Week 31 - Amazon Jungle

Hi Mom, Thanks for the recipe! Oh my gosh! I´m sorry about Trace, I hope that passes without hurting him too much.  Yeah, thanks for asking - no, I don´t have a bug net.  Some rooms do, ours does not, but when you live in the Amazon Jungle, it´s kind of how it goes, I guess.  This week was awesome! We had a baptism, which was the crowning part, and today we went into the amazon jungle for p-day, which was awesome.  Tomorrow we have our Christmas dinner with the mission president.  It doesn´t really feel like christmas, when your in the jungle, ha ha. Man, when it rains here, IT RAINS.  Part of our sector gets flooded out, too.  Our pants aways have mud on them, and there is pretty much no point in polishing the shoes because it only lasts for a few hours until they look like they haven´t been shined in a few weeks.  Within one day my white shirts are brown.  As far as the other stuff, the people that were progressing stopped, so that is always really sad, but were always finding new people to teach. So I´m about 4 hours from Brazil and Bolivia, and in that space they are still finding groups of people that haven´t had contact with "civilization" so that is pretty crazy.  Has it been snowing back home yet? Anyway, once again I´m out of time, but I love you guys.  Here are some pics of the adventure, and Marcelina, the sister we baptized. Talk to you next week!  Oh yeah, so apparently I can call you Christmas Eve to plan the time I´ll call you Christmas and I get up to an hour or so to talk to you guys, as I have been told so that will be pretty sweet!

Week 30 - Still in the "Jungle"

Hi Family -  I´m glad you got to go the Christmas Fireside, I watched it via satelite.   It's going to be weird having Christmas in the jungle - no snow, or anything to make it feel like christmas.   No street lights here or christmas trees or anything "festive" ......... not sure how I feel about that, so I have decided to go into denial, ha ha.  Anyway,  things here are going good still, we started teaching an awesome family about 2 weeks ago.  They have a lot of problems, so it´s really different teaching them, but we taught them about family prayer, and they said they would pray every night as a family, and with just that alone their family has changed so much -- like it's completely different visiting them now.   They have come to church the past 2 weeks too, so that is something special i´ve been able to witness lately.   Man it is SO hot here!!!!  I can´t sleep at night because it's so uncomfortable, and there is always the fear of the weird species of flying insects, that I'm pretty sure haven't been discovered yet landing on you throughout the night.   We always wake up with bites.  Also,  you should try taking a shower, or, more correctly, bathing yourself with cold water and a bucket.   But despite the temporal experience the spiritual side of things here is pretty awesome.  We're teaching and finding cool people.   We have some baptisms soon - so I'm really excited for that!   You could try sending me christmas dinner, but I don't think that would work,  ha ha.   We're going to spend christmas night with some member and supposedly we are going to cook something.   That's all I have for now! I Love you.

Week 29, Somewhere in the Jungle, Peru

HEY, Glad you guys had an awesome Thanksgiving! And thanks for the pics! It´s nice to see everyone, is that Brennan? You had to send me a picture of the dinner so I could drool over it!  Here Thanksgiving is a normal day so we just worked, it was really weird.   It's crazy that it's December in a few days! So we went to the Jungle today as a zone - that was cool. My first day here I challenged a lady to be baptized and she was doing awesome she didn't come to church this week so we have to wait longer to baptize her ahhhhhh!   Anyway, we have some more people we are working hard to get baptized too.  People here have the weirdest dreams - and they always tell them to us, but unfortunately I have not interpreted any yet.  I just about got into an argument with a Jehovas Witness Friday, and apparently since I don't know the years that Moses was a prophet, I don't know what I'm talking about, which is dumb because she looked it up herself and then told me that!  Anyway that's always interesting.  We found a lady with her 2 kids that has been inactive for some time but she told us she wants us to baptize her son, so that was really cool, and she came to church this week which was awesome!  That's what is happening now. I'll talk to you guys next week! Love Ya!

Week 28 - New Area

Hi Mom, so...... I´m in the Jungle.   I haven´t stopped sweating since the moment I got here.  I didn´t know that was possible.   I´ll be in a lesson with sweat just pouring down my face.  I started drinking 3 liters of water every day but I just sweat it all out.  It's a lot different being here in the jungle.   My new companion is alright - he thinks he is my boss though, so I guess I´ll work on my Christ like attributes... one of the which being patience.   I got moved up to senior companion, which I guess is cool.  My zone leaders said they want me training next change so we´ll see what happens.  It´s pretty brutal trying to sleep here with just a fan, and sweating all night, but hopefully i´ll acclimatize soon.  I like it here though.   I think I´ll be able to have a little bit more success.  The people are a lot more receptive.   Part of our area has about 500 inactives which is like 3 wards, so we're trying to think of what we can do here.  We do have a regular church building here so that is really nice.   Once again I got my welcoming present of having to teach gospel principles class.  It was a 12 hour bus ride to get here from Cusco, in the middle of the night, and then work the next day, so that was interesting.   Well that is what is going on now.  Hey Thanksgiving is this week!!   Kind of weird - I forgot about it until an Elder reminded me today.   Anyways let me now how it goes!  I love you guys.  Here is some more pics.   The one with the family is the family I ate every lunch and dinner with for 4 and a half months, and then there is some pics of my new area.