This week I became the proud new father of my new mission son. He is Elder C. He is half Latin half black but from Farmington, Utah. And way cool!! I feel kinda bad for him because everyone thinks that he is from Honduras and probably wonders why he can´t speak Spanish fluently. Also his name is a slang word for friend in Spanish so everyone gets a good laugh out of it. But they still haven't quite figured out Schriever yet. Most members haven´t quite gotten it down but some are getting close. It's kinda crazy, Elder C. knew President H. before the mission, as a matter of fact he was good friends with his son and spent lots of time at their house. Pressure!! But we have gotten along really well and are having lots of fun. Hopefully we will have lots of success these next few changes if we are obedient and work hard.
We are having a kind of competition right new between the two districts in our zone. Our district is all gringos, and the other district only has one, a zone leader, who now officially renounced his gringo standing. So we are basically having a contest to see who can do more work. It makes things kinda fun and if it inspires us to push a little harder doesn´t do any harm. Every time we get out of a district meeting or anything like that we do a team break and yell GRINGO POWER! You gotta keep things fun.
This week was kinda rough as far as the work goes mostly because I wasn't there Monday or Tuesday because Elder M. left on Monday I had to go in trio in another area and so to start out we didn´t have many fixed appointments but now things are rolling and we have been doing well. The M. family has been somewhat hard to get a hold of but the lessons that we did have with them have been solid. We didn´t get to talk with C. this week either because of some problems that they are having but hopefully in the next coming week. F. C. is finally going to get a lighter schedule at work so he will hopefully be able to come to church this coming week! He had a baptismal date, but it couldn´t happen because he was to busy with work to make it to church. Now if that is figured out hopefully in the next coming weeks we will be able to see him baptized. It might be tricky though because he is like a small bear I don´t know if I could lift him back up out of the water! I guess there are worse problems that we can have. E. T.´s son is also doing well. He works at a cable call center and it's a little rough. The hours are long and there is nothing angrier than an American whose cable isn´t working! He speaks English really well. But when people talk really fast because of anger is is a little trickier to understand. There is also really bad traffic right now due to some road construction coming back from San Salvador so he gets home at about 8:30 every night. It doesn't leave much time for missionary visits but soon his hours should lessen up a little bit and he will hopefully be able to attend sacrament meeting.
M. V. (wife of the family we dug the well for) came to church yesterday! They are a super humble family, don´t have much like some of the people here, but they are super nice people. She can´t read really so it's going to be tricky teaching her. We will have to really break things down for her so that she can understand, but that's totally doable. Really the gospel isn´t complicated, its just the application that is sometimes a little tricky.
I am super psyched for Christmas. Hermano V. invited us over for Christmas dinner. His son is the head chef at the Hilton Hotel in San Salvador. So it should be amazing. I don´t know if anything can match dad's dinners but this one might come close:) We also have a misson party basically next Monday, over in Sonzacate. We get to wear normal clothes and I think that it is pretty informal. Should be a good time. For Christmas I am afraid we will have too many dinner appointments to be able to eat it all! I guess we will just have to suck it up and eat all of the delicious food that people give us.
It was great to hear from all of you, it sounds like this upcoming week might be a little rough with finals and everything but that's just the way things go sometimes, there are always ups and downs, occasionally lefts and rights as well. I just want to let you all know how grateful I am for all of your prayers and for taking the time to write me. I hope that this Christmas season is one of joy and happiness, it really is a wonderful time to remember Jesus Christ and all that he did for us. Without him there is really no hope at all. I love the line in Oh Holy Night ¨his law is love and his gospel is peace¨ really the whole purpose of the gospel is learning to love. We should try to share this love with all those who in this happy season, for one reason or another are down or having a rough time. It would be great if we could all make an effort to reach out to someone and help them feel of our Savior´s love. We will realize that as we do our own gratitude and happiness is so much more. I love you all and hope that this week is an excellent one.
Take care,
Elder Schriever
