May 5, 2008

* Just a quick editorial note from Tracie -
He asked us to put some birthday $ into his account so he can buy a guitar - we knew he couldn't go 2 years without one! That's what the first paragraph is all about -

Hello again,

Well first off, its SaladO, not a. Haha, and secondly, the $ is up to you. I was thinking somewhere about $200-250 or so. And the reason I wanted to pick one up now is cause there´s an Elder here who´s looking to sell his and get a better one, but I found out this past week he´s wanting $300, and that was a little more than I was looking to spend, so I don´t think I´m going to do that anyway. But alot of Elders have them around here... just no one who´s living with me, go figure haha.

Alright, now for the exciting stuff for you: the call. Actually, I´m not going to need a phone card, because you´re actually going to be calling me. We´ll be taking the call from a member´s house, one of the few with a land line down here, and its alot easier than going to the church and fighting 10 other Elders for the phone. Call at about 6:15pm on Sunday. I´ll be there waiting, and we get an hour to chat. Make sure you call at 6:15 though, because we have to make sure we give enough time for E. Nilsen´s parents to call after our hour.

Okay, now to basically retype my letter from last week. haha. Okay, a little about Paraguay. FIrst off, about the roads. There´s three types of roads here. The 1st kind is actually paved, and these are the main arteries of the country, and in the bigger cities. The second type is this rock road thing, where its larger rocks are hand laid with sand, and they´re the roads that branch off the Ruto Principal (the paved road). And then thirdly, there´s dirt. But that brings me to the dirt. The dirt is just red sand and clay... at times it just feels like I´m walking along the beach, its awful. And then it decides to rain, and the entire landscape just turns into a mudpit, and you get home at night and your pants and shoes are just caked... okay, not caked, but there´s just mud all over them. I love it here though, it really is beautiful, and when its not raining, which isn´t too often so far, only about once a week, its just clear skies and palm trees and amazing fruit that is absolutely delicious. Although last week was FREEZING for some reason. It rained a little bit, but it was just cold. We were huddling in our blankets at night and in the morning in the apartment, and it made me really wish that I hadn´t sent my other sweaters home. But its all good, its warmed up again, and its about perfect right now.

Now for the buses, or colectivos. These things are CRAZY! The taxi drivers in NYC got nothing on these guys. First thing, they barely come to a stop, you just have to kind of hop on and off as they slow down. Second, the drivers are crazy multi-tasking. They take your money, dish out change, drive stick shift, watch for people signaling to get picked up, and for people signaling to get off, and when no one is getting on and they´re done dishing out change, they count the money they have! Its so fun to ride! haha I love em.

The ward here is so different. The kids just get up and run around during Sacrament meeting, its so funny. We have a new bishop, and he´s a somewhat recently returned missionary in his mid 20s, and he´s really trying to bring around some orginization into the church, which it desperately needs, and I think he´s doing a great job so far. And as for you question from last week, retention here is horrible. We try so hard to get these people into church, and for some reason they just don´t. And for the majority, its not like they´re doing anything bad really, they´re just not going to church. I don´t know what the deal is, Elder Nilsen and I are visiting some of them nearly everyday, and they say they´re going to church, and then they just don´t show up, and we can´t go round them up in the morning, because we´re busy rounding up our investigators. But some happier news, this week we have scheduled my first baptism! And this guy is just calidad, "quality", as they say here. Valeriano (pronounced Val-lay-dee-ano... they prounounce the r like aq d) got offered a job (he´s unemployed at the moment) to go work in Argentina, but he would have had to leave today, and he actually turned it down, because he wants to be baptized. He also quit smoking, going from a pack a day to none in just 4 days. So we´re pretty excited.

I´m trying to send pictures, but its not working very well... So if it gets through, you should be able to see. But anyways, my first thing of service was cutting down the growth along one of the "roads" or dirt paths near a members house that was getting kind of dangerous, with MACHETES! Wahahaha. It was awesome, though it definitely gave me some of the worst blisters of my life. And then this past Saturday we did a service activity with the youth that was just divisions, and we went and passed out invitations to an open house for a new chapel for a couple hours. That was pretty cool too. Oh, and as for my camera, don´t worry about that. 1, I don´t carry it with me ever, and second, I keep the memory card seperate so that if it is stolen for whatever reason, I´ll still have all the pictures. And the house is very safe, its an apartment above a store along the ruta principal thats gated, and trust me, there´s no getting in. I left the key in the house, and we came back for lunch, and we were doing all we could, and we weren´t able to get in.

As for the letters, I got them all today. I only get letters once a week at District meeting, and I got my card, so activate that as soon as you can. So yeah, there´s really no point to Dear Elder anymore, because I get them in the same amount of time as any other letter. And I also had my pants washed for the first time, and they came out fine. I was a little worried, so it was a big relief to see that. Anyways, all is awesome, I love it here, I´ll probably have an accent when I talk, and I gotta go.

Love you all,
E. Dennis