Mar 2, 2009

And the weeks keep moving on…

So yeah, I’m still here, and it’s still hotter than jalopeños frying in a pan. I don’t know, that’s what popped into my head. All I know is that it’s still hitting over a hundred everyday. And dad, its not dry Arizona heat, its New York humid heat… it sucks. Yesterday was like the worst day of my life, I was literally dying. This weekend something messed up my stomach. I didn’t have the runs but man it was not happy, so that definitely didn’t help. But our count of investigators just continues to grow. Right now we have 15 people, with 2 families with a baptismal date. This week I helped the Hermanas Smith and Arce out and baptized one of their men for them. It was cool, we had to go do the interview and then we were asking who he wanted to baptize him, talking about different men in the ward, but he wanted me to do it. So I kindly obliged. This week we don’t have too many baptisms, we’re planning on two, but then for the eleventh, we have a ton of people, with one family that’s just absolutely incredible. I think I mentioned them last time, Juan and Angelica. We found them through service and they’re about as golden as they come, so me and my comp are pretty stoked right now just because of them.

Um… I never got around to trying that root beer extract, I just never seem to have time, and I always forget. But seriously, I’m so busy as a zone leader, because we’re expected to get more numbers than everyone else (which we do cause we’re studs) to show the example, plus we don’t have like a single day that’s just like, normal. We always have meetings or interviews to do or we’re on divisions to boost the other elders, its insane! But I love it, I like keeping busy. Unfortunately my journal writing is kind of slacking now, because down time is absolutely zero. But I still try to hit it up 2-3 times a week when I can. This past week for example, I haven’t gotten to write yet about Friday, when at 7 in the morning we had a special meeting with Elders Jensen and Aidukaitis of the 70 with the ZLs of both missions in Paraguay, and then afterwards they met with everyone except zona lejos from our mission. That was just amazing, let me tell you. Blew my mind. Then I went on a division with Elder Agudelo from Colombia, who went on divisions with Elder Nilsen when Nilsen was his zone leader haha, so that’s a cool little reflection. And that night I had to perform the baptism of Virgilio for Hna Smith. So it was crazy. Definitely the craziest day I had last week.

Today we ate at Shangri-la though, which is like amazing all you can eat really fancy Chinese food with 12 of the elders from the zone, and we ate basically for free, because some man paid our billed for us. We went up to pay afterwards, and the cashier was like, He didn’t tell you? He paid your entire bill, except for drinks. So instead of dropping 45 mil I only paid 4 mil… that’s only .80 cents. We were all so surprised, and it was amazing. He paid like 100 dollars for all of us, and down here that’s over 500 mil… which is like, a LOT. We don’t think he was a member or anything either, just someone who came into contact with missionaries before and respected the sacrifice that we make to do what we do, and wanted to treat us. SO that was awesome.

Anyways, sorry if my letter is all over the place, I didn’t make an outline ahead of time like normal this week. Love ya lots,

Elder Dennis