Monday, October 14, 2013

10-12-13

Hey Mom,

How is everything going? That is crazy that your getting some nice fall weather. I would like to say it feels like fall here too but its not really the case. Sometimes at night if it's rainy it feels a little cooler but during the day it is still blazing hot here. I had to go to the dentist again this morning and we had to walk pretty far to get there, I am sweating right now. I had another filling fall out on one of my teeth (that makes for three since I have been down here) so I figured I would have to go and get it filled, especially since the other filling that had fallen out had been out for like a year. It really wasn't that bad though, the tooth that had had the filling fall out didn't hurt or anything and the dentist was really surprised because it had almost no decay, even though I had left it for so long. The dentist is a new guy the mission is using and I was actually really surprised at how nice it was. My mission President´s wife was the one who found him and he does really good stuff. He graduated from some dental school in Alabama but is from here. He spoke perfect English too so it was all pretty good

It has been a really quiet week actually. We did not have much going on other than my companion and I are   kind of sick. These last few days have been pretty fun for that. I haven't taken any medicine but it's ok, it will pass. Most things do. I don't lik to just take medicine everytime I get a little sick. Then my dominant genes don't get the exercise they need to keep being so dominant. I was thinking about going around the corner and getting some tacos from the street vendor and really giving them a workout.


Our investigator is totally ready to get baptized now. She came to three out of the four sessions of General Conference and she said she loved it. So we had a few lessons with her this week and she seems ready to get baptized a week from today.  Other than that it's always the same, office work, and missionary work. 

I got so frustrated at the bank again this week. I went in to cash a check, and since the church does not allow us to have our actual passport for security reasons, we all have official copies that are signed by a lawyer and a notary so that we can still do official things even though we do not carry around our passports. But like I said, we went in to the bank and tried to cash a check and the manager came out and told me that I could no longer cash checks there because my passport copy had expired. I was kind of confused since my passport does not expire for 7 more years how is it that the copy of it could expire. So I called the lawyer and asked him about it and he told me that it was not true and that it did not expire, so I went back to the bank and asked him to check again. He called his boss and after making us wait like half an hour he comes out again and tells me that I was right that it had not expired, but he still would not cash my check. This guy totally had little man syndrome. He was about 5 feet tall and was totally just abusing his power. He walked out around the corner and was trying to explain to me that even though my passport copy was valid, he could not cash my checks because I was pulling out such a large quantity of money because I am not from this country and was not using my actual passport I could have falsified all the documents and could be stealing so much money. I was pulling out like 1500 dollars from the account. If I had seriously gone through all this work to have falsified all my paperwork and would get a check signed by the man in charge of the bank account (President) to sign a check in my name, if really I had gone through all this trouble to steal, would I really be only pulling out 1500 dollars? That is seriously nothing. Either way I just went to another bank in town that is the same company and they cashed the check for me. Business protocol here kills me sometimes. 

General Conference was awesome. I hope you have had the chance to listen to the Priesthood session. All of the talks were really really awesome. President Uchtdorf seriously had two of my all time favorite talks all in the same conference. I really liked Adrian Ochoa`s talk too. That would be a good one to go over again.
Anyways, what have you guys all been up to? Everyone is in school? What did Alex end up deciding on doing for school? Did you get that last package all ready? I forgot my camera at home again today on accident so sorry, double photos next week I guess. I love you all and hope all is well. Have a great week.
Adam

Monday, October 7, 2013

10-5-13





Hi Mom,

Yeah, we just got done watching the first session of Conference. We watched it in the church because one of our investigators came with us. We have an investigator that is ready to get baptized now. We have a date with her for baptism on the 19 of this month. It was so cool actually. She lives with an old investigator that we had been teaching but she didn't really want anything to do with us, so we had left them. A member had just gone over there to visit and met this new lady, and she invited her to church and she is really, really interested. She even came to the baptism a week ago and totally loved it. So we have been teaching her and she has been coming to church and we took her to conference this morning. The session was really good too. I thought all the talks were amazingly done. I especially liked Elder Dube and Uchtdorf´s talks. I thought it was interesting how much in general the church itself was talked about. Not just what it is, but a lot about who we are and what we believe in. And it was all so centered on Christ. I loved the story Elder Dube shared about how working in the field and how easy it was to look back and think, whoa, we have done so much. But how important it is to be able to look forward and know that that work ahead is more important than what has already been done. That one was for me haha, even though I have been out here for a little bit of time, that does not mean I am done and cannot just be happy with what I have already done. It was pretty inspiring for me honestly. 

This week has been soooo busy and crazy. We had transfers this last week and it was also on the first day of the month. The first of the month is when I have to make all the payments to the missionaries and pay for rent and everything, but it was a little stressful since I had no idea who was going to be where. I was talking on the phone making sure everything had been paid pretty much the majority of the whole week. We also had to go and close down a few areas and take some stuff to some of the missionaries. We went out to the middle of nowhere. We went to one of my companions old areas in Momos. It was unreal. The missionaries live in a little cottage built with the chapel, and the chapel is on top of this huge mountain. There is one dirt road that goes along the mountain and it is so far out in the middle of nowhere. It would have been crazy to have had an area like that. It's seriously so far out in the middle of nowhere. We had to drive on a dirt road for at least an hour in the mission pickup before we arrived. So cool though. That is what I have been up to though. Everything is good here, just trying not to get to fat in here haha.

I love you all and hope you enjoy conference. 
Have a good week and say hi to everyone for me. 

Adam