Week 54

Bananas

Monday, January 24, 2011 12:25 PM
Hey family,

Here am I healthy, happy and safe. Well I`m as healthy as a person can expect for living in a 2nd world country I don`t know if that exists, but I feel bad calling Uruguay a 3rd world country. Recently, I was attacked by a small bout of diarrhea. For some reason my digestive system decided that it no longer wanted to process the food last night and yesterday. :) I do seem to be doing better today though.

Um, let`s answer questions first today. Sadly, I do not take vitamins...so I think that if I were to start taking them daily for the rest of the mission, I`d be able to bring them home. Right now, they are renting a spot in my suitcase...good income. Yes, I do use my retainers at least 5 or 6 nights per week. They don`t bother me at all, so why not use them. (PS that`s great that Chris got his braces off. I will be needing a picture). And as far as mail, I got letters 51 and 52 and 2 letters from Grandma...that`s it for this week. Hopefully, I`ll get some more this week (i.e. tomorrow), we can only hope I think.

Now, as far as the missionary week here, it`s going great. However, we have this weird phenomenon in our area. We have a group of investigators who have accepted a date to get baptized and we have a group of investigators who are progressing towards baptism. Theoretically, those 2 groups would not be distinct. Sadly, in this area they are. That is to say, there is no investigator with a date that is progressing (i.e. going to church), and none of the investigators that are progressing can have baptismal dates because they all have to get married. It`s an interesting situation. On that note, we had 9 investigators in church yesterday. It was super great. We had our 3 awesome couples and we`re now teaching the daughter of one of them So yeah, it was super awesome...and our gospel principles class was better. We`ve been having this Brother from the stake come teach it and he`s good but there is absolutely no class discussion and he likes to go off on random, pointless tangents. So I have to pay attention and clear up questions.

Anyhoo, we do have one of those couples mentioned above who are going to supposedly get a marriage date this week, which means they should be able to get baptized in mid February. For that reason among others, I`m really hoping and praying that I stay another change in this area (another reason is that my comp is awesome and I`m enjoying having an obedient comp). So hopefully, they along with a couple other people will get baptized in February. I would have liked to have some baptisms this month, but it just wasn`t too feasible with how much rebuilding we had to do in the area. We are being blessed a ton though.

Let`s see...oh yeah, I also got the box of cookies! And the majority of them were not broken which was also a surprise and they taste really good...so thank you for the Christmas cheer. Hooray!

This last week we managed to pick up a foreign investigator...she lives in Peru. Yep. She`s here visiting family or something until March. I don`t know if it`s possible to baptize her, but if it is, and she ends up getting baptized, how cool would that be to say that we baptized somebody who lives in Peru. Woo!

Quick picture update. The first one is of my comp and me with our 25 pound zucchini we got from our investigators. And then some random pictures I took when I was bored. :) Enjoy.

So, I think that`s all the exciting news I have. Life is pretty rocking. Since I`m now on the declining side and also because my mission is pretty much lined up directly with calendar years...every month that passes is one less month I have. Sadness. I can`t believe that this is the last week of January and then we`re already in February 2011. Seems like we just celebrated the new year. Oh well. I`m working hard and having a blast so I`ve got no complaints. My comp is awesome like I have said. I really hope I can stay another change here. Good times.

Oh, and thanks to Dad for the basketball updates. Is this Jimmer`s last year? Or is he a junior? I can`t remember. That`s pretty sweet that they`re doing so well though. Good stuff.

Mmk, that`s all I`ve got for now. Hopefully this satisfies the desire that y`all have for Guayan updates. Yeppers. Have a good week. Send me some cold weather. :D

Love Always,

DJ