Well April is coming to a close, I loved April, but I am pretty darn excited for May. We had a pretty good week this week, I fell asleep in less than five minutes every night, but I guess that really is a blessing. The problem is when I almost fall asleep in lessons. It only happens when the person we are teaching starts talking for forever about something irrelevant, but it doesn´t happen that often. We had a fairly good turnout this week at church, we had two investigators in church that we are teaching, and a few more that are boyfriends/girlfriends of members, who we need to start teaching. Overall I am pretty excited with how things are going. We have been struggling with finding new investigators here in this area. we get a handfull every week. We have been visiting lots of members, and trying to get references from them. because contacting here is basically useless. The people have little time, and less interest. unless they are family or friends of members. It will be good for me to learn how to work better with the members, and help them in their own missionary work. So far we have had a small glimmer of success, we visited this one inactive member whose son is 19 years old and has never talked to the missionaries. We didn´t even ask him if we could start teaching his son, he asked us! his name is C, hopefully we will get to talk to him this upcoming week.
This week we helped with a multistake service project to clean up this river that's filthy, we didn't help clean the river but we walked around telling people not to throw their trash in the river and also giving out these little bags that you put in pilas to kill mosquito larvae It was pretty fun, after that we had a seminar on how to use family history to help find more investigators, and help reactivate less active members. It was very cool. The guy explained that really the mission work and the temple work are one and the same. and if our converts go to the temple and help out their ancestors the effects of our labors are magnified thousandfold. Really the biggest effects of the restoration are felt on the other side of the veil. It was a really cool seminar and got me super excited about doing family history work and explaining it to everyone. I talked to president and he gave us permission to change our p-day every once in a while and go to the temple as a zone, because we are so close. Hopefully we will be able do it. I would be super happy to spend my p-day in the temple. This week I have been thouroughly enjoying the exercise equipment in our house, especially the punching bag. I don´t know why I never got one before. It is super therapeutic It makes my knuckles hurt but I can live with that. I was pretty sore for most of the week and it felt great. I miss that feeling so much. My companion wants to start eating healthier. So this week I am planning on eating beans and whole grain rice, with vegetables for lunch. Breakfast will be eggs or oatmeal with raisins. Pancakes are good but not super healthy. I think it will help me have more energy, and get more done if I eat healthy and excercise regularly. Mangoes and avocados are in season which means that I will be eating them just about every day. They are so so good. There is not many things I love more in this world than a tree ripened avocado.
This upcoming weeks we have multi-zones, temple trips, and we get to call home. Super excited for that! I´ll let you know the details when I get them figured out. There are members here that have nice computers and fast internect connection so Skype will be a great option this time around. But because of their scheduling we will have to plan it out well. When would you all be able to skype? Let me know what you guys figure out. This email is kinda short, I had tons of ZL stuff to take care of but I will write until the other missionaries kick me off.
Me and my companion get along pretty well. I was a little worried at first, I didn´t really know him that well but he was in my same zone in Sonzacate. But he is a really cool guy, It just takes getting to know someone to get to like them I think. I am getting a glimpse of Dominican culture, and its pretty cool, Bailey is serving in a cool place. I am even learning some dominican slang. Which is always fun. I love spanish slang more than anything. I have hole pages of agendas full of it and am learning more every day. It's hard to memorize and use correctly but I am getting there. the only problem is that anyone that is not from el Salvador will have no idea what I am saying, I will need to get some salvadorean friends while i am at BYU. Or I'll just teach Jake, Sam, Bailey, and Dan and we can all talk together in Vos. It's gonna be sick.
Sounds like you are all doing great, wedding plans are made, Childers babies have been born, and school is wrapping up. All is well in the world. Hope you all have a good week and I will talk to you soon!
Elder Schriever
