Monday, November 5, 2012

Nov. 5, 2012

Dear Mom,

I am excited that Ben is leaving, and that he already got his visa that quick. I talked to a ton of elders in the MTC going to Colombia who were all waiting to get their visas to leave, so he is lucky to leave on time. That will be fun for him. Hopefully the letter that I sent to him in the Provo MTC gets there in time. That is also exciting that Tiffany is going to go on a mission too! That will be cool. 
I haven't heard anything other than what you´ve told me about hurricane sandy, although Ive heard a couple people mention it here, but I don´t know much about it. It sounds pretty big.. And the elections are coming up. That is exciting, I'm sure that I´ll hear a lot more about that this week.
A typical day is waking up, working out, eating cereal for breakfast, studying while waiting for the water to boil to shower with, showering, going back to studying until lunch, which we usually go to a member´s house to eat, which you can read dad´s email for information about what we eat, and a short story about something that we ate this week that was interesting. Then, we work for the rest of the day, talking to people on the street, members and investigators in their homes, other random appointments, some sort of dinner, normally around 7, because they eat dinner later here, so 7 is early. We go back to the apartment around 9 and plan for the next day and go to bed. Not too exciting.
P-days, we usually play soccer first thing in the morning. We drop our laundry off at the house of a member with a washer in the mornings, and go play soccer for a couple hours, come back, shower and eat, then we go out to use internet, go shopping for random stuff, and then for groceries, normally we go with other elders in the zone, and we come back at 6 and continue like a normal work day until 9.
We haven't really done anything more with the mission president. He is plenty busy with other stuff. We had interviews with him a couple of weeks ago, and I saw him today in the office and shook his hand, but other than that, we don't often see him or visit the mission office.
For service, we have carried roof materials up a ton of stairs one morning, and this week we moved bricks to help build a house for a member. Nothing too exciting for service so far, but it is good.
I hope that everything is good for you all!
Love,
Elder Ward


Dear Dad,
 
This week has been good. We have been trying to get a lot of new people to talk to, so we have been working extra hard to do that, which is good, I like working hard, and when my companion is more excited to work and go out and teach. So that has been good. I have been a little bit sick this week, but am just going to keep working and hope that the tiredness doesnt catch up to me and kill me. But I am starting to feel better now. We have been walking a ton recently, or maybe I am just more sore now. This hill is killing me! But that´s alright, that will just replace my morning workout. I´m kind of slacking in that department. I should be better in doing that, but I have little motivation early in the mornings.. But my goal is 20 pushups and 10 pull ups a day. We have a pullup bar here, because my companion is obsessed with working out. So I try to do that and a little bit of stretching, but thats about all I do right now... 
 
I have been trying to get better at cooking this week, but it is hard to do here. There arent all of the same ingredients, all of the titles of food and directions are in Spanish, We dont have a oven or microwave, and only have a stove with 1 working burner to cook everything with. But I made chicken quesadillas this week and some hamburger, as well as lame stuff like ramen and spaghetti and easy boiling foods like that. Most of the time we eat at a member´s house, which a normal meal for that is rice, beans, a block of cheese (which is normally the grossest part), maybe some avacado or tomato slices, and tortillas. And also we will almost always have banana soda, or occasionally like sprite or a different soda or juice. But the foods not too bad here, my stomach still isn´t loving it all, but it all tastes good. We never really have a set mealtime for lunch and dinner. or how many we will get. We had one day this week 1 breakfast, 2 lunches, a snack, and 2 dinners, which we were obligated to eat, and we have to eat everything on the plate to not offend them, so occassionally we get super full, and sometimes we are hungry, it just depends on the day. 
 
Thats a little sample of some of the stuff that happens here, just random stuff that I thought that I´d share.
 
Thats still weird to me that you guys got chickens. I dont know if I see the point in that... Are the eggs good? Have you cut ones head off and eaten one yet? WAIT! Hahaha, I have a funny story for you that I remembered, its a good one...
 
So I was at the house of some members that we visit quite a bit, and we were talking with them, and they were cooking something for us on the other side of the room, and we waited for the food, and they brought us our plates, and there were chicken legs on the plates, cooked and flavored and all that, but like chicken legs, like just the 3 little feet/toe thingys. They insisted that we try them and said that they were good, and I wanted to say that I had tried it, so we did. It wasn´t all that great. The flavor was fine, just like you´d flavor regular chicken meat, but there was only like bone and skin, there wasnt any meat to eat, so you basically just suck on it to get the flavor out, and eat at the skin. I didn´t spend too much time trying to eat it, but I can say that I have had chicken legs now. So that was a fun little experience.
 
Anyways, yup, that was good. I hope that you are doing well, and that everything was good for Halloween and stuff like that.
 
Love,
Elder Ward