TEACHING, SICK, MONKEY BUSINESS

Buenas,

We have been way busy this week, so I’ll just get right to the stories I have. Tuesday, we always have district meeting in the church of our zone leaders, but they didn’t have the keys to the church for whatever reason, so we had to have one district in their tiny house and the other district in the other tiny house of their next door neighbors (who are members). It was way weird. We were just sitting in this tiny little living room talking about missionary work while they were cooking their breakfast haha. So yeah, that happened. The rest of the day, we pretty much just taught, no crazy stories there. We were talking with this one member who is inactive right now and doesn’t want to come back to church. Why? Because she has a guy she is living with and thinks everyone is going to judge her for not being married. But then she went on to say how great of a guy he is and how he is so different because he doesn’t hit her. Wait. What? Castro and I looked at each other like “ummmm is she going to elaborate on that?” She went on to say how alllllll the guys here hit their wives and its so normal, and Maria Isabel (the recent convert from last month, who lives in the same house) was like “Yeah, its normal here. My daughter’s husband hits her AND me. But its all good, we are used to it.” That’s not ok….haha. We talked to Hermana Magda later in the day and explained that and she’s like “that’s definitely not normal….” So yeah, we will see what happens there haha. So that’s Tuesday 

pretty much. Wednesday. We got a reference from another zone so we went and visited the people. It was a grandma and her granddaughter and they were way chill. We talked with them for a little bit, taught a little bit, and just got to know them. One thing that is kind of annoying here is that people base their religious beliefs off of what church is closest to their house haha. You don’t even have to ask them what church they attend most of the time. If there was a church on the way to their house, you can bet that they attend it. It is kind of weird haha. But they both were way receptive and awesome. The grandma said something kind of weird. She said that she had a dream that we (the missionaries) were getting persecuted or something like that, and then she was trying to get in to this giant white building, but couldn’t. She follows the story with “So what does that mean?” Ummmm I don’t know? Castro said he thought the giant white building symbolized the temple or something, he was just searching for an answer really haha. It was kind of weird. I'm just hoping she didn’t have like a vision of us getting murdered or something and then it comes to pass. That wouldn’t be cool. Moving on. Remember that drunk guy from a loonnnnggg time ago? We are teaching him and his wife right now. It is kind of weird though. The wife is like scared of her pastor and worried that if he sees us over at their house, he will freak out or something. The people here are SO scared of their pastors sometimes. The pastors like warn the people and make rules about talking to us. It cracks me up though because these 50 year old men are scared of two 20 year old kids teaching the gospel to the members of their church. It’s funny to me haha. But yeah, those 2 are doing pretty well, so we will see where they go! On to Thursday. Thursday was a joke of a day. EVERY appointment fell through. It was so annoying.  We just had to contact and do all this lame stuff until English class at night. English class was super lame too. These kids came and would NOT. STOP. TALKING. So I just started talking to them in straight English and wouldn’t answer them in Spanish for the rest of the class and said “If you weren’t talking during class, you’d probably understand me right now”. Castro and I were laughing haha. After that, we went and ate at a member’s house. The same member I ate at with Zura and got sick with. I was soooo nervous to get sick again, but I ate anyway in order to not offend them. Guess what happened? On to Friday. I WAS DYING. 

Again. I woke up, threw up, went back to bed, threw up, and repeated that all day long. We only left the house once to go to a pulperia so I could go buy Gatorade, and I almost died. I was sitting at the pulperia and was like 5 seconds away from legit passing out. It was crazy. For anyone who has seen the Harry Potter movies, I felt like what it looks like when dementors suck people’s souls out. It was nuts haha. But yeah, that was only Friday. On to Saturday. Saturday we just spent trying to get people ready to come to church for Sunday. There really was only one story from Saturday. We were walking and saw a TON of vultures. We were walking towards right above where they were circling, and Castro said they were waiting for me because I was on the verge of death and I was like “How did they find me here? What do they want from me?” But then as we got closer, it started reeking of death SO bad. We started getting kind of freaked out that it was a body, but as we walked by, there was a half eaten dead dog and like FIFTY vultures. They are creeeeepy creatures. They just hopped away when we walked by, and hopped right back to eating when we passed. Later in the day, we passed it again and the dog was PURE bone. No flesh whatsoever. It was brutal haha. That’s pretty much the highlight of Saturday. On to Sunday. We went to church, did all that business, and just went out for the rest of the day. Nothing crazy to update there. We did find a giant field of sugar cane (hence the pictures). They are EVERY where here and go on foreveerrrr. So yeah. On to Monday. Why Monday? Because the coolest thing in the world happened. I held a monkey. A MONKEY. We didn’t do anything as a zone today, so I just asked one of the elders here in the city if he had any plans and he said “Not really. We can go see this monkey I found if you want.” Hello, invitation of a lifetime. Apparently he was out contacting in his area and found a guy with a capuchin monkey, so we went and played with it. It was seriously so awesome. They are like cats, but way more fun and active. He just jumped ALL over us, picked at our hair, and did a bunch of other stuff monkeys do.  It was so weird because it was like impossible for him to fall. He would hang upside down from my arm, while picking out stuff of the other elder’s pictures). They are EVERY where here and go on foreveerrrr. So yeah. On to Monday. Why Monday? Because the coolest thing in the world happened. I held a monkey. A MONKEY. We didn’t do anything as a zone today, so I just asked one of the elders here in the city if he had any plans and he said “Not really. We can go see this monkey I found if you want.” Hello, invitation of a lifetime. Apparently he was out contacting in his area and found a guy with a capuchin monkey, so we went and played with it. It was seriously so awesome. They are like cats, but way more fun and active. He just jumped ALL over us, picked at our hair, and did a bunch of other stuff monkeys do.  It was so weird because it was like impossible for him to fall. He would hang upside down from my arm, while picking out stuff of the other elder’s leg hair haha. So cool. Well, that's about all I have. Stay classy world!

Elder Shuga

500 LEMPIRA, EARTHQUAKE, PLOT TWIST

Buenas,
I hope all is well in the states and you aren’t being attacked by North Korea or anything like that. Seeing that the Korea is about to freak out on the US on the front of every newspaper here makes me a little uneasy, so stay safe! Haha. I’ll start with Tuesday. Castro and I decided that we need to find a bunch more people to teach, so that’s what we did. We just went to a bunch of member’s houses, taught a little messages, and then asked for references. It went pretty well, but there really isn’t much else to say about it haha. We pretty much just did that all day so there isn’t many other stories.  At night, we went to go eat at our cook’s restaurant. As we were walking up, there was this lady in the kitchen who would not. stop. staring at me. It was so weird. So when we walked up, I asked Alex (in English so that she couldn’t understand me. He lived in the states for a bit so he speaks English) who she was and why she kept staring at me. He says “She’s my cousin. When you were walking up, she asked who you were and said that you were sexy. Do you like her?” Ummmmmm. That’s awkward. But it doesn’t stop there. I told him sorry, but I don’t/cant like her because of this little mission thing I’m a part of right now and he goes “Wait, why not? Are you gay?” UMMMMMMMM. That’s even MORE awkward haha. I had to explain that no, as a matter of fact I’m NOT gay, I just don’t like your cousin who staring at me like she wants to kill me and wear my skin as a jacket haha. So crazy. After THAT, we went to a pulperia to get some snacks and all that fun stuff, and Castro decided to pay with a 500 lempira bill. It is the biggest domination bill they have here, so they always check it in the light like they do with money in the states. So he gives it to the lady, she checks it in the light, and then she pulls both ends to make sure its sturdy and something (I don’t know, she is crazy) and she rips it in half! Castro and I look at each other like “Did she really just do that?” and then she looks back at Castro like she wants him to pay with something else because now his money is void, seeing as it is freshly ripped in half hahaha. We said no, and she just had to deal with her mistake. It was so weird haha. That is pretty much it for Tuesday. Wednesday. Legit, this was probably my best day in the mission so far, as far as working and teaching goes. We decided to go contact a bunch of the references we got, and Castro wanted me to do all the teaching so that I could practice. So I did. I taught like everything and it went super super well. After each lesson, I was like “How did I do that?” I don’t really talk about the language because it’s just something I just do now at this point, but this day was crazy. I was speaking way more Spanish than I thought I knew how to speak haha. It was weird/cool. I was on fire, so that was cool. Learning a language is really weird though. Every time we are talking with people or teaching, I am sitting there like analyzing there speech, but the people talking aren’t thinking anything of it. For example, the other day I was like “Wow, that guy just used a past subjunctive adverbial clause without even trying.” Then I realize, they have no idea they are using advanced stuff, they are just talking haha its weird. So yeah, there is a little update on the language. Anyways, that is pretty much all we did all day. Oh, and something CRAZY happened. We came home from lunch and I went to go to the bathroom. While I was in there, I felt this crazy shaking roll thing like I was super dizzy or something. I looked over at our bucket we have in our shower, and all the water in there was shaking too. I walked out and asked Castro if he felt it and he said he didn’t feel anything. So naturally, I just assumed my cerebellum was out of order and I was on the verge of death, so we just continued on with the day. That night during a lesson, our investigator says “Oh! Did you guys feel the earthquake?!” I WAS IN A EARTHQUAKE!!!! How SICK is that? I FREAKED out when she asked me that because it meant that I DID feel something and I can now say I was in an earthquake. So awesome.  The only downside is that when someone asks me “What were you doing when you felt the earthquake?!” I have to say I was in the bathroom…not as cool hahaha. I digress. We had a lesson with the Sosa family again and they are doing super well. When we first met them, the mom told us that she shut the Book of Mormon after reading the introduction because there was no way she was ever going to believe it. Then on Thursday, she kept talking about how awesome 3 Nephi 11 was and all this stuff. I saw a visible change in how she was acting and accepting us and just freaked out in happiness haha. It was awesome. So yeah, twas a pretty good day. Thursday. We had divisions, so our district leader came to our area and Castro went to a different area. I have been feeling kind of weird lately because I keep being the only one who knows our area, so it feels like I’m training kind of. It is a weird feeling because it feels like yesterday I was just holding Zura’s hand as he showed me around Honduras haha. Anyways, we decided to visit Christopher again. He is the kid who told us he wanted to get baptized, went to church, and then started hiding from us after we talked to his mom. So we went over there and got to talk with both him and his mom. It is a really frustrating situation for me because the mom is just scared of change, and Christopher is just scared of his mom. When we got there, we were talking with Christopher while his mom was in the other room, and he told us he still wanted to be baptized. Then his mom came out, we were all talking, and she goes “Christopher doesn’t even want to be baptized anymore, right Christopher?!” And he just nods his head. Are you serious?? RIDICULOUS. This is when the more “direct” side of Elder Shuga had to come out haha. I kind of just laid down the whole situation for the mom and she was starting to realize that she was just stifling her son. She started getting more level headed and seeing where we were coming from, and then her little 2 year old daughter walks in the living room and poops on the floor. What? PLOT TWIST. This kid seriously just walked right in, stopped, grunted, and a terd fell out of her pants. The district leader and I just looked at each other like “where do we go from here…” hahaha. Probably one of the weirdest things that has happened to me during a lesson. It is kind of hard to bring the lesson back around to what we were talking about when the mom has to deal with this little kid pooping in the living room. So yeah, that happened haha. The mom is so set on the fact that Christopher needs to stay in her church (Catholic) because it is where he belongs. No one in the family is active, it is just a tradition. I am all for people sticking to their beliefs, but she is saying they need to stick to beliefs they don’t even have. It doesn’t make any sense haha. But anyways, after that, we just had a few more lessons and then English class. We have the English class in the church, and while it was going on, there was a blackout. It was PITCH black. Not cool. When we got outside, it was super cloudy, so outside was pitch black too. We have a rule in the mission that if there is a blackout, we have to go straight home, so that’s what we did. It is kind of annoying because it just ends our night right away, but I would rather go home early than be murdered on a dark night in Honduras haha. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday kind of just blurred together. I don’t really have anything great to tell about either of them. We just kept teaching and doing our thing. We visited Hermana Marta (the really sick one) and her situation is just getting worse and worse. Her husband, who got baptized the week after her, got hit by a car last week. He is wayyyy beat up and had to get surgery on his shoulder. It is costing them like 15,000 limps, which is enough to bankrupt pretty much anyone in my area. Super sad. And then Hermana Marta was walking from the chair she sits in all day to her bed, and she fell because her husband wasn’t there to help her walk. So her face is all beat up too. It is seriously so depressing going over there because it seems like so many bad things are happening to them. So yeah, pray for them. I don’t have much else to write, but I don’t want to end this email on a sad note like that, so I’m sitting here wracking my brain trying to think of something funny haha. OH! I’ll talk about Elder Castro. He is way cool and I love him, but he is kind of a weirdo sometimes haha. He has a very odd sense of humor. Actually, I think he doesn’t even mean to be funny most of the time, but what he says cracks me up haha. I will give some examples. We were doing our planning and he was talking about questions we could ask people while we were out contacting that could help us get references. He says “I don’t know man, you just have to be creative. For example, you could say ‘Hi, do you know anyone who hates our church that we could go talk to? Or is there anyone that YOU hate that you want to send us to and we will go talk to them?’” I don’t know why, but that craaaacked me up haha. Oh, and he asked to see a picture of Kim, so I showed him one and he said “She looks like a fun, energetic woman” and walked away. Who says that? Hahaha. So yeah, there you go. Now we aren’t all super sad. I don’t have any pictures this week, but I think I will next week. Stay classy world! 

CHANGE MEETING, ENGLISH CELEBRITY, GRINGO ROOM

Hello Sweet Sweet American World,

I didn't do a lot of prepping for this email in the sense that I don't really remember all the juicy details of the week, so it might be another below average one. Forgive me as I would forgive you. I'll start on Tuesday. So like I said in my last email, we found out that Elder Zura had a change, meaning he was going somewhere else and I was going to get a new companion. Bittersweet. So all day Tuesday, we just spent it saying goodbye to members and recent converts that he has come to know from being in the area. Zura packed up his stuff and that was it. We had our differences, quite a few of them, but he is a cool kid and I had fun. But I was ready for a change haha. On to Wednesday. We rented a bus as a zone and went to San Pedro for the change meeting, which are always super fun. I don't know if I talked about them before, so I'll just do it again. All the missionaries who have changes just gather together, we hear from the AP's and President, and then he announces the changes. A couple things. 1. This mission is the highest baptizing mission in the world. I don't know if that's a rumor or if that's legit, but I heard it and it sounds cool, so I trust it haha. 2. The mission baptized like around 350 people in 6 weeks. That is nuts. and 3. The changes are hilarious because the new missionaries all have to come to the podium and introduce themselves and say where they are from. The gringos have to do it in Spanish and the Latinos in English. All the Mexican missionaries FREAK out if a new missionary comes from mexico. It is so funny. They all just scream and hold up Mexican flags. 

So naturally, I join in, because I'm obviously mexican haha. But yeah, they are way fun. I got my new comp and he is the bees knees. His name is Elder Casto and he is from LA, but his parents are from El Salvador so he spoke Spanish before the mission. He is way cool. After the change meeting, we went back to our area and right away Castro told me that he wanted to go meet all them members and get right to work. Quite the change of pace for me haha. We went to the bishop's house and a bunch of different people and everyone loved him. We had to go in early this day though because Castro had some stomach issues, so that's pretty much the end. Thursday. We had a zone meeting with all the new companionships from our zone, and that was pretty sweet. Our zone is way cool now and everyone is so stoked to work. Again, a nice change of pace around here haha. For the rest of the day, we just went around finding new people and taught two of our families we are hoping to baptize this next month. One family, Familia Vasquez, is way cool, but it is going to be difficult with them. They have to be married first, but they aren't from Honduras, they "lost" their id's, and they don't have money, so that will be a challenge. They really want to though, so that's good!  The other family we are teaching, Familia Sosa, is super cool, but the mom is way Evangelical and stubborn as anyone could possibly be about the bible. She has a ton of doubts about the book of mormon because “Its not in the bible”, as she says. She always says “If the Book of Mormon is true, why don’t other churches have it? Huh? What do you think about that?!” So I try to explain that if other churches had the Book of Mormon, they wouldn’t be other churches, they would be other wards of our church because they would believe the same thing, and then she just looks at me and goes back to saying the bible is the only scripture. All our lessons with them have been centered around the bible testifying of the BoM, and its been really cool for me. They go hand in hand and its so easy to prove that. Its just hard for people to accept when they have been so hardened to other stuff their entire life. But they are going to be baptized, mark my words. They have been taught by like 8 different companionships, but we have gotten the farthest with them. So that’s pretty cool. After all that jazz, I had my English class. A bunch of people showed up this time, which was awesome. They were all girls but 2, so Elder Castro kept messing with me saying I’m just running a class for guipers haha. But for real, my English class is like getting famous here. People show up that I have never seen before, and when I ask them how they heard about the class, they just say they heard it in the streets. So basically I’m famous for speaking and teaching English haha. Sometimes people will stop me in the street while we are out and ask for help on their English homework. Its funny haha. That’s pretty much it for Thursday. Friday, I don’t really remember much from Friday to be perfectly honest. I think it was good and spiritual and all of that stuff, so yeah! On to Saturday! General conference! We went to the stake center, where they had a gringo room. A gringo room is where all the gringo missionaries get to watch conference in English. Talk about awesome haha. It was seriously so fun. Right before it started, we all went to the store and bought a ton of snack food to get us through Saturday and Sunday. We just got to hang out and watch all day. Twas awesome. We had to sleep at the zone leaders house so that we could stay for the Priesthood session because busses stop running that late, so that was pretty fun. It was kind of annoying with Priesthood session though because the power went out, so they had a ridiculously loud generator running right outside the gringo room, so it was way hard to hear. Such is life in Honduras haha. Sunday was pretty much the same, just conference all day. It was pretty awesome. Other than that, nothing really happened. Everything is going super awesome right now. I’m happy to be in a companionship that actually wants to work. I guess I’ll just go on to random stuff now! 1. We played soccer at this enclosed soccer field for the past 2 pdays. It isn’t indoor, but its like one of those fields with the walls around it. It is way fun. All the Latinos are so good its not even funny. It doesn’t matter what kind of shape they are in or where they are from, if they are Latino, they are really good at soccer haha. 2. Remember how I said our landlord has a hitler mustache? I found out that his name is Santos Dias, which is Holy Days. Quite the juxtaposition haha. 3. I'm going to explain the pictures. The one with me and the three other missionaries is Elder Zura, my grandpa, and my brother. In the mission, the missionary who is your trainer is called your dad. Elder Zura is training again right now, so that gringo on the left is my brother, and the Hawaiian missionary was Elder Zura’s trainer, making him my grandpa. We wanted a picture of the generations haha. 4. The lizard/dinosaur is back. I think it lives in my yard. Its majesty is addicting.  5. The last pic is all the gringo bros in the gringo room. It was so fun haha. Anyways, I think that’s about it? I don’t know haha. Ok, Im just going to end it. Stay classy world!  

SEMANA SANTA, HITMEN, HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED

This week was kind of a dud. Here in Honduras, the last week of March is “Semana Santa” or “Holy Week”, and every one heads to the beaches or goes out of town. As it turns out, when everyone is gone, it is really hard to have teaching appointments. Who would have thought! I’ll start with Tuesday. Remember last week how I said it was just unbelievably hot? Well Tuesday morning, I was woken up to the sound of POURING rain. It sounded like someone was continually dumping a giant bucket of water on our roof, it was so loud. Probably the hardest rain I have ever been in. But yeah, it will go from super hot here to three days of pouring rain, back to super hot again like its no big deal. Anyways, this day was a SUPER dud. Not only was everyone gone for Semana Santa, the people who were in our area stayed hiding in their houses. Its kind of like Arizona. If the weather is anything but hot and sunny, the people freak out and just bundle up inside like it is the end of the world. So that made it really hard to do our normal teaching. And everyone here has tin roofs, so the appointments we did have were SUPER annoying because we had to like scream over the rain pouring on their roof. Crazy crazy stuff. Walking everywhere was crazy too. There aren’t any actual roads, so its just dirt roads, which means a ton of mud. So that was pretty fun. I had my trusty boots though, so all was well haha. We decided that we couldn’t really do much, so we went home an hour early. Zura just went straight to watching movies, like he always does, but I studied. Its kind of annoying, he literally just doesn’t care. But I feel like I'm wasting time if I’m not doing something missionary-like, so I just studied for the rest of the night. On to Wednesday. The rain cools everything off so much. I love love love it. It was 79 degrees in our house. That’s heaven here. So Wednesday morning, I went to shower, and apparently the rain has a huge effect on our water supply. I started filling up our bucket and the water was disgusting. It looks like if you poured a spoonful of nesquik in to a glass of water. Just filled with dirt. It was gross. I contemplated even showering, because I couldn’t rationalize showering in dirt as being worthwhile, but alas, I did it anyway. I miss the states sometimes haha. We carried on with our day, but it was raining like gatos y perros, so the people were all hiding. Oh! I remembered an interesting story. So we went to lunch at the restaurant our cook is at, and as we were walking up there was this giant, really nice pick up truck with two security guards with machine guns sitting in the back. Kind of odd. So we continue to the restaurant and there are these two guys sitting there eating. They are both wearing really nice cowboy boots, animal leather belts, wearing like the same clothes, and they both had super shiny pistols with extended mags sticking out of their jeans. Super sketchy. For anyone who has seen the show Breaking Bad, they looked just like the Mexican twin hitman, for real haha. I asked Zura what was up, and in turns out that they are actually legit hitmen. How interesting! I've never met hitmen before haha. Apparently they travel everywhere with those security guards that I was talking about. What kind of hitmen travel with security guards? LAME ones, if you ask me. So I went up to them and asked “If you think you are so tough, why do you travel with security guards?” So they both pulled out their guns, pointed them at me, and asked me if I was feeling lucky. Just kidding, that part didn’t really happen haha. They were lovely gentleman though. Very respectful! Well played hitmen, well played. So this day was pretty much just like Tuesday. A few lessons here and there, but nothing really earth shattering to mention. We walked through rivers all day, which was hilarious with Zura because he just had normal shoes. So there he was being all careful with his steps, trying to find all the driest parts to walk through, and I was just trudging through like a warrior in my boots. It always makes me laugh haha. Onto Thursday. Semana Santa continued to mess with our week. We had appointments in Balsamo, but the busses we need to take weren’t running, so we couldn’t go. We could have walked obviously, but by the time we would have made it there, we would have been late to our other appointments back near our house. So frustrating. We just decided to reschedule them and go to our other appointments. But guess what? Those people were out of town. So ridiculous. Walking back from one of our appointments that fell through, we met a ridiculously drunk guy. I don’t know if the achohol is different here or what, but when these people are drunk, they are DRUNK. Its amazing haha. He stopped us and started asking us for money. This happens to us so often that we have a routine. We tell them that we have something better than money, give them a Word of Wisdom pamphlet, and tell them to call us when they are sober. They can't even process what is happening, so they just stare at the pamphlet like it is a gift from aliens haha. After that, we continued on our way, and another guy stopped us. He wasn’t drunk though, but he was different. He looked like a real life Voldemort. It was seriously so scary. He was as white as paper and was skin and bone. Hes like “You guys are the mormons right?” in a really creep voice. I said yes and then just kept thinking “Please don’t suck out my soul with your magic powers. Please don’t suck out my soul with your magic powers.” Then he’s like “Your religion is cool and all, but I studied in PALESTINE for 4 years. So yeah, I know a few things about religion.” Ok? Thanks for telling us haha. He literally just said that and walked away. I think it was a mind trick. It creeped me out haha. After the encounter with He Who Must Not Be Named, we went to find a reference with a member. After that, we had English class which was a dud too. Everyone is out of town, so only 3 people showed up. Not cool. And remember Christopher? He is like hiding from us. We think it has something to do with his mom, but we aren’t sure. So we will see what happens there. On to Friday. My birthday. I didn’t get a call from a single one of you. That makes me sick. I joke haha. Thank you to everyone who sent emails to me! But I digress. I'll just skip to the birthday festivities. Hermana Magda invited us over for dinner and cake. She is seriously so good to the missionaries. She's awesome. Anyways, she made me my favorite dinner: Tortillas with beans and eggs. I don’t know if that would be weird or normal in the states, I have had it so many times here that its normal. But I love it haha. Anyways, she made me a cake too! How sweet. They sang me happy birthday, then told me to take the first bite because its “tradition”. What they were trying to do though was get my head near the cake so they could slam my face in it. I'm not stupid haha. I kept saying I knew what they were going to do and I wasn’t going to do it, but then they like got upset because I wouldn’t do it, so I was like dang. I really don’t want to put my face in a cake right now, but these people are going to cry if I don’t. So I did it. It was a fun night overall. Quite different from my birthdays in the past, but fun nonetheless. On to Saturday. Early Saturday morning, President Veirs called. We NEVER get calls from him, so I was freaked out that we did something wrong or something. Zura answered, but he asked to talk to me, but he was just calling to say happy belated birthday. What a mission president! He is seriously the coolest. We had a lesson with a family that we are hoping to baptize in April, and it was pretty sweet. We went to a members house that night and they gave us “tamales”. They were like tamale on the outside, but just beans on the outside. Really weird. But I ate it. Now cut to Sunday. 4 in the morning. Those tamales were not sitting well with me, if you catch my drift. So I had to deal with that, and then went back to bed. When I woke up at 6:30, I threw up. Happy Easter!  (PS, they don’t celebrate that here, so we didn’t do anything for it. Kind of interesting). But yeah, I was dying. My stomach hurt so bad. But I just fought through it and went to church. I made it through the second hour, but I literally couldn’t take it anymore. We decided to go home so I could go to bed, but Elder Zura had to do some stuff before we headed out, so I just waited on this bench in front of the bishops office. Hermana Magda came up and asked what was wrong. I was being SO dramatic. I was like “Hermana…Im dying. Tomorrow is P-Day. Write my family for me and tell them that I loved him and died a valiant death.” It was funny haha. Anyways, that’s about it for this week. It was pretty lame, I know. But hopefully next week will be more interesting. People will be back in town, I'm 20 years old now, I'm a new man, and I don’t have a demon inside of me eating my intestines. All of those things sound like a recipe for a good week to me! On to the random stuff. 1. Sugar cane is SUPER popular here, in every form imaginable. Where we wait for the buses, there is a lady who juices sugar cane and sells straight sugar cane juice in bags. Pure, unadulterated sugar cane juice. So I tried it, and it was pretty good. I kept grunting “SUGAR WATER. SUGAR WATER” like the guy from Men in Black. I was the only one laughing though because Zura has never seen that movie, and the lady selling it doesn’t speak English, but it was cracking me up. Really, there are only 2 people I know who get that reference (Catie and my boy Dan the Man!) 2. The movie Cars here is like the biggest thing ever. There are Lightning McQueen stickers, toys, posters, etc EVERYWHERE. I seriously don’t get it. Such a random fetish that EVERYONE has haha. 3. I just found out that Elder Zura is getting changed this Wednesday, so I will get a new companion this week. Very nice! 4. This is my 8^th week here. EIGHTH. That’s crazy. It feels like YESTERDAY that I was saying I have been here a month. Time is flyingggg by. Anyways, that’s about it.  I hope everyone is doing awesome back home. Stay classy!

Elder Shuga