanted to do it on the roof so we went up. After I finished after a few minutes we went to leave. We got locked on the roof. We tried everything to get down, I turned off the water to the building to see if anyone would come up to turn it on but no, I was even going to use a garden hose and tie a harness and lower myself down to our house's window because it was unlocked. We were stuck on the roof for an hour and a half. Luckily a little boy in our ward was passing by. He went and got his brother who then went and got the hermana who lives beneath us. She came and let us out and said we were really lucky because she was going into the city for the whole day in 10 minutes. We would have been stuck on the roof all day. :D Then we went and made that fancy breakfast. I also have some other stories from this week that I can only tell you when I get home :P

I love you all so much, thank you for being my family and loving me. I'll talk to you soon,

Elder Branden Carl Astle