#41

Hello family!

I´m not really sure what happened last week, but I forgot to mention someone pretty fabulous. Her name is Karina, and she´s here living with her aunt and uncle who are members, but she´s from New York City.  She´s a teenager, and it´s been really interesting teaching her, because she´s learning Spanish still, and lots of the church-related words she hasn´t heard in Spanish before, so we´ve been teaching the lessons to her half in English, half in Spanish. I´ve noticed now just how bad my English is. It´s really bad. I can´t talk. And she´s got a New York accent so when I talk with her in English I adopt parts of her accent. But she´s a sweetheart, and yesterday she got baptized. We requested that our gringo Leader de Zona interview her, so that if she had questions she could speak in English. Our zone leader is from my same group, and he told me that he couldn´t think of a lot of words in English that he needed to ask her. It´s helped a lot that Amanda sent me a planner in English, it´s helped me to remember phrases like Sabbath Day, chastity, and priesthood in English. Without the planner, I wouldn´t have been able to do it. But yeah. She got baptized yesterday, and is really happy. I´m going to ask Hermana Isama to lend me her camera, because I didn´t have my camera yesterday and didn´t take photos... Oops.

I´ve included a picture of me and Hermana Isama. Where we´re serving is like the ritzy gated communities, there are parks every ten feet with fruit trees (it´s nice because anyone can pick fruit. We have a small stash of starfruits and every once in a while we find a semiripe mini mango) and the houses are really pretty. In this photo we´re in one of the hundreds of park at night. You can´t really see anything but yeah. Feel free to edit out the ridiculously large forehead zit.

My companion is so cool! She speaks Quichua, which is one of the indigineous languages. It´s so funky, with lots of p´s and k´s. It´s sounds vaguely chinese-ish but every once in a while there are words that are spanish words with pa or ka added. For ejemplo, Diospa nushy kany is I am A Child of God. Dios is God in Spanish, and Diospa is God in Quichua. You may ask, how do I know how to say I Am A Child of God is Quichua?

IT´S BECAUSE YESTERDAY WE SANG THE COOLEST SPECIAL MUSICAL NUMBER EVER. Karina, her cousin, me, and Hermana Isama sang I Am A Child of God in three languages, Spanish, English, and Quichua, one verse in each language, and to end we sang the final verse in Spanish and I sang the harmony part above. We have been asked to sing again next week in the Ward Conference. Oh yeah, and yesterday, two minutes before sacrament meeting started, the bishop asked me to be the final speaker. I was not pleased. I think I´ve actually gotten pretty good at giving talks in Spanish, but I need at least an hour to prepare myself. So yesterday I gave a very scrambled and hectic talk in Spanish and I forgot words because I was nervous, but I filled the time. Half a success.  

This area is so different. We knock on doors allllll day and we´re lucky to set a future appointment with one person. It´s way different from Valencia, where we would knock on doors, tell them that we´re missionaries, and they would say "come in!" and give us a glass of soda or juice. But it´s been fun. I´ve learned a ton, and I´m excited to look for more people. Right now, we don´t have a single investigator, but this week we are positive that we are going to have more. 

I´m even more excited because in 11 days we get to go to the temple wooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don´t know if they´ll have the 2 new presentations in Spanish already, but igual I´m just stoked to go to the temple. The temple is only about 15 minutes away from where I am right now, and the members always tell us when we ask them how their week has gone "good, yesterday I went to the temple and then..." Í´m really excited to go to the temple often, especially when I´m in Rexburg or Provo again and there´s temples close by. Also, has anyone else had the recent desire to do their family history work?!

So yeah. I don´t know what else to tell you. Everything is great. My hair is growing super dark. Like, really, really, really dark brown. It´s weird.
I love you all!
Thanks for those of you who wrote me! Holly and Beebz, pongase pilas, eh?