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

Week 13

So, my entire email was just deleted because I tryed to upload some pictures, and that really annoyed me. I am going to try to do a cliffnotes version of my email because I dont have time to write another one:

Hi family and friends!

It was really foggy this morning!
I love you!
Progressing investigators are awesome!
People going inactive because of other people is not awesome!
I have cool pictures!

Bye!
-Elder Hale

No, I am not going to do that, because it is not fair to you or anything, however sucky it is. So a slightly less cliffnotes version.

The weather here is really interesting right now, because during the day it is really hot, and at night it gets colder that you would think. And this morning it was really foggy. I have pictures of it, but I am not going to try to send them, lest I fall into a fit of computer nerdrage.

I really like it when investigators progress. When they hear what you have to say about this gospel of hope, and then act for themselves to find out if this is true through prayer, it is so cool. We have two progressing families and its going to be cool if we can get them baptized. One of them has a son that is 17 years old, so future missionary, aww yeah.

More on the point of people finding out for themselves if the gospel is true. This wasn't in the original, erased email (don't miss it too much, it ended feeling a bit depressing). When God saved Noah and his family from the flood that would cleanse the world of the evil that was there, he didn't save them all by lifting them up into a cloud, or doing some miraculous thing. He had Noah build an ark. He had Noah do everything he already could, and then Jehovah filled in the rest. We need to do the same. God always did that too, now that I look at it. When the people of God, the ones that choose to follow the prophets and commandments of God, try with all their might to do what is commanded to save them, the Lord fills in the rest. So if investigators or even we as members desire salvation, we need to do all we can. It is kinda cool.

We had an elder here, Elder Aranda, get a Dear Juan (spanish joke, ha) today. I am really glad I don't have to worry about that.

I am going to end this email with the same ending as the deleted one. I am going to leave you all with a really cool scripture that was told to my zone by my old branch president, Pres. Shumway, the Sunday before we left the MTC. It is 2 Nephi 33:6

I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell.

I glory in my Jesus. :)

Love you guys,
Elder Hale