Week 14- Pica Pica!!!

Ok, time for the good parts of my week, and let me tell you, there are many. I'm just going to bust out my handy dandy notebook and see what my past week had for me.

On tuesday we had a good day with everything. Tuesday was some sort of holiday, I don't know what it was called, but it essentially consisted of people hitting each other in the head with Pica-pica. Pica-pica is a dried out egg shell, mostly intact, filled with little peaces of paper, then has a piece of paper glued to the hole and painted random colors. And all you do is go up to another person and CRACK it on their head! Its cool because it is super easy to clean up (unless it goes down your shirt) and doesnt hurt at all. But sometimes, kids fill it with other stuff, like I got hit in the head with one full of sand and More-caf (its like Postum, but tastes better), so all this powder was in my hair and whatnot.

We also taught a family, I don't know their family name, but the grandma is named Comacita. Comacita is a tall, gangly old woman. In fact, she looks like an old version of Olive Oyl from Popeye. She and her daughter and granddaughter listened to us and participated as we taught about the restoration, in which I made the...mistake of up and up saying that the Pope was not a prophet and didn't have any priesthood authority. The daughter is catholic. So, we spent the next part tip-toeing and answering questions and while I think we ended well, and she said she would pray, I just hope I didn't mess the whole lot up and offend her. Pfffffff.

Wednesday, we had district meeting which turned out well. Especially the part where when the whole zone came out of the chapel, our district pegged them all with Pica-pica! We all joined in,the whole zone, and it was awesome. But besides that the rest of the day, every single appointment fell. :(

We celebrated my comps 20th birthday on wednesday. Some really good cake. I normally dont like the cake here, and this is why: They always buy the cake frozen, so when they serve it, it is thawed. Good right? Wrong. Because there was the excess of liquid that was produced by the freezing, the cake is soggy. I am literally swallowing bites whole just so I dont have to have it in my mouth for too long. :P

The whole week, we have been taking a boy with us to go teach. He has been having problems. He is the youngest, picked on by his brother, and no one really pays attention to him. So he hangs out with the wrong peepl, and acts up for attention. Once he almost swung a machete at his grandpa. Yikes. So we have been taking him, and it has really helped boost his esteem. He hugs and helps his grandma, brings his own Bible and BoM, and although he is too shy to help us teach, I try to involve him by asking him questions that he can answer with some form of confidence, like "What did Adam and Eve do?" or "Who baptized Jesus?" and the like. Hopefully he will recognize what he needs to do and do it, thereby making him happier with his family in the long run.

On Saturday, we did alot of service. We moved some people from one house to another by essentially handcarrying everything that wasnt a dresser about a half a mile through houses and traffic. Heavy awkward stuff too. Once, we were walking down the street, and an old man came out of his house, saw the sheer number of elders and said "Oh Dios mio, gringos!" Lol!

Then as a district we had a carwash. While some elders were washing, others were talking to the people about our message. Some people didn't believe us that it was free, but we got alot of work, alot of pilas references, and a nice sunburn. I got the whole red-ish face, but white lines where my glasses go. :)

We also discovered that one of our long time investigators, Geovanni, who wants to be baptized and attends everything, but his dad wont sign, was drinking. We passed him on the street after dinner, and he was with his friends, saw us and hung his head. Man, that just sucks. Fear can rob us of honesty, and honesty is the only thing that can set us free, honesty with ourselves and others.

Things are going good with the spanish. I am understanding people more, getting accostumed to the accent and the speed, and all it is now is learning the words that they are saying. Man my vocab is limited! I figure that next change, which is next week, I am probably going to get put with a native comp, and then necesity is going to  help my spanish leaps and bounds.

Not much time to answer questions, the cafe closes soon.

Dad, awesome job on working with neighbors. Keep it up. And the maps you have are right, but the lines that google added for the streets are way wrong. Nice fish.

Mom, killed the fleas with a flea collar. Stomachs fine, but cant go.  I still dont like cilantro, but they dont use it much anyways, just eggs and beans. Lots of wards.

2 minutes. Time is against me like scott said. And yes scott, I am tall. :P

I am not going to upload pictures because last time I tryed, I got a virus on my sd card. It is fine, along with my pics. More stuff? I dunno. More ties, not blue ones.

 Love you all!
 Elder Hale