It's Getting Cold

November 30, 2015

Hey family!!!!  

You´ve been cold out there in Utah I know I know but I just wanted to let you know that it´s getting a bit chilly in Nicaragua too.  This morning in the shower I was actually a bit chilly.  And the wind started blowing a bit which was super nice.

Sounds like you had a pretty good Thanksgiving as always so that´s good.  I´m glad that everyone got there safely in spite of the snow....  It was definitely weird because I knew basically what everyone would be doing and where they would be the whole day.  

 So it was a very normal week except for Thanksgiving.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we worked as normal.  We´ve been doing a TON of contacting just trying to find new positive people that will come to church.  We found a guy named Oscar who was baptized seven months ago but left for Costa Rica right after his baptism and only got back this week.  It was actually a miracle that we found him like the day after he got back because we were looking through our area book and came across him on Tuesday.  So we retaught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and then we came back the next day to teach his mom.  The lesson with his mom (not a member) was really good and she was super positive.  We also found a cool guy named José and when we asked what he wanted in life he´s just like, "I want to find a church to join so I can be like you guys and help others be saved".  So we´re like ok, we can help you with that.  Anyway he was super positive.  

Then Thursday was Thanksgiving and it was pretty much like a normal.  We woke up as normal, studied as normal.  But for lunch we had an activity with the ten missionaries in Juigalpa and we ordered some pizzas and soda.  I ate all the pizza I could and had a ton of Pepsi.  Then we went out as normal and worked.  At about four in the afternoon we went out to dinner at a relatively nice restaurant called La Hacienda.  I ordered chicken fajitas and it was actually really good.  It reminded me of fajitas you would get at Chili's except with the nasty corn tortillas they have here.  And they only gave me one tortilla so I ate most of it with a fork.  But I was still pretty full from the pizza so I was stuffed.  But really it was a pretty normal day.  The people here didn´t celebrate Thanksgiving at all.  Nobody really even knew what it was.  The Nicas have already been ready for Christmas for weeks.  

  

On Friday Elder Medrano and Hanson went to Boaco for District Meeting and I worked here in the area with Elder Merrill.  We had a pretty normal, uneventful day.  

   

In the mission Saturday is a special day, the day we get ready for Sunday.  We go around and teach everyone we committed to go to church during the week and recommit them to go to church and help them understand the blessings they´ll receive when they go.  So we went around and got everyone super pumped for Sunday.  Oscar´s mom was super excited and said she already washed the clothes so she could be ready on Sunday.  José wasn´t home though so that worried us a bit.  

  

So Sunday rolled around and....   disappointment.  Oscar´s mom wasn´t even at home in the morning and we found her walking away from her house in the afternoon with Oscar and her other son who was drunk.  They said in the morning they had to take the drunk son to the hospital and they were just leaving again for the hospital because right when they got home from the hospital the son started drinking again and got more sick.  I don´t know if I believe them but in the end we couldn´t get her to church.  We passed by José and he wasn´t home.  We passed by another five or six people who weren´t quite as positive but still had fechas and they either weren´t home, were hiding, or just wouldn´t go.  In the end we got the unbaptized son of a less active to go that turns 9 in January, two investigators of Medrano and Merrill that I hadn´t met yet, and a lady that showed up with her daughter.  One of the guys that came that Medrano and Merrill have been teaching is named Rolando and he´s amazing.  He´s done a lot of bad things in his past but truly wants to change.  He´s super excited to be baptized but we´re not sure when we´ll be able to baptize him because of how long he would need for repentence.  So ya, it was another frustrating Sunday but we got 5 people to come and it was better than most Sunday´s I´ve had so far.  

    

It´s pretty likely that this will be my last full week here in Juigalpa.  Typically people are only in their first area for two changes but you really never know.  So we´ll see but for sure I´ll be here still next week.  I know there are some people that have sent me packages but sorry, I still haven´t gotten any.  We can only get them when the zone leaders go to managua or when someone from managua comes here.  Last week when president came here for interviews I only got letters and this week nobody has come or gone.  I´ll probably get them this Wednesday when the zone leaders go to leadership counsel.  I´ve got my fingers crossed:)  

   

Thanks for giving me the cool news dad like the A380 landing in SLC.  Someone was telling us this week about the hijacked airplane that miraculously landed in SLC and I was able to let them know what really happened, how it actually wasn´t hijacked, how significant and cool it was that an A380 landed in SLC, etc.  But I had no idea how to say runway in Spanish or really any words that would be necessary for a conversation like that so I had to get a bit creative in describing what happened with words I knew.  

   

I hadn´t even heard of the church´s new Christmas video but I just got an email from president Russell telling us it would be a good idea to use it.  We probably won´t use it much because nobody has a computer or internet really and this isn´t exactly an ipad mission.  Maybe if we go by a rich less-active´s house or something and they have a computer we´ll show them.  Also to answer a question I got last week, nobody in this mission has cars or bikes.  The only exception is that the senior missionaries (two companionships) and the APs have cars.

I hope you all have a great week!! Enjoy the Christmas season!!  It´s really is the most wonderful time of the year.   Pray that people will come to church this week!!

Love Elder Smith

At Daryl's house

Personal Study Time

Thanksgiving lunch

Wearing out the Bible already

This moth was larger than a man's hand

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 23, 2015

Hello family!  Happy Thanksgiving!

So no, the Nicas don't really celebrate Thanksgiving, but luckily President Russell does so we´ll get a little extra money on Thursday from the mission to get some food.  But yes, on Thursday we´ll essentially be working as usual.  On Thanksgiving we´ll probably have rice and beans for lunch  but for dinner we´ll maybe get pizza or a chicken or something.  We´ll see.  We really only eat rice and beans for lunch and every once in a while dinner.  Turns out that we get $4 for food on Thursday.

 This week was a good (and pretty stressful) week.  Tuesday was really tough, we had a lot of rejection and didn´t really find any cool people.  On Wednesday we found some really cool people though, that kind of made up for Tuesday.  On Thursday we had interviews with President Russell.  I had to be at the church basically all day because the zone leaders had a lot of stuff to do (make sure everyone was ready for their interviews, go with Sister Russell to do house checks etc.).  My interview was really good.  Since I´m still in my training I got a pretty short interview but it was good.  I learned a few things that I could be doing better (ie. being a bit neater in my planner).  Friday was pretty normal, we found a few more cool people.  

All week we had been going by Adolfo and Dany to make sure everything was good for their baptism.  They were good to go and excited for their baptism at 4:00 on Saturday.  So on Saturday we passed by at like noon and Adolfo had gotten work off at 4 and Dany was super pumped.  So we came by again at like 3:30 to take them and Dany was ready and so was Jessenia.  But Adolfo was nowhere to be found.  So we called him and he said he was at work but would get home later that night.  So there was nothing we could do so we just took the baptism we could get and went and baptized Dany.  It was a good service but only like three people from the ward were there even though we told everyone about it in correlation meeting.... That wasn't great.  So after Dany´s baptism we went back to Adolfo and Dany´s house to wait for Adolfo to get home from work.  We waited and waited and eventually when we called him he said he wouldn´t get home until 1 AM.  So on Sunday morning we went right to Adolfo´s house and woke him up and took him to get baptized.  Me and Elder Hanson went to the church with them while Elder Merrill and Elder Medrano went to bring other people to church.  To do a baptism you need three priesthood holders (to baptize and witness) so we had to wait a long time for a recent convert to show up (Mario Roque who always baptizes for us).  So we set the font filling up really slowly so Adolfo didn´t wonder why we weren´t doing the baptism yet.  So eventually Mario showed up and we baptized Adolfo.  Dany came for Adolfo´s baptism so we kept them both there until 9 when church started to make sure they got confirmed and everything went smoothly.  We just had to babysit Dany who is quite a handful.  It was cool to baptize Adolfo and Dany because I remember my first week when we contacted Dany´s mom Jessenia.  It was raining really hard and we were soaked and just hoping that she´d let us in to teach her so we could get out of the rain.  I remember when me and Elder Vasquez were teaching Jessenia and Adolfo walked in from work and we got him to stay for the lesson and put a fetcha with him.  It´s really cool to see that despite the many frustrations of a mission I´m actually helping people here.

   

We think there´s still a chance we can get Jessenia baptized if we can get her to understand that her baptism the other week lacked the proper authority.

Other than Adolfo and Dany we didn´t get many people to church.  I missed out on bringing people to church in the morning because of the baptism but Elder Merrill and Medrano said that it was the same as always, with people hiding and lying etc.  Please continually pray that the people here will keep their commitments and come to church.  

  

Today has been a good Pday, we came to the church and played soccer with Adolfo, Dany, Elder Cuevas, and Elder Miculax (and Merrill and Medrano).  That was fun.  We´re making some more pumpkin bread also for Thanksgiving.

Since I talked about Jeffrey, the pamphlet reader, we haven´t been able to find him.  He works out of town somewhere in a mine.  But his neighbor was redoing his porch and found two snakes when he pulled up the concrete.  They were really small but pretty cool.  Also Elder Medrano had a huge scorpion on him that was in his backpack but I wasn´t there to see it.  

One of the biggest miracles of the week (other than getting Adolfo and Dany baptized) was that I finally got two letters from mom.  Just so everyone knows, don´t ever send money or anything valuable in a letter here because letters are often "ripped" and then taped because the postal workers check for money.  But thanks mom, I greatly appreciated the letters.  

I´d like to take a moment in the spirit of Thanksgiving to express my profound gratitude for all of the blessings in my life.  It´s such a wonderful opportunity to be here spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and trying to help the lives of these people.  I´m so thankful for all of my family that I know is continually thinking of me and praying for me, and I hope you know that I always pray for you.  I´m truly blessed with wonderful people in my life.

Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Smith

Park at Boaco during the rain

Hamburgers with Elder Merrill in Boaco

Baptismal font in Boaco

November 16, 2015

Hello family!!!  It´s so crazy that it´s already been another week!

So last Monday I told you all about how I was in a trio now with me, Elder Hanson, and Elder Merrill.  Well a couple hours later we got word that another missionary was already en-route to be Elder Merrill´s comp.  So our new companion is Elder Medrano from Corpus Christi Texas.  He has just over a year in the mission.  I´m already enjoying having him in the house as he´s super funny.

On Tuesday we taught a really cool guy that read the restoration pamphlet like 4 times (People don´t usually even read two pages) and so we brought him a libro de mormón and then he disappeared this weekend and we couldn´t even find him to take him to church.  Satan is really working hard on this mission.  Really working hard.  

This week we went by Adolfo and Danny and we got signed permission from Jessenia to baptize Danny and he´s excited to do it this Saturday.  Adolfo also says he´ll be baptized this Saturday and he came to church yesterday.  Lots of things can happen in a week though so pray for Adolfo and Danny.  Danny has come to church a bunch but he doesnt really have much teaching so while we were there an eskimo man (guy that pushes a cart with ice cream in it) came by so we bought Danny an ice cream that he ate while we taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He actually knew quite a bit about baptism and confirmation (he´s like 9 years old).  So hopefully we can get them baptized and get Jessenia to understand a little more about how proper authority is necessary for baptism.  

On Friday Hanson went to Boaco for District meeting with Medrano and I was here working in the area with Elder Merrill.  I really loved the opportunity because Elder Merrill is a really good teacher and I learned a lot from him.  We had been having a really disappointing day with appointments falling through and lots of people being very unreceptive (Delaney and Matt must hate reading my emails...) but then we were walking to talk to an investigator when Merrill got a call from a guy he contacted a couple days before.  We found out that this guy (Javier) was actually just a 3 minute walk from where we were so we went and talked to him.  We had the most spiritual lesson of my mission up to this point.  It was mostly him talking about how addiction has hurt his life and how much he wants to change.  He said he heard a preacher bashing Mormons on the radio in the morning but the preacher never said why Mormons are so evil.  So he was curious and wanted to know so what did he do?  He called in to the radio show.  But he didn´t get through.  Still, he´s very interested and curious.  

 Saturday was a very hard day.  We found lots and lots and lots of very unpositive people.  You really have to teach these Nicas like children sometimes.  You can ask questions such as, How do you think a better relationship with Jesus Christ could bless your family? and they´ll answer with crap like, Read the scriptures. They just repeat a few things they hear all the time from their pastors but they have no idea what they really believe or why.  And they´re just not really willing to take any steps to change and come closer to Christ or acknowledge that they really aren´t doing much in regards to their salvation.  I´ve learned a huge lesson on humility here in Nicaragua.  The people we find that are prepared and actually willing to change are the humble ones.  And contrary to what a lot of people assume, Nicaragua is not really full of humble people.  I´m glad that I have this opportunity to try and help these people because there are a lot of people here that really need the blessings of the gospel.  

On Sunday we had a lot of added pressure to bring people to church because President and Sister Russell were there for branch conference.  So we passed by a lot of people we had committed to go to church the day before and not a single person came with us.  Every Saturday we pass by everyone that said they´d go to church during the week and recommit them and review the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy and the blessings they receive as they keep this commandment and we make sure everything is good for them to go to church the next day.  Then Sunday comes around and everyone just starts lying to us and making up stupid excuses we´ve already heard a million times.  So we walked into church with President and Sister Russell sitting up on the stand with nobody...  Sad.  I had to talk also.  I was assigned to talk on the restoration so I basically just taught lesson one to the branch and it went ok.  I wasn't even that nervous but when I got there my voice was super shaky and everyone said I looked super nervous.  Whatever.  I think people basically understood what I was saying.  Elder Merrill, Sister Garfield, and President Russell also spoke so I only had to speak for like 7 minutes so it really wasn´t that bad.  So after church, branch counsel, and our usual Sunday lunch of Nacatamales ( I hope you´ve googled nacatamales by now because they look super gross but they taste super good).  Then we went back out to bring people to the afternoon branch in the church.  Between me, Hanson, Medrano, and Merrill we brought three in the afternoon (one of them was Adolfo).  One lady was an old lady that just sat in the back during a lesson with her family this week and didn´t say anything.  When we passed by to bring the rest of the family to church her family made a bunch of dumb excuses (even though they promised us that morning that they´d come) and wouldn´t come but she just quietly got ready and came.  So we brought a total of 6 people to church on Sunday (because 3 came with their less active family).  

  

Today we had a normal morning, then went and got a burger at a dinky little restaurant called Burger Hot.  It was all right.  Pretty big but the meat here isn´t quite like the ground beef at home.  

To answer a few questions: This week I got a letter from Diane, and four from Grandma Wilson and that was it.  So thanks Diane and thank grandma for me too please.  My shoes are already starting to wear out.  Part of the sole on my heel is already worn down below the pattern.  So at some point on the mission I´ll need you to send me some new shoes or I´ll have to buy some here but not for a while. 

Hopefully you appreciate the detail today.  Last week the email wasn´t very good so sorry.  

Love you all!!  Thanks for all the prayers and support!!!

Love Elder Smith

Misc. information:  The most exciting thing that happened this week was that I saw an enormous spider.  We ventured out into woods a little bit and I looked up and like five feet in front of me at eye level there´s this enormous yellow and black spider.  Probably about the size of my hand if not bigger.  I took a pic but the camera wouldn't focus on it.  It was freaky.  Sorry the pic doesn´t do it justice at all.  I destroyed its web with a stick and we ran for our lives.

I get letters and stuff and people are saying things about feeling bad for me because of my "living conditions" and "stomach sicknesses" and stuff.  I don´t want people to feel bad for me or anything because things here are really good.   Please understand that I live very comfortably and that I´m healthy (having diarrhea every once in a while doesn't make me sick).  I don´t want people feeling bad for me when I don´t feel bad for myself if that makes sense.  They take good care of us here.  

Me and Elder Merrill at the ward mission leader's house on Friday

lunch: rice, beans, meat patty, tortilla, juice

Like the only open space I've seen in Juigalpa (this is in my area)

Butterfly we saw in the church

Huge spider in a tree

Spider

November 9, 2015

hey family!!!

I cant believe its already pday... crazy.  So Tuesday was the day I was super scared about, just me and Elder Peterson, alone in the area with a total of 8 weeks in Nicaragua.  and it went great.  We completed with norms, put 5 fetchas, 4 of which were with really cool and positive people.  The zls were thrilled that we didnt ruin the numbers for the whole week haha.  Tuesday was probably the biggest miracle of my mission to this point.  I felt like for the first time that I was understanding what everyone said to me and I was able to say (and they understood) what I wanted to say to them.  Definitely the gift of tongues.  and the gift of interpretation of tongues.  It was really cool.  I would just talk and not have to think too much about how to say what I wanted to say in Spanish.  Thanks for all your prayers!!!!!!  

Wednesday was a normal day. 

  

On Thursday I woke up at 3:30 to go to  Managua for 8 week training, which everyone has in their second change.  It was good, President and Sister Russell taught us and i learned a lot.  Sister Russell took one look at my face and asked me about my acne.  I said it was normal and that I take doxycycline and clindomyacin (sp?)  gel and she called the mission doctor and now I'm supposed to take amoxycilin and RetinA cream .1%.  So I'll pull like 40 bucks off my personal card to buy it at a pharmacy (prescriptions are not necessary here lol).  Sister Russell didn't care that amoxycillin didn't work on me before so if Diane or Doctor Johnson thinks its a bad idea let me know.  After we had the training we had Burger King that they brought in for us.  we left at like 1 and got back at like four or five.  Then we had a normal couple of days of finding cool people (no ones cool until they go to church though).  

On Sunday we got a total of 8 people to church.  3 of them we pulled off the street and got them to stay for an hour and the rest were actually investigators.  Adolfo and Danny came (we dropped Jessenia because she got baptized in a different church yesterday, possibly just to spite us).  Also this really cool lady's daughter came, but not the really cool lady so now the daughter is cool and not the mom.  And also a lesbian that Elders Peterson and Merrill found.  Now in the area we're a tripanionship of just me, Hanson, and Merrill.  I have no idea if they'll send anyone else or if we'll just be like this for four weeks until the next change.  It's a great opportunity to learn from two of the best missionaries in the world though.

Today I weighed myself in a pharmacy because I've been going down belt buckles and I weighed 151 lbs.  I think I weighed lke 170 when I got here from the MTC so apparently the Nicaraguan diet works.  But I'm confident that I'm the only one eating my food right now (I don't think i have a parasite).  I'm probably just losing all my muscle haha.  As if I had any to start with.  But that's ok, i just lost what I gained after graduation basically.

So ya, good week.  I wish I could tell you when or if Adolfo will get baptized but we dont know right now.  He says he wants to but he's bailando the mambo about when.  Pray for him and Danny (and Jessenia couldn't hurt either)

I'm glad you guys got to go to the cabin and that you saw sooooooooooooo many animals.  The deer will be the perfect size for when I get home.  Good job with school, work, home etc.  Thanks for sending the Christmas package  mom, I'm sure it'll be perfect.

Love Elder Smith

Answers to questions:

Thanks for the update about the church same sex policy.  Will you update me on any huge news stories as I hear nothing here?

Home Teaching here exists but doesn't happen much.  There's only like three companionships of Elders that actually go out and do their home teaching.  Poor guys have like 9 families haha.

The only change in weather Ive noticed is a little less rain which leads to a lot more heat.  So hot.  Always haha.  I don't think there are any holidays before Christmas here but i don't know. I'm already starting to see a bunch of Christmas trees.  I haven't gotten any letters from you yet.  Nobody's gotten mail for a while so when it comes I'll probably have a bunch. 

 Oh and Peterson and Merrill found a smallish tarantula in the bathroom this week but I didn't see it.

happy día de los muertos‏

November 2, 2015

Dear family,

Hello, it´s been a fairly long and boring week except for changes on Wednesday.  Me and Hanson are still here but Naupoto and Vasquez both got changed, which surprised us because we thought Naupoto would die (complete his mission) in this area.  So our two new companions are..................... Elder Merrill (coolest last name ever right dad) and Elder Peterson.  Elder Merrill has like 17 months in the mission, is the new ZL here, is from bountiful, went to bountiful high, played basketball baseball and football, is exceedingly tall, and has a full ride basketball scholarship to Utah state.  But he´s really cool and humble about it, I didn´t know he was going to play college ball until like Friday or Saturday.  He´s training a brand new missionary out of the MTC named Elder Peterson.  Elder Peterson is from Morgan, played football, and is pretty cool.  He really just reminds me of myself six weeks ago.  It´s weird to say that because you would think that six weeks isn´t a very long time but that´s a lie.  I´m a very different person than I was six weeks ago.  Elder Peterson´s Spanish is more or less what mine was when I got here and now I can really see just how much I've improved. But ya, now it´s four gringos in the house.  They´re much more obedient than those they replaced, which is nice.

So this week.  I don´t really know what happened.  We worked super hard all week, completed with norms every day I think except maybe pday and Sunday.  Coming off of the two baptisms was hard because now the only progressing investigators we have are Adolfo and Jessenia.  And this week Jessenia said she goes to another church (she´s very bipolar about the whole conversion process) and Adolfo wouldn´t come to church.  I think it´s because we taught law of chastity this week and they have a few major problems with that (completely separate problems as they are brother and sister).  This week both companionships worked super super hard and we found some cool people and had like 15 people completely committed to church.  To make a long story short: All but one of these people either hid from us, lied to us, or just refused to go even though they knew (and we reminded them) that they had committed to God.  So the one we got was very hungover from a night of partying.  We also pulled one guy off the street in front of the church and got him to go with us, and two nonmembers showed up with their family in our branch so our total number in church was 4.  The norm is 12.  It was frustrating to say the least.  

  

This week will be interesting.  Tomorrow Elder Hanson and Merrill have a ZL meeting in Managua with president Russell.  They´ll be gone all day.  Which means that it will be me and Peterson alone in the area working all day.  If a native here speaks 100% Spanish, and an old missionary that´s fluent like Hanson or Merrill speak about 75-80% Spanish, then me and Peterson combined speak maybe 30% Spanish on a good day.  I hope that made sense, but the moral of the story is that we don´t speak very much Spanish and have essentially no experience teaching.  We will appreciate your prayers tomorrow very much.  Very much.  It´ll be a perfect opportunity to force us to rely on the spirit as a teacher and not ourselves.  Then on Thursday me and Hanson have to go to Managua for my 8 week training with President Russell.  Then on Sunday President Russell will be in our branch.  So we´ve got a busy week ahead.

I assume people might want to know what Halloween here is like.  Basically everyone knows about it but doesn´t do anything.  A few people said that because we celebrate it at home we´re devil worshipers.  The only celebrations here are at the clubs.  The Nicas just use it as an excuse to get wasted and do stupid things.  Today is the real holiday here.  it´s el día de los muertos.  People basically just go to the graveyard and decorate graves with flowers and stuff.  Right now the roads around the cemetery are all closed off and full of people selling flowers and crap like that.  I guess it´s kind of like a weird version of memorial day.  I´ll attach a pic.

To celebrate Halloween we had some of Elder Peterson's american candy he brought from the MTC and I also had some Fazer chocolate.  Haha someone tell Delaney or Kim that you don´t need to go to Scandinavia to eat fazer on your mission.  Hanson´s mom sent him some ingredients to make pumpkin bread so we´ve been doing that today.  We also organized all the supplies that had been dumped on the floor from the move from the old house today.  So ya the bread is in the oven here at the church right now and smells super good.

I´m glad that you all had a good, uneventful week.  You don´t realize how nice those are until they´re gone haha.  

Have a great week!!

Love Elder Smith

Some answers to questions you asked:   on a typical day we just go around the area according to our plan hitting the appointments we´ve made and going to less actives and recent converts and if we don't have any appointments or less active or recent converts we just contact.  usually we get like 30 contacts a day, 9 lessons, and 4 less active or recent convert every day.  Then we go home, snack on a bag of chips or something, plan, take numbers, and go to bed.  I don't have any trouble getting to sleep haha.  The senior missionaries here teach piano lessons and it´s always like 13 year old girls doing a horrible job of playing simplified hymns.  I've never had to worry about playing because Hanson can play the piano.  I could only play Nearer My God to Thee anyway or Joy to the World.  I never have to teach classes.  The missionaries are often in and out of classes because we have to herd investigators.  The teachers here suck.  They never prepare and just read out of the book.  way worse than america.  They have ym/ym but they don´t meet during the week.  There are only like 2 ym and 1 yw.  I had to share my testimony my first week and that was it.  They are known to randomly call missionaries to speak though.  They use 2 or 3 sacrament trays, depending on how many priesthood show up.  Usually there's only 1 or 2 Deacons there.  They use tap water, luckily it´s blessed.  The sacrament is the same, just much shorter because of the size of the branch.  The primary program was good, very well organized and planned because the senior missionaries did a lot with them.  A ton of less actives showed up for it.   No one has visited the recent baptisms but missionaries.  Once we get transferred if the ward doesn´t pick them up I don´t have very high hopes for them unfortunately.  In ward counsel yesterday we asked for them to assign home teachers for Miguel and Luis and a couple other menos activos and the Elders quorum president straight up refused.  We probably wont take any on splits because Luis is 83 and doesn´t move too well and still has a lot of catholic in him.  The other day in the middle of his prayer he started praying to Mary so that wasn't good.  Miguel we can barely find, so no.  The good news was that Luis showed up to church yesterday on his own.  we reteach everything after baptism.  We also teach about lesson five, which is like priesthood and missionary work and such.  

I cleaned the bathroom.  I put bleach in water and used that to clean the floor.  It made me a bit nostalgic because it smelled like the pool.

The street by the cemetary for día de los muertos‏

Making pumpkin bread at the church.  It ended up being pretty expensive bread by the time we bought a bowl and a spoon.

The pumpkin bread came out perfect and smells really good.  We´re just waiting for it to cool off so we can eat it.  It´ll be like eating real (non junk)food from home finally. n

What it looks like with Elder Peterson in my room

After we cleaned the materials from our move.