8 November 2010

Q- How are you? 

A- Really good even though it is really hard!

Q- How about a picture of your apartment/house? 

A- O.k. Coming next week.

Q- A typical meal?

A- Sadly there are no tacos here.

Soup and a fruit followed by lots of rice and usually some part of chicken. The other day we had chicken heart, which adds to the normal parts: throat, feet... Oh and I had clam for the first time in the dinner soup on Friday I think. I am learning to tolerate seafood, as fish is not uncommon. Luckily I started being more open before my mission. There are areas where you only eat fish... hopefully I can not go there haha.

Oh and there is this thing called matagringo, which is from the verb matar (to kill) and the noun gringo. They are kind of like olives... and a really sour and basically terrible. At least for us gringos. The Latinos like them. Hence the name.

Q- Who makes your food?  (a picture!) 

A- Oh, coming next week. Sorry only 2 pictures of my surroundings today. One is the son of Clelia, who was baptized my first Saturday. The other is the steeple of one of our two chapels. The chapels are tile floored, hard walls. This makes for a lot of noise reflection, but luckily both have speaker systems to conquer the children´s noises. This chapel is comparatively pretty, the other is a little more reserved.

O.k., some anecdotes.

I got a haircut Wednesday for 3 sol, a little more than a dollar.

I am searching for the best way to mark my scriptures, if there are any suggestions I'd love to hear them!

This week we talked to an investigator who had been taking discussions from missionaries a while ago. She like many people has a child but isn't married. Lots of people here are convivientes, which means living together more or less, without being married. They feel like it is mas o menos the same but as they are unmarried, they are violating the commandment given to us to be chaste, having no sexual relations other than to our legal spouse. She wants to get married. We talked about how the commandments are in reality a blessing. The scriptures say that God does nothing save it is to help his children gain eternal life. Commandments are part of this. They are how we know what we need to do anyway. We receive blessings when we follow the commandments in addition to the eternal reward for being righteous, and avoiding the sadness and despair that can take us when we live contrary to the commandments.

I think she really understood this, and she has a goal to be baptized on the 20th of November.

On Friday, I believe, we had our interview with the mission president.

He interviews us every 3 months I think. His first question was plainly, are you worthy. It is very gratifying to be able to answer this question in the affirmative without any reserve. We talked about how I am doing, how Elder Orihuela and me are doing, what we need to do. In the end, he gave me a spectrum 1 to 10 where 1 is a very bad person and 10 is Christ. I am thinking it must be a logarithmic scale or something. Anyway I am around a 4. He responded, ok, you have a year to be a 10. This is quite a high goal, but I believe I can do it. Today I have a personal goal to work towards realizing this, and tomorrow, and the next I will too. Actually I want to keep having these daily goals basically for the rest of my life, and hopefully I can reach a 10.

We don’t have any flea problems, in answer to your question.

Eric! Sounds like marching band and soccer are being a blast!! Very cool! Your letter made me laugh haha. I was amazed by the blog stats... if each hit was only a second long; it was viewed for a solid hour in October! I shall try to write valuable things. I really do miss trees.. greenery... autumn. 

Sounds like the bike ride to Mount Vernon and the backpacking has been great! I really liked that trail, and that bike ride too!

All right I gotta go. Later we shall play basketball.

Love. 

Elder Johnson