July 14, 2008

Well things are still chugging along… very, very slowly. These days with E. Cameron just drag on and on and on, and I feel like it’ll never end… I did get your package though, and that was just amazing, with like a full candy store of skittles and starbursts, so yeah, that was awesome. Also I finally have some decent music to listen to with the Last of the Mohicans and I really like one of those cd’s you sent me of hymns, the white one. Its really good. So thank you for that.

Other than that, we had a good day today… we went to Pizza Hut! Which actually wasn’t like pizza hut at all, but at least it was better than most of the pizza one can find here in Paraguay. I’ve been taking some really cool pictures these last couple days, but this computer doesn’t read my USB thumb drive thing, so I can’t get any sent to you unfortunately. I was really hoping to get to organize my photos on the computer, because copying them over to my chip time after time gets things a little “busy” on the camera. And being ODD when it comes to organization, its really starting to bother me to have the photos like that.

But yeah, I’ve also decided that I don’t yet feel like I’m actually a missionary. I mean, I walk down the dirt paths, with a white shirt and tie and teach people who live in little cardboard and tin panel huts all day long, but the knowledge that I’m actually on that 2 year voyage that I’ve wanted to take for as long as I can remember hasn’t really set in. I’m just on a sweet vacation out in the jungle of Paraguay right now. At moments it comes to me, like when I’m playing with the little member children, and I have flashbacks to when the Elders used to play with me, and when I talk and look at this person who has changed their lives in a million ways because they met me, but the day to day moments just feel like this is just one big summer camp get away where I´m just having fun with my friends… most of whom can’t speak English. That part in itself is really weird. I think I might have mentioned it before, but I can’t remember. Just the fact that you guys back home couldn’t come here and join in on some of these amazing conversations with these amazing people, because you can’t understand them, while for me, I don’t even have to try to understand them anymore, I don’t even think as I switch from one language to the other. Its hard to remember the times when I didn’t understand what they were saying, but it was only 3 months ago. I don’t know how to really explain it, its just little thoughts like “oh mom and dad would get along so great with this family, but wait, they wouldn’t be able to talk to them, never mind.” Its crazy stuff let me tell ya.

But anyways, I hope all is going well at home, and I love you all,

Elder Dennis