I've got some news! The first bit is that I am staying in Izalco this change, the other bit of news is that Elder N is leaving! I don´t know who my new companion will be but I will find out on Wednesday! I'm kinda weirded out by the whole thing, But it was inevitable since I was getting comfortable with the whole situation. To live is to change, and to live well is to change often. I'll try my best to answer some of your questions, If I don´t get to all of them I apologize.
Food I miss: There´s honestly not a whole lot of food that is in the states that you can´t buy here, but there is food that's so expensive we can´t buy it. Specifically peanut butter, it costs $7-8 a bottle which is out of our budget. Also milk is like $4 a gallon so it's not something we buy all the time. I would say that I miss those two things more than anything.
Food I eat often: we do eat a lot of beans and rice, but mostly rice. Beans take a really long time to cook and so we only eat them when a member can cook them for us. We eat a ton of mangoes, probably an average of 2-3 every day. They are really good. Surprisingly people eat them pretty green and ripe but a ton of people eat then when they are sour and hard.
P-days: Normally we spend most of the day cleaning, getting food, and sometimes playing chess. There aren't a whole lot of activities to do here, but I am trying to find stuff to do.
Typical day: Normally we spend about an hour or two knocking doors or contacting. Usually we have enough appointments to fill the days. Very few are fixed appointments, we normally just find a time that normally works for people and visit them then always. People here have pretty free schedules so it's not that hard.
Ward: The ward here is supposedly pretty big for here in El Salvador, there are usually about 100-110 people in a sacrament meeting. The members are great, super supportive and friendly. But there are about 300 inactive members here so we have lots of work to do in addition to finding new people to teach. Normally all of the talks and lessons are covered but I normally prepare something just in case, it never hurts to be prepared.
Language: The language is coming along pretty well, the people here don´t always speak really clearly, and sometimes when I'm tired I have a hard time understanding, but every day I learn a little bit more. In a few months hopefully I won´t have any problems.
Well I think that's was most of your questions. I hope I answered them well enough for you all. This week was nuts, we had two days of interchanges, a trip to the temple, and a trip to Santa Ana for a follow-up meeting to the new missionary orientation. But it was a good week. We found a couple new families to teach and we they are both pretty positive. The temple trip was a huge help, the spirit was super strong and everyone that went loved it, they were all taking pictures which to me was a good sign. Hopefully we can find new people though because we can always use more. Anyway I hope you all have a great week and that everything goes well. Talk to you soon and love you all!
Elder Schriever
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| A tree here that has flowers! I have no idea what it's called but it's pretty cool. There are others with yellow flowers too. |
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| Santa Ana Temple |
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| This picture is of me in front of this super old huge tree here in Izalco I think its called a ¨sabu¨ tree or something like that. I don´t know If you can tell how big it is from the picture but there are some people standing somewhat close that you can use to get the scale. |
