Inquieta

September 13, 2010

Hello FAm...

This has been a rather stressful week. My bike is still broken so we walked everywhere, we went by every member in our area to see if they or anyone they knew, knew how to fix bikes. They all had their own theories and all of them tried but none of them could, I myself have spent hours on it, and nothing has come of it. So I gave up and today we went by the local bike shop and dropped off to be fixed. Knowing how bike shops are it'll probably cost me an arm and a leg but whatever, I don't care anymore. They said they'd have it done by Thursday so we're not through walking yet.

My new companion, Elder Lamoure, is an interesting fellow. He started his mission in the Dominican Republic and after being there for three months, got seriously ill and was sent home. Apparently the local diet got him, they eat nothing but rice over there and he entered the mission weighing 255 lbs, all the rice plugged him up and he couldn't use the bathroom for a month, and in that same month he lost 70 lbs. He's not sure where it all went seeing that he couldn't poop for a month but it went somewhere. He was at home another three months recovering then he was reassigned to this mission. He's not quite over whatever happened to him over there, he can't eat rice, bananas, or pasta, and only has to poop twice or three times a week. He's been in this mission for 4 months, so he has 7 months total as a missionary. So he's still pretty new and his spanish isn't good at all, I've been pretty much teaching by myself this last week and he's just been following me around. I try to get him to do something but he generally has a very negative attitude about... everything, I've felt the temptation on multiple occasions to tell him to suck it up and get his act together... This transfer is looking to be a challenge, hopefully things will go better this week, last week was a little rough but we're a little better off now.

So in addition to walking everywhere and not teaching too many people our ward had it's "Fiesta de Patrias" saturday night. It was cool, it was a good turn out and lots of potential investigators came. It's basically just a party in which everyone brings food, clothes, and dances from their native countries and shows them off to everyone else. It was great, there was so much food, I got to try all sorts of weird things from all sorts of weird countries. We had Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. I took lots of pictures as you can see. There was this really bizarre dance performed by the Bishop and his wife, some Venezuelan thing where he hopped around like a monkey beating his stick on the ground while holding a rope that was tied around his wife while she stumbled around pretending to be a donkey or something. It was one of the most odd things I've ever seen in my life, and we weren't alone the whole ward was like: "What the freak...?" The bishop and his wife are the only Venezuelans so the rest of us didn't seem to get it.

Oh and that's way weird that Alyssa ran into Frost and Bone, very weird...

Okay so the pictures are of the area and me with the bike. Myself and Elder Rupp with the two english elders we live with, Elder Gustafson and Elder Miller, and the others are of the Fiesta de Patrias. I still haven't gotten the package, we'll swing by the apartment office tomorrow and see what they say. If not then I don't know, I don't really care about too much right now, mostly just trying to stay awake and getting my companion out the door. Okay, that's all for this week. Hopefully next week's e-mail will have better news, and sorry mom I haven't had anytime to write any letters, hopefully I can start some soon though. Adios.