February 22, 2012

Hello Family!!

Yes, we eat at a member’s house every day except for Mondays, in which the members that really like us usually invite us over to eat anyway. It is with random sisters of the ward; they just print a calendar and give it to everyone. I get about 1400 Pesos a month, which is about 120 dollars and that is how we pay for transportation and breakfast and dinner. To give you an idea about what we spend it on: a box of cereal-30 to 50 pesos, a half gallon of milk-23, peanut butter-45, oatmeal without flavor I think 400g-10, 1k of bananas-10, bus-10, metro-4.5.

As far as the question about what Tristan should do to prepare to serve, I really am not sure. If you are looking for a secret recipe there is one, and the prophets have told us lots about it -- studying and praying. Tell Tristan not to study weird things but to study about everyday situations that he has (or with his own questions). Doing this, he will really be interested in the subject and will be able to recall what he learned later. Another thing is, he could think about all the commandments that the Lord has given us and think or write down specific times when he as seen the blessings of keeping them in his life, or when he has not wanted to keep them and wasn't as blessed.

We have had a riot this week. I'm pretty sure I've told you about Lucy. We saw her all this week until Friday morning when she left out of town and got back Saturday night. We talked to her a lot about getting baptized this week. She said she would if the weather was good and we had hot water - she has told us that before and she decided to not do it at the last minute so I didn't really believe her. Sunday morning we decided to pass by her house and see if she was going to go. Turns out she was already there and had been for a couple hours. She had to escape from her house early because her daughters don't like the church, but she was lost for a while because she told her daughters she had gone with a sister from the ward that is her friend and lives close. Nobody knew where she was for a while. We got to church after the sacrament and found her there. She told us she was ready to get baptized (luckily we already did the interview) so we went to start the font filling, but the boiler didn't work so we called the zone leaders and they started their font filling with ´´hot water´´. Meanwhile we found a brother who could take us and got everything worked out to go to the zone leaders building. When we got there the water was just above my knees and not hot. But I wasn't about to wait for it to fill because she still wasn't sure if she was going to do it. We had a quick service (I don't think she understood much, she's basically deaf and blind) and then I baptized her. I had to do it twice because old people don’t really bend. The second time I put my leg over hers and my shoulder pushed her down (good thing that she isn’t either tall or fat (remember how deep the water is). I was a little worried I drowned her but she got up and the testigos said it was good.

I am running out of time (tell Tristan to learn how to type fast). Yesterday I was the sickest I've been the whole time I've been here. We ate some pretty shady stuff and on top of that I have been stuffed up with a sore throat. I got diarrhea around 5:00 and around 7:00 we were on a bus. It was about 110 degrees in there and packed with people so I could barely move and I got really nauseous. I got off the bus just in time and threw up more than I ever have in my entire life, meat and fried potatoes with agua de Jamica. I feel bad for all the people that had to see it, because it was on the side of a 4 lane highway during stop and go traffic. I didn't even think about getting back on that bus. We started to walk the rest of the way home, took a little nap on a random slab of concrete and walked for about 45 minutes until we gave up and took a taxi to the house. When we got to the house I couldn't even rest because we still hadn't picked up our clothes from the sisters house (about a half mile away). Needless to say we did not go to the temple today as planned. I think it's going to be a couple days before I can get on another bus. Thank heavens we live with otros elders and they could help and give me a blessing last night. I feel pretty good today.

Anyway, I've probably made you all sick in just reading this so I think I'll stop. I hope the best for you all and I love you.

Elder Waite