Haha yeah I noticed that! It gave me a good laugh, especially when I saw Trent has it on backwards. (All the younger people put on Tiegue’s shirts and did a poor version of the Haka at Thanksgiving. The Haka, a tribal/posture dance, is performed by opposing teams before some Rugby games.) Torben looks good! And wow his hair is so loong!!! It probably looks weird without a hat on. He can have that shirt if he wants, it looks good on him, just call it a Christmas present. Speaking of, once I get the card working and some personal cash, I'll keep an eye out for gifts for you all, but not yet, and they wouldn’t even make it by Christmas. It'll be more of a surprise that way ;) 

Thats crazy!! Is there like a state of emergency or something?  (Told him a little about the demonstrations after the election in Portland)  I can’t believe I'm missing out on riots! I bet there are tons of videos though, sounds wild. Is it scary, like with Greta going to school In DT (downtown)?

My shoes were getting worn down pretty quick, since they were meant to be dress shoes and not walk 5 miles every day shoes, I got some of the rubber ones that Vaha was talking about, they look like dress shoes but are made entirely out of rubber so they last a long time.

This week I was blessed with companion exchanges. This is when you switch companions with someone in your district (usually the leader) in order to learn from their style, and to improve our effectiveness. The companion who I got was Elder Maners; He's from the same batch as me, meaning that we're both fairly new. This worried me because we were going to be working in my area, meaning that I would lead, I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to understand and it would damage our success. But it turned out to be the best day this week! We had 8 lessons, and found 3 new investigators; I was able to learn from Elder Maners' strength in street contacting, and him from me in lessons. It is always suuuper refreshing to have a break from your companion, even if you get along, being together 24/7 gets to be a little tedious at times. 

  

We did a CSP Community Service Project, helping a family to cement a portion f their wood workshop. After digging out a foot of packed sawdust and wood scraps from years and years of working, we carried sand in 3 gallon buckets and dumped them into a pile, after mixing in the actual cement, they made a little crater in the pile and mixed it up. Before I took one of those cement pictures Elder Gamboa says "Wait! Lemme grab a shovel so it looks like I'm working"  The people here don’t have everything we do in America, but they make up for it with ingenuity. The owner didn’t trust the cement to be level, just flat and hard, so he sunk 2 tiles into the corner, on which he would place a table or chair to see if it was indeed even. It’s different, but they know what works for them.

  

Also I took a picture of the kid on the motorcycle after I saw him climb up there all on his own, and I thought it was a good representation of the difference from America. How if a kid was climbing, there probably would have been a parent right there, maybe even holding him, makin sure he didn’t fall down

I finally received the packages! All 8 of them (was there supposed to be nine?) and a letter from Brother Snider. It was like Christmas morning opening up all the boxes, and the whole time I kept saying "man, I totally love these people" Mostly it was candy from my family, but there was also from the young women in the ward: Thank you!! With all of the little toys and candy I will make little present packages for kids in the branch. I know it will mean so much to them because some of them have so little. Elder Bek asked a kid what his favorite Christmas present he ever received was, he answered 3 pairs of socks and a cupcake.

This week we have two 13 year old girls to be baptized. I want to describe one of their houses: they live behind a building through a passageway barely 3 feet wide. We have to teach her before 5:30 while there’s still sunlight, because they don’t have electricity. Their entire home is about 10 feet x18, and there is a grandma, grandpa, mom, and 4 kids, 13, 4, 3 and probably 3. One week they couldn’t come to church because they needed to use their tryke fare money to buy food (plain rice) for their kids. It’s heartbreaking sometimes to see how little they have, but so inspiring to see them so full of joy and laughter all the time, and so willing to share. 

Our Zone leader just said that for skype you guys need an account and I'll make an account to call you on. So to do that I need the skype account address that you'll be using, and we'll need to coordinate what time also. I'm not sure what day it will be yet but I'll let you know when I know.

 

That bug was about 5 inches long. Scary huh?!