Well family, it's the 19th of September. Exactly eight months ago I was just about to leave on the plane, scared, excited, and well mostly excited. It's been the craziest time of my life for sure. But it's also been by far the most rewarding. This week Elder S. was pretty sick, I felt really bad for him, he had all kinds of headaches, sneezing, and all kinds of fun stuff, on Thursday we stayed home and he slept all day. It helped him a lot but I was going crazy. I feel like maybe I have developed ADD or something, I just could not sit still. I watched all of the districts 1 and 2, read my scriptures for a couple hours. It was somewhat gratifying to realize that I am used to the mission life, and working. But I couldn´t stand just sitting there and doing nothing. But luckily Elder S. is feeling better and his Spanish is getting a lot better too. He is understanding more and more every day. Because he was sick we weren´t able to work as hard as I would have liked to but it's been a good lesson in patience for me. Hopefully this week we can kick it up another notch. Most of the investigators that we had have stopped progressing/aren't interested. So right now we are going to start over from scratch. It will be kinda nice for me because after six months here I have gotten into kinda a routine with looking for people to teach, but we need to try doing things differently if we want to get results. I feel like there are places where I have talked to everybody but then when I really get down to thinking there are places I have never really been too.
One of the funnier things we did this week was eat sopa de pata (cow foot soup) I didn´t tell Elder S. what it was until the end, I had to do it and in the end we laughed about it. This lady wanted to make us limeade. She ran to her tree and grabbed some limes, squeezed them into the water and dumped in a bunch of sugar with ants in it. There were probably 50 ants swimming around, it was somewhat dark so she didn´t notice. I just had to close my eyes and drink it. I was worried that Elder S. wouldn´t do it and she would get offended, but he was a champ and struggled through it.
We went to contact a reference from a recent convert and it turned out really well. The next visit we will probably invite them to be baptized. It is so refreshing to actually have people that want to progress instead of feeling like you are trying to drag people by the ear to the gospel. I want to find more people like her and her family. They are few and far between but I know that if I am patient and obedient, the Lord will guide me to them. This week we have a multi-zone with the area presidency. Elder D. should be way good.
Sounds like you all had a fun time at the McGregor´s house and had a nice summer break, but now are getting ready for school, I wish you all the best of luck! You will do great I´m sure. Try to enjoy it as much as possible, it really is a great opportunity that most people don´t have. Love you all and wish you the best!
Elder Schriever
