Investigators at Church

This week was awesome.  Recently we have found a ton of investigators, and we have been really busy.  For a couple of weeks there, the work had slowed down a bit, but now it has picked up again, and we have been running all over the place recently.

Yesterday was an amazing day on sunday.  We had 8 of our investigators that came to church, and including all the children of the investigators, we had 19 nonmembers in sacrament meeting.  It was crazy.  It was also pretty insane trying to get everything set up so that they could all come.  We had two of our investigatos who are sisters, and they both have three kids, so in total there were 8 people that we had to get from st. pauls to Hope mills for church, which is like trying to get someone from Salem to Orem.  I started calling people on Friday, and we just barely got something set up on Saturday in the evening just before our nightly planning.  I was stressing out like crazy, because it would be the worst thing in the world to find someone that would commit to come to church as long as they could get a ride, and then us not get a ride for them.

So I've got some good news, you now that mouse that was in the apartment.  Well, it's dead now.

Also, on saturday we had the baptism of [former investigator], which wen't really well.  And Right afterwords, our investigator,  made papusa for us.  I don't know if you've ever eaten papusa before, but it's really good.  It's made of the Maseca flour (corn flour for tortillas), and you stuff cheese and beens inside the maseca flour and flatten it down and cook it on a skillet.  Then she made some sort of salad and salsa that you put on top of it.  But we'll just say it was good.

This was pretty much everything that I can think of to write to you about, we were pretty much just running from apointment to apointment this week.

A Mouse!

This week was actually pretty crazy. On Thurs. we had interviews with Pres. Cotteral, and then on Fri/sat I went on exchanges with our zone leader. The exchanges were pretty fun, we did a lot and also ate a lot. One of their investigators cooked carne asada for us in the morning for lunch, and then in the evening we ate some food with one of their members. They're members is from Honduras, so I hadn't ever seen the food that we ate before, but it was something like a hamburger patty with something mixed in with it, and a salad made with just boiled eggs and potatoes (no, it wasn't potato salad). But it was kind of funny, because [zone leader] was sick and the doctor said that for now he can only eat rice, applesauce, toast, etc. So he had to watch me as I ate the food and he ate his bowl of rice. But we also taught four lessons that day, which is a lot. But it was fun being able to speak to him in Spanish the whole day (He doesn't speak much English), that always helps me out a lot with my Spanish.

On Saturday we found a little surprise in our kitchen cupboards. I got back from the exchange and looked in my cupboard and saw a pile of shredded up bread. I saw that and asked my companion what happened, he said he didn't know, he just thought I had done something crazy with my bread. So I pulled my loaf of bread out of the cupboard to se what had happened and saw a little head popping out of the loaf of bread. So as you could imagine I through it back in the cupboard. My companion then grabbed the loaf of bread and put it in the trash. But there was something alive in that, we couldn't just throw it in the kitchen trash. So I pulled it out and brought it out side and through it on the ground, and a little mouse came running out of the loaf of bread. We went back inside and pulled out the microwave and there was a lot of droppings from that mouse, it looked like it had been hanging out there for quite some time. So, now we have some poison out and all of my food is in the fridge.

Other than that there hasn't been too much of anything exciting this week....O wait, Actually, [investigator] … is going to bet baptized on the 2nd of April (which means if everything goes as planned, he'll get baptized before I leave!)

Also the daughter of on of our members is going to get baptized soon. The mom is a recent convert, she was baptized about 8 months ago, so we have been teaching the daughter. … But she'll be getting baptized this Saturday.

Good, Great, Yeah

What is your p-day schedule like?

STudy like normal until 10 30, write home, do shopping, come back home, hang around the apt.. It's not too exciting. When I was in Raleigh we would go and play basketball for a couple hours, or some other activity. But here, we live out in the country and there's not too much out here to do. One time we wen't to play basketball, but we had a bunch of dogs come chase us off. It got to the point where one of us would shoot the ball while the other made sure that that dogs stayed back, so we left and we havn't tried doing that again. So at the apartment, often times we clean the apartment, write letters, cook/eat food (sometimes I'll spend a little more time and make a better meal), etc. And Preparation day ends at 6 oclock, and we go at and work after that.

How long do you have for e-mail?

I don't think there is really a set time to be honest. I thought there was before, but I looked in the missionary handbook and I couldn't find where it said how much time, but it does say that we shouldn't preocupy ourselves too much with communicating with friends or family.

Do you do all of your wash on p-day?

yea, most of the appartments in the mission have washing and drying machines.

All of your shopping too?

yea.

How is the weather?

Good, it's getting a little warmer, I'm hoping...I honestly don't know how to spell this anymore, but la temporada de los trajes, ends soon.

How are you doing?

Good

On saturday, we translated for the womens conference for the stake. This time around went a little better than last time, but I have found out that most women's vocabs are different then mens (you know how I might say that something is orange and sharee might say that it's peachy). So I kind of just had to try and figure out what they were saying and put it in my own words, because I don't know how to translate peachy...duraznoso...?? But then they fed us lunch (it was a very light lunch, so I ate about 3 plates of food, and then they started taking away the extra plates around us...They had about 30 extra plates a food that nobody was going to eat!) but it was really weird, because the theme of the conference was about the temple, so during lunch they had a "fashion show, where some of the young women modeled their mom's wedding dresses. And as a missionary that is REALLY awkward, so we just ate our food as quick as we could and got out of there.

Yesterday the presidency in the branch got got changed. Pres. Martinez is recovering well, but it's going to be a while until he'll be back in full swing. So the new branch president is now Pres. Urias.

So, kind of a funny story. On Thursday we had exchanges with elder chupin and Elder Raleigh. I wen't over with elder Raleigh, but when we went to exchange back we both drove half way (because it's about 60 mi one way to get from our apartment to their apartment) and we switched back over, and started driving away and my companion told me that he didn't have our phone and that elder chupin still had it. So that's when we started going crazy, because you cant do a whole lot without a phone. so we pulled in to a gas station and got some change to call the other elders and tell them to come back, but when we called them they didn't answer. So we left a message and told them that we would call them back in a few minutes (because we have a rule that we can't use the phone while were in the car, even if your the passanger.) and so we thought that maybe they just needed to pull over. so we wen't in side, and I needed to use the bathroom, and when we left there was an old lady that needed help putting her walker in her car, so we offered to help. But then she started telling us the whole life story of her and her family (I know as missionaries, we should take time and listen which we did do, but our phone was driving down the rode!). So finally when she was done talking (half an hour later, we wen't back over to the pay phone and called them, and got them to stop, but we had to drive an extra 15 miles to get it.

There wasn't too much more that was exciting this week, and this letter is getting long.