Monday, April 26, 2010

2nd Week in El Salvador: No I Don't Have Parasites

Dear Family,
I will write this letter in the order I took my notes. hahahahaha. Anyways, I really did take notes. First off, I really need my priesthood line of authority, I am supposed to have it on me all the time, and I´ve never even seen it lol. So yeah if you could email me it, I´d appreciate it. (Editor: I cut a small portion here that contained private banking information) Also Yeah my mission rules are different, even different than the call packet which makes me kinda mad, One big rule that I´m a little pissed about is that we can´t use MP3 players. puchica lol. Anyways the rest don´t really need to be included because they don´t really mean anything to someone who isn´t out here lol. Just for trivial´s sake, One of the rules is that we can´t drink cola (and I don´t think were supposed to drink caffeine either). It turns out we have one of the stricter mission presidents. Oh well.
Onto things that are actually interesting, One thing that is wierd here is that there are just tons of mutted out dogs running around the cities, they just lay around in the street, on the sidewalk, eat garbage, poop, fruit, whatever they can get lol. Once in a while there is like a big pack of dogs walking around, you don´t see them very often though. The good thing is that they are way tame, you could pet them if you didn´t care about the fleas and lice and stuff haha. Also I´ve seen a couple CATS hahahaha. All the cats down here look like auchwitz survivors though, I think Eddie probably weighs twice as much as one of the cats down here, but its pure muscle anyways. Lets see what other animal are there down here....no monkeys which sucks...But we found a huge spider in our DL´s house, I put a picture of it on here, It was literally the size of my hand. I guess I should explain the other pictures, Well the second and third are pictures of my house, the fourth is outside my window, I think the fifth is just a shot of what the scenery is like here, but you cant really tell becuase its dark, Sixth is my district in the MTC in front of the temple, seventh should be self explainatory, eighth should be self explainatory too, Ninth is us with hermana decena, 10th with hermano ammons, 11th departure form MTC, and the last is all the incoming missionaries, like 75% were from the guatemala mtc. Elder Quijivix is the short guatemateca next to me haha. He is really cool. I swear he can get in like anyone´s door. And yes you can send me pictures in email, its probably best to only send packages through snail mail lol but you can send letters if you want.
Well anyways whats next, well One exciting thing that happened last week, is that Ryan Newell got re-instated, and he going to the same mission, DR east! I´m pretty happy about that! I´m hoping he sends me his email lol. The poor guys is gonna have shell shock when he gets to DR, they have one of the thickest accents in the world lol its like they are speaking portugese when they are speaking english. The spanish here is also pretty hard sometimes, more than I thought it would be, but they also have a lot of like slang, and words that they only use here. Also a bunch of really bad words in Mexico have totally different meanings here, so like the f word in mexico just means to annoy here. Also the word for like "screw you" in Mexico is just a passing phrase with a different meaning here lol. Any like everyone uses them haha. I can´t say I´m a huge fan of the food here yet, they hardly use any seasoning, I think I might have mentioned that it my last letter. We pretty much have rice and beans, (but not always in the same way,) fried bannanas, little dinner rolls a lot, and also tortillas, but the tortillas here are about half an inch thick, and about 5 inches in diameter, and they are a lot tougher IMO. The camelbak was definitely definitely a good Idea, everyone here is so jealous of me lol. The members and native all look at it in amazement when I drink out of it lol. its pretty funny. This is like the easiest life ever though, we have 2 meals a day cooked for us, and the third we usually eat out hahah! for like $1.40 we can eat 4 pupusas and a bottle of soda. Its pretty coo. Its funny here because you actually use coins here. all the missionaries have these coin pouches that tie to your belt loop, I want to get one but I cant find them. Also since we use so many quarters, all the missionaries collect the US state quarters, some people have all the 50 states, the hard ones to get are Puerto Rico, Guam, Washington D.C., and US Virgin Islands. ( 2 of which I had from the US! haha) I only have like 15 right now, but they are super easy to find.
I guess I should move onto something that actually has to do with the work. Well we are actually working eral hard, We are teaching a bunch of people, a couple families. Right now we have two people with baptismal dates, that we found like our first week, and one of them we are pretty sure will be baptized, the other we have high hopes for. Here since the names are so wierd, for the most part we call people by their first names, so we are teaching Hermana Reina (BD: 8 May 2010) Hermana Dinora (BD 22 May 2010) a Hermano Fransisco, a family; the Campos Family, the Lizana family, and a lot of other people who don´t have as much interest in the church lol. We found Hma. Reina at like 8:00 at night in a dark ally lol, but she is actually progressing and she came to church last week, along with 2 other investigators!
So I am hoping that we will have a baptism in my first month!!! woot. its pretty cool to see the people that are open to the gospel, and open to change, because most of the time the only reason people don´t want to listen to us is because they are so indoctrinated in their "easy" churches where they believe in being saved by confessing christ as their savior, and they have all these wierd ideas about how youg et the holy ghost, and the priesthood, and the church is inside each of us and whatnot. Basically it comes down to this, that most people are lazy, and just want o sit back and listen to a band once a week and shout Jesus´ name haha. Oh well, eventually eveyone need to hear the gospel, so thats what were here for. This place is actually super duper jungle, I don´t know if you cant tell by the pictures, but it is. Actually where I am right now is pretty moderade weather for El Salvador, I guess Usulatan and San Miguel are like way hot, but I think I´ll be okay, I really do like the heat lol. When everyone else is complaining about the heat, I just kinda don´t notice it lol. I´ll probably be complaining when I get stationed in san miguel, but oh well haha.
Well lets see what else, Tell danny I´m on the lookout for a birthday present for him, if there is anything especial that he wants, let me know. Hopefully I can find some cool El salvadorean thing for him. At Teresa: congrats on graduation! and 18 months is nothing. Sam: Have fun lifeguarding, get a nalgene bottle for the daily gatorade, Don´t go out partying with the water park people, because they pretty uch just get drunk every night. Dad: Get me that line of authority! lol, and have fun at (work), tell people I said hi. Mom: you pretty much get a whole letter from me, but Hope eveything is going good, tell everyone I miss them (but not really) Enjoy the pictures!
-Asalaamalakim One love,
Elder DeVictoria.

Editor Note: I didn't put these in the order he sent them, but I did rename them so you can see what they are. Click on them to see them bigger. And in case you are wondering, the scripture he wrote on the white board in the picture below is this one: " And when they shall say unto you: Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter—should not a people seek unto their God for the living to hear from the dead? " 2 Nephi 18:19













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