Ok so I have taken way too long to read all of your emails and I haven’t even gotten through all of them yet. First I will just start by answering dad’s questions. Yes we get mail by going to the mission home. I have not sent anything yet because I just haven’t had time but I did get some more of your letters last Thursday and I got the package of pictures Katie sent me. We go to the mission home every Thursday and that is when we get our stuff.
I haven’t had a chance to get my shirts or pants made. P-days have been busy lately. On the 20th we had the amazing chance to go see Elder Bednar in our mission home. It was awesome. He pretty much just opened it to let people ask questions and I got to shake his hand at the end. It was awesome.
My comp is from Colorado he is a bit of a country kid. Kind of like me he had a bit of land and some horses and a cow and chickens. We only played soccer on the first P-day. I guess they always just get together at that big field when the newbie’s come in like me. So we haven’t played soccer again yet.
The language isn’t too bad I can actually understand some people when they talk clearly and slowly. There are a lot of people who slur and the old people I can never understand and lots of people just mumble. Me and my comp switch off teaching principles of the lessons and I usually take a long time to say what I want and then after I’m done he usually sums up what I said in 2 or 3 sentences that actually make sense. But at least I am practicing.
Water. We don’t have a filter in our house but what everyone does here is there are little shops on like every corner called commandos that sell clean big 5 gallon jugs of water. That is what we drink. Plus I have my water bottle filter thing and I can fill that with the faucet water. Oh did I mention I take showers with buckets of cold water every morning? Or that we can’t flush toilet paper because it clogs the sewer? Yes it stinks.
San Isidro probably is by the airport because I see and hear airplanes taking of a lot. I think it is east of the capitol.
I did not feel the earthquake but some people we asked said that they did. We have seen a few gringos like me come in to help with relief efforts so we do see some white people every once in a while.
As far as food goes I have been surviving. We all make a whole ton of rice and beans for lunch and usually get some bananas or some sort of pasta with it. The bad news about food is though we can’t really eat fish here because I think they use a chemical to kill the fish that my stomached is not used to so it’s almost a guarantee diarrhea food.
And as far as news goes for me: the most exciting things that have happened or just stuff I remember. When Elder Bednar came that was cool. Today we played dominos for like 3 hours. Dominos is huge here everyone just sits outside those colmados and plays like all day and night. I hated it today though because I just lost and everyone made fun of me in Spanish because I didn’t know how to play. We are allowed to eat with the mission leader and the bishop so we had lunch with the mission leader today. It was just kind of relaxing.
A few interesting things I forgot to tell you guys. Dad you should see how they tighten their barb wire fences around here. We helped I guy build his fence and he just had all the wire wrapped around a stick and just pulled as tight as he could.
Another interesting tool we saw was this guy had a skill saw like yours and he had strapped it to a board and flipped it upside down, set the board on top of a couple stacked up crates and had himself a nice little table saw. He just zip tied the trigger down and unplugged it to turn it off. It is pretty crazy a lot of people are good and making things here out of nothing. Like couches--that what this guy was making. And it was just like dump wood.
And yesterday we had like 15 contacts which was good. Our goal everyday is 10 which we haven’t been hitting. And since we did it yesterday we saw a little miracle. We found one guy who used to live in the Bronx. We taught him and his wife and at the end asked them if they prayed and received an answer that this is the only true church if they would be baptized. The guy said yes so fast it was cool.
Creed
