Hey family,
Well, to start off, it has been soo hot this week. I´m not sure what the temperature has been but my tender gringo skin has been taking a beating from the sun. Also this last week is “La Semana Santa” (holy week) to remember Easter and the events leading up to it. Its pretty cool that there´s a big focus on it as a culture. Everyone takes work and school off for the week and go up north to the beaches…I honestly don’t know how some of these people afford it, but they definitely need of a good vacation. The sad part is that during the “Holy Week” where they celebrate the resurrection and the atonement and everything, A lot of the people just get incredibly drunk for the 7 days…it’s a lot like Christmas here haha. It is the weirdest thing though going around contacting because NOBODY is home because they are up north in the place called Tela. My area has been a ghost town so its been a little slow lately.
Elder Quevedo and I had a pretty crazy lesson last Monday though. We found this family in this really shady part of my area called La Ventania. Its just a bunch of shacks along the side of this river with a lot of marijuana that the local gangs are growing. Anyways, we got this reference to teach the granddaughter of Hilario (who we baptized a month ago). We went to teach out the back door of the house right by the river because it was really hot inside, so we were just sitting there in this really jungle-y area and as we were teaching I saw the largest spider I have ever seen in my life crawl up onto my companion´s shoulder. It was just like those tarantulas you would see on TV only a little longer/skinner legs…but furry and everything. When I saw it I let out an involuntary audible “oh..my..gosh.” Elder Quevedo looked over at his shoulder, jumped up out of his chair, then hit the spider and sent it flying about 15 feet away. He is a champ and held back his tears from being terrified as we finished teaching.
Also we got a set of some ghetto concrete weights in the house so we´ve been lifting in the mornings, which makes exercise a little more exciting at 5:30 in the morning…I’m also trying not to get fat here in the office haha we sit a lot during the day and eat a lot too. I´ve been kinda sick lately though, every transfer I get an annoying cold for a couple days.
Easter was good. It was just a pretty normal Sunday; it was really nice though because a lot more people opened their doors and were more receptive to our message because of the date. We had 6 really positive contacts and found some new investigators. There were two investigators that showed up to the neighboring ward of their own initiative and during the Sunday school class they told the missionaries that they wanted to be baptized and everything…the good news is that they actually live in Jardines de Toncontín (my area)! The missionaries gave us the reference and we went to their house right after church and they were very excited to see that we came to visit them so soon after. We couldn’t teach them because her husband wasn’t home, but we set an appointment for Wednesday. Tender mercies…
We´ve been having a really tough time lately in the area, we haven’t baptized recently but we have a lot of investigating families that are really really positive. The hard thing is that everyone of them has a pretty big problem that keeps them from going to church or getting baptized…La Familia Ramirez Pineda the wife broke her leg really bad and can´t even use crutches to leave the house. There are 5 in that family and said that they know the Book of Mormon is true but they don’t want to go without their mom. Abraham y Consuelo are really old and they both can’t go at the same time because they sell stuff from their house and they are afraid to leave their house alone they´ll get robbed. They know the church is true as well. Samir has gone to church 3 times, but if he gets baptized his family will kick him out of the house. La Familia Matute, I already told you about their situation how the wife needs to get divorced from her first husband, but they keep coming to church every Sunday…I just really hope they don’t get discouraged. La Familia Hernandez, they have a testimony of the restoration, but the husband has a really hard walking because has really bad knees and they have 2 little kids that the mom can´t handle on their own… It’s been frustrating because here are these 10 or 11 people who want to be baptized but for one reason or the other just can’t…right now at least.
About the mole that Elder Ray removed haha…Sorry I didn’t let you guys know before, but it was just on my neck right where my collar is and it would rub against my shirt all day and was really uncomfortable… Elder Ray said that he could take it off real quick and easy so while I was in the office he just numbed it up and then cut it off. It wasn’t a big procedure or anything but the next time I´ll let you all know before.
Also, I haven’t gotten any Dearelders in about 2 months…Its not super reliable down here so I think it would just be better if you emailed me the letters that you would normally send through that and I’ll just print them off. Speaking of…Cole is back home right? When does Elder Lontine get home? And when do Trent and Brandon head off? Has max gotten his call yet?
Well, that about sums it up for this week. Oh yeah, if someone plans on sending me a package in the future It would be nice to have more of those Shout wipes…they work better than the tide to-go pens I think (good call Ali). And a small Colorado flag patch to sew on my bag would be sweet. Also that journal that David gave me for Christmas is almost filled up, if someone could send me another one like it that would be really great.
I love you all! Thanks for everything. I have the best family in the world! Let me know how everybody is doing, I love getting your letters and photos.
Con mucho amor,
Elder Archibald
Ps. Those scripture covers that I bought forever ago, well the lady said that it’s likely that I could be getting them this week…keep your fingers crossed.
pps. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELLI!
No comments:
Post a Comment