I Am Happy As Can Be

Hello mi familia!!  This week has been great for the most part!!!  It has absolutly flown by!  I hope that the weeks will continue to do this!!  It was kind of slow as far as the number of lessons that we had we only taught like 35 and the goal is 55 but that is super hard to achieve with our lessons usually going like an hour and a half and food taking two hours because they forgot that we are coming to eat with them until we get to their door!!  One thing I forgot to tell you about last week was that we had a regional conference and the speakers were all americans and this poor lady hadn't ever taken a spanish class in her life and she tried to talk and it was a trainwreck.  I guess the good news is now maybe people won't think my spanish is as bad!!

Alright so this week we found three new investigators while we were knocking doors and all three of them have a fecha to get baptized on the 21 of december!  The one guy we thought wasn't going to really do anything or progress at all but then it turned out that he was actually really excited and told his whole family that he was going to get baptized!  Then this week at church his grand daughter wanted him to leave right after sacrament and he basically said she can leave if she wants but that he was staying which shows that he really knows what's happening!!  The other two investigators are in a family that doesn't really have much of a house at all! It is mainly just a porch!! But they are progressing good and it turns out the mom who is like 70 years old out of no where pulls out a Book of Mormon!  the whole thing was just a little crazy including her!! It is all super crazy to me that after these two weeks I have grown to love these people so much!!  I don't want to have to leave at all which is so beyond crazy to me!!  We have a couple other investigators that we should be able to put fechas with so hopefully that will happen this week and then get baptized the following week!!

I am loving the food we get every day and we actually just ate the best ice cream I have ever had from a members house!!!  it was like right up there with my peanut butter cup perfection!!!

The weather is literally the same every single day which is nice.  I never need to worry about it being randomly cold!!!  I am super glad I brought my New Balance jacket though it is perfect at night when it gets a bit chilly!!

So we were teaching two days ago some familiy that still just can't get an answer about if the church is true or not!!  they have been being taught for weeks!!  She wanted us to go to her church and see if it was good so we taught the restoration again and very bluntly said that this is the only true church and that all others are wrong!!  Then I had the strong impression that we should get down together on our knees and pray to know if it was true and then just wait a few minutes in silence with our eyes closed so they could recieve their answer!!  So we did it and the spirit was so strong and there were a few tears shed not much but a little bit!!  Then when we started talking she just said she still doesn't know.  So we ended up dropping the family!!  I bet you didn't expect that turn of events!!  So basically we are just trying to find new people which seems hard because we literally have four missionaries in an area that is just about twice as big as our neighborhood so we have half of the ward and they have half of the ward as well!!

So one of the funniest things that happened was we were eating with a member this week and she had like twenty kids it seemed like but it was really only like 5.  Well anyways we had just said the prayer and her eight year old son came out and asked why the tonto guerros are eating here.  Or in other words why are the stupid white people here!  In a members house!!  I couldn't believe it we all just busted up laughing the whole time!!!

I'm doing really good though!! So we haven't gone grocery shopping yet we are going to go next week to central de abastos which is like this huge costco or sams club on steroids and everything is pretty cheap there so that is what our plan is!!  I will be sure to take pictures next week and let you know how it goes.

The spanish is going pretty good for the most part I mean I still struggle but I am feeling better and better each day!! This week I gave a talk in church about the work of Salvation and so I talked for ten minutes!!  I was going to try and write out my talk since I still am not fluent but I just couldn't bring myself to do that so I went with some bullet points again and then had a list written down of things members can do to help the missionary work without being a full time missionary!  I won over all the hearts of the sisters because I said they can continue to feed us and this is huge for these people to feed us!!  I have eaten everything that has ever been put in front of me and I have had all sorts of vegetables I didn't like and I even eat peaches!!  You guys should be so proud of me!!  Since we walk like ten miles a day I haven't really gained or lost any weight since being here!!  But all in all things are going great!!  I am happy as can be and things are just getting better and better!!

Some cool things about the mission are going and seeing this complete turn around in people even after just one or two lessons!  Mexico is also pretty cool as far as all the sites and different things it has here!!  We have a lot of freedom and I really like my companion so we are really just out here having a blast!!

Yeah the duck is just one of the weird pets people have here!  (He is explaining the picture of him and the duck from last week.)  I see something new every day I swear!!  I think everything is good here as far as the prayers go I will let you know if there is something specific we need though.  Last funny moment of the week!  We had an appoinment with a member one night and we showed up and it looked like there was a party going on!!  Turns out her neighbors and other members of her old catholic church came over and they were totally having a rosario in our members house and we just didn't know what to do because she totally was just standing up leading it we just were laughing trying to figure out what was going on!!

We also went on a hike today up the mountain to this hill by our house and it was really cool!!  The pictures won't load to drop box so I will try them from a different place later I guess!  I love you guys and hope everything is going well at home!

Love,

Elder Orchard

Elder Orchard and Elder Lund

We got this gem with the hike pictures!  Random silver guy:)