7-22-2008 E-MAIL

AREA: PERU MTC
COMPANION: ELDER CLEMENTE

We received a letter from Mike today. He seems to be doing well besides the expected confusion of being in a foreign country without knowing the language completely. Please excuse the grammer from his letter....he only has 24 minutes on the computer. So, by the time he gets his e-mails and writes there's isn't much time for details.

hola, hows everybody doing? its really wierd typing on a spanish keyboard,things have been moved around a bit. I sent you guys a letter last night, but it probably wont get to you for about two weeks. And it looks like i only get one letter a week out of here, so thats pretty lame. I guess ill just write to random people since im sending you all an email every week. I think im getting all the emails people have sent. I havent had any mail in a while, and moving countries is probably gonna make it pretty tough for the things that have been sent to provo. Dear elder looks like the best way to get things to me. My companion is pretty funny, hes not good at soccer which is very rare among south americans. But hes really good at piano. and i just figured out today he likes to make up his own words for things, like ¨planificacion¨. Hes pretty goofy.

Lima is so loud, we figured out here people dont use turnsignals, they just honk and that means they are turning, or slowing down. So it gets really really anoying. We went to the lima temple this morning cuz many of the latino elders didnt get a chance to go through b4 they came here. it was so confusing there. in a meeting last night about the temple,president groberg called out my name for a list of people that are going to help with anointments, which i dont really know what they meant by¨help¨, cuz they didnt want me to actually do them. But then we get there and i got stuck with all these missionaries that needed to go to imigration instead of the temple. I didnt figure that out for a while, but then i got into a spanish session and got to wear the very attractive headphones. and right when the session started the elder next to me goes ¨oh no, im gonna fall asleep i can feel it¨( we got up at five to go). So the whole time he told me to elbow him when he started to sleep. But after the session we get out.... and NO ONE from the mtc is there. it was just us four gringos sitting in front of the temple. we started talking to a peruvian member and he told us that a bunch of them were in the little store in the parking lot, but nobody was there. After an hour we were pretty sure wed been left. But then a few more elders came out of the temple. And then some worker from the mtc showed up and he was really mad and told some of us to get in his van. i still really dont know what happened but it was just super confusing. OH! i forgot, as we were sitting there somebody kept pointing at the street, so i turned around and saw... A BUS FULL OF WHITE PEOPLE! FROM UTAH! it was some lds humanitarian group, so we talked to them for a bit. OK ive run out of news. So now ill do some bussiness. (fyi after only a month of spanish i nolonger can spell anything in english.)

Everybody?- If youre just sending me a letter, use dear elder... i dont have the address on me right now and i only have a few min so ill send it in the next letter. Somebody remind me when you answer this. It goes to utah first though and then from there to me. I remeber it had bolivia on it so i guess they just track where i am and send it. But ,ya i need some more letters. i need pictures too but thos will have to be in packages, which are very expensive to send. Well i gotta run, the latinos want to play american football... tee hee.

Love you all