3-25-13

Hey Mom,

How’s March going? Warming up a little bit? The summer weather is a lot (and by a lot I mean a million times) better here in Toto then it was in Huehue this time last year. It’s only really hot from like 12 to 3 in the afternoon here, but other than that it’s pretty comfortable weather. The rain is starting to settle in a little bit too. It usually rains for maybe an hour or so a day, but it’s not the constant every day all day of rainy season just yet. I just remember that in Huehue last year I was dying. It is so flipping hot there. But here in Toto the elevation is really high, so it makes for a little bit more mild weather. I do have permanent sunburn though, like I can’t get rid of it, even though I put sunscreen on every day.  I’m just rosy all the time. It’s probably a little more windburn then sunburn though.

We’re gearing up for another Holy Week here. My area is pretty Catholic heavy so it should be pretty wild again. Most of the days aren’t too crazy except for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. They make these big designs in the street too that are really cool. They are made out of dyed sawdust and it’s pretty cool. Although we did hear that in Quiche this week some guy was driving on a street where they were making the designs and he drove over the corner of the design with his car and messed it up, and the people making the thing got in a argument with the driver, ended up pulling him out of the car and they killed him....uhhhh. Yeah. We’re going to be sure and not mess up the sawdust designs in the street while we’re walking.

They (pretend) crucified some guy in Chiantla last year for Holy Week ha-ha. Remember that? It’s pretty wild. This week is even bigger than Christmas here. It’s just a little strange though because Sunday is literally nothing. Easter here does not even exist. They just celebrate his death and nothing else. Nothing about the resurrection. Kind of ironic I think.

This last week was good though, not a whole lot of exciting news. Our guy we had a date with for baptism dropped off the face of the planet and the date fell through so that was kind of a bummer. We seriously could not find the guy anywhere and he wouldn’t answer our calls or anything, and then he called the branch president and told him to tell us not to pass by anymore. :(. This is your salvation man, how can you not want this?

The other thing that happened this week is that we have no electricity in our house. We’re not exactly sure why, but for the past three days we have not had any light or anything in the whole building where we live. And it’s literally just our house on the entire street that is like that. Just cold showers in the morning and the headlamp (that Dad insisted that I should bring) at night. I honestly never thought I would use the sleeping bag or the headlight, but Dad turned out to have some great prophetic thinking on both cases. I’m still using Agnes. I literally can’t switch back to blankets now. Even though it doesn’t get cold at nights anymore. It’s so nice waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed, and folding in half the sleeping bag and throwing it back on the bed in two seconds, while I watch my comp make his bed like a scrub messing with blankets and sheets and all. Too much work. I hope my wife is okay with us getting a two-person sleeping bag because I’ll never make a bed again. Great call on Dads part.

Another cool thing that happened this week is we found some of the coolest investigators in the world. The Mom and Dad of the family are both deaf and mute. The Dad fell out of a tree a week ago while he was getting firewood, and now he is paralized from the waist down. But we got the reference from some members and the whole time I was just kind of thinking, how on earth are we going to teach deaf, mute, and paralyzed people...? But when we got there we met their 7-year-old daughter, and she translated for us. It was seriously one of the coolest lessons I have ever had in my mission. The daughter isn’t deaf or mute or anything, but she learned Spanish sign language and has spoken Spanish her whole life too, so she did all the work. She also taught us a few of the signs so we could tell them ourselves things. It was crazy. But we taught them a lesson and gave the Dad a blessing. It was sad at the same time though, like those are some rough cards to draw from life. The Dad is super cool though. I really hope they progress. How cool would that be if they got baptized? Anyways, that’s about all that’s new here. I hope everything is going good there. I’ll talk to y’all next week.

Love you all,

Adam

P.S. Today we just went to Xela and now are kind of hanging out. They might change our area so we were going and talking to the AP's about that. There is this city called San Andres Xecul that is super close to San Cris, and they might move us there to open the area (its never ever had missionaries) and put normal missionaries in our place here. How cool would that be? You should Google the city though; it has this famous Old Catholic church there.