11-9-2009 E-MAIL

Subject: Lil Vacacion

Well... I'm in Santa Cruz right now, and not sure why. Our zone leaders called us on Thursday and said we have zone conference down here, so we took a little trip down here. Me and my zone leader Elder Hanks had a good time remembering country songs during the 9 hour bus ride. I guess a couple more zones from out of town are here too, but they aren't telling us whats really going on. We are guessing a general authority is coming to visit us,hopefully President Nash... or maybe apostle... but well find out tommorow. I normally have a list of all the things that happened during the week, but i didnt bring much to write on. Its actually been raining a lot in Villa Montes. Its like the Lord forgot about spring time so he made it all up in 2 days. Saturday night it was POURING, I finally got to use my rain coat and gave the poncho to my comp. My comp tried jumping a puddle and totally biffed it in the mud, it was pretty funny. We couldnt find many people to teach that night, but we had a good time just being soaking wet and having people look at us wierd. This week we really focused on talking with more people in the street. Pres Maynes (and Preach My Gospel) want us to talk with 140 people in the street. Before we would only talk with 80-90. This week we talked with 90 in 4 days, which is good, but we still didnt get to 140, so thats our big goal for this week. The branch is getting better, Pres Miranda is making some more callings, cuz we really need to get more organized. And now people are actually coming to clean the church on Saturday, in a few weeks I think we'll be able tol eave it all up to the members. So Saturday night I talked to our first counselor, who was supposed to give a talk. He told me he couldn't come and so he wanted me to give it. so I prepared a message in about 5 minutes. I was the last speaker, and the sunday teacher and my companion were the first two speakers... combined they spoke for 15 minutes. So that left a half an hour for the big gringo. IDK how good my message was, but I'm just surprised I had enough words to last that long. Gotta admit I was proud of myself. So ya I'm pretty excited about tommorow, there's a real good chance I'll see somebody from my group. I miss them all so much, I haven't seen anybody except Eld Puglisi in four months. So I really don't know what's going on yet, I'll fill you guys in a bit more next week.
dad- Ya I've already become use to the heat. According to most people it got up to 50 degrees (120 F) last sunday, but we still worked like normal. Good luck in Arizona.
mom- I need to buy batteries to see if my CD player works, but honestly we don't listen to much music. I haven't been taking very many pictures here. We don't do as many activities like in Peru, so I don't have many chances to take pictures. Tommorow I'll take a few. My garments are good. Honestly I can't think of anything I need. Just send me pictures haha, PLEASE, and that flowery shower scrubber.
Crystal- Well this second I'm not out in the middle of no where. But ya I'll be back out there on wednesday. I'll be there for at least 3 more weeks. But really I think I'll be here till the middle of Janurary when it starts getting REALLY WARM. But President Maynes called me and said that I'm not going to spend my ''whole life'' out here. But I'm not really sure what that means. I have 8ish months left, that might mean 7 months... IDK.
EE- be sure and email me some pics.
kk- muchas gracia por the photos. the kids look so big.

Well, time for me to go, I love you guys. talk to you in 38 dias. Mike