December 18, 2012

I'm going to start this letter off answering letters that you've sent me. Sorry that I don't write you back Katarina, I honestly don't have time to send a personal email or a written letter. I have to include everything in one letter to save time. And you're studying bears for school? What motivated you to do something interesting? =) And it's good to hear that you're finally getting your license....finally.....And yes, I remembered when Christmas is thank you. And I put "lol" all the time to express emotion, that as I'm writing it I'm laughing to myself. Now to answer mom's questions. Things are still going good. I didn't get changed to a different area, I'm staying here in Yaruquì. Elder Salazar went to a different zone as a Zone Leader. He wanted to stay here longer and he didn't want to be a leader either, but he got both. Too bad for him I guess =). So now I'm here with a new companion. His name is Elder Leal, he's from Argentina and his accent is really hard for me to understand....with time hopefully I'll be able to understand him better. Gift of Tongues....come to me!! And before I forget, we're going to call you on the 24th at around 11:00 here, which is 9:00 there. All I need to contact you is your account thing or whatever it is that I need to be able to "call" you. I got 4 packages in total. The other might come this week or next week, hopefully. And no I didn't wait to open them =). Waiting is crazy talk. There is no way a missionary can have 4 packages in front of his face for 1 month without opening them, so....I opened them right when I got them =). And I ate all the food already. It's awesome to hear that the trials are finally over! That must be a big relief to have over with, after years of waiting and praying. Woot. And we do have a Christmas meeting with the president. We have a Christmas dinner at his house this thursday. And Hermana Ghent is a good cook, we're excited. And yeah, all the music you sent me came through just fine. 

So this week was a hard week. Elder Salazar was sick towards the end of the week, we hardly taught anybody because they weren't home, and we didn't have much success contacting. Kind of hard. Not much to tell other than that because not much really happened. One thing that happened that was cool; we were teaching family Medina and then they changed houses suddenly without us knowing. Sad, we contacted most of the day and tried to find their house, without any luck. I wasn't too down, but my companion was. He was sick and a little disappointed. So we kept looking and contacting for another day without any luck. We really prayed hard that if we were meant to find them that we would find them somewhere. So on saturday Elder Salazar was really sick and he was in the house basically all day resting. At around 5:00 we left the house to go contacting, we had a few minutes of time before we had to meet up with some other elders. So we went to Rafael's house again to stop by and again he wasn't home. Elder Salazar was feeling sick, disappointed because we lost family Medina and more disappointed because Rafael wasn't home again. About 10 seconds after we decided that Rafael wasn't home I saw Andrea (Christian Medina's girlfriend/unofficial wife) walking down the street towards us. So we talked with her and she showed us where their new house is. Truly a blessing. If Elder Salazar wasn't sick we wouldn't have been at that spot at that particular time. He was also grateful that he was sick because it allowed us to find where they lived. The Lord works in mysterious ways, that's for sure =). 

So we finally have a baptism this week, Jefferson Cedeño. The interview with him went pretty well. But he had a problem with question number 4, the question that if they have a problem with it they have to have an interview with the mission president. I don't know what the problem is, but I don't have any worries that it will postpone his baptism. Other than him we don't have anybody with a baptismal date, just people with promise.

A couple of things for Hunter if you haven't already bought them. He does not need 2, 2 pant suits. Just one suit with 2 pants is plenty. You only wear a suit in church and when you have a meeting and the president is there. Save the money and don't but 2 suits. Also pack lots of Pepto Bismol and Tums, that stuff is golden. =)

I'll try and attach the pictures again. There are pictures of the Christmas tree we made, a few pictures of Yaruquì, and my watch on 12/12/2012 at 12:12 and 12 seconds =). Enjoy.


Elder Black