Week 7: I Knew it! May 31, 2010

Hello all you gangstas in antioch,

I coulda called that Teresa would go to Taiwan, for three reasons, most importantly Mom and Dad went to Taiwan on their missions, number two Teresa took Chinese in College, And third they call a lot of girls to Japan and Taiwan. Don´t ask me why, but in the mtc there was a load of asian speaking sisters. It kinda sucks now, because that means I have to learn Chinese when I get home so you guys don´t talk trash about me. But we still have hope with Sam and Danny to go spanish speaking! Spanish is actually a lot easier than you think Mom. Its a little wild your first little while here, but you start to get used to it after a while, especially when you have to speak it all day long. Because there are a lot of Missionaries that get out here without ever studying Spanish, and they pick it up in like 3 months or so, and ususally are mas or menos fluent at about 10 months. But yeah I still have trouble sometimes, but I can ususally understand what people are saying. I´m guessing Chinese will be the same, just a little wierd at first, but after a few months you just use it and you don´t really think about it. But yeah it will be pretty awesome. I don´t know it taichung is gonna be more ghetto than El Salvador... I´m sure its pretty ghetto there too. The funny thing about El Salvador is that you will walk in to this crappy crappy little hut, and inside is a TV, cable, internet sometimes, and yeah its pretty crappy and a lot of people have dirt floors, but its nicer than camping at least. The bugs in Northern California are worse than here too.

To settle your rumors yes it did rain like crazy this week. It rained allllll weeeek looong, and it sucks because all the water pools up way fast. But basically my freakin shoes are just doused every day, but whatever. We worked all week long teaching, trackting and everything, buttt the Trackting suuuucks when it rains, for some reason people don´t want to bother with it when its raining. My theory is that it is the umbrellas, because the freakin Testigos de Jeovah allways have umbrellas, rain or shine hahahaha. and Nobody wants to talk with J-dubs haha. But yeah the rain did do some damage, 2 houses went over the edge of the cliff out in one of our neighborhoods called Las Cañas, and the Nation was on red alert for a couple days. It sucked because we had church cancelled, all we had was a little sacrament meeting early in the morning with just a couple members. But the lucky thing is that none of our investigators wanted to go anyways, so we didnt have to turn then away. We did get the grand-daughter of Reina to come, but she only lives a block away, so sending her home wasnt a big deal. We challenged her to be baptized and she accepted, so we are going to baptize her this weekend coming up. We are also teaching her daughter, who is 33. But she is living with this 18 year old kid, so they will either have to split up or get married to get baptized. We´ll see what happens.

The new companion is pretty cool. Probably a little bit more focused than my last companion, but both of them are really great. I´ve been lucky so far with companions, I have only had cool companions. But there are a lot of uncool missionaries out there lol. I just try to get along with everyone. I think one of the the Zone-leaders doesn´t like me that much though because he totally hated or me for forgetting a baptismal record, on my first transfer, which means that you don´t get to write that day, but im way new and I didnt know the rule, so I complained to the AP who was there and he said I could write lol. But the ZL definitely isnt a huge fan of me lol. but hes not a huge fan of anyone haha. But yeah my comp elder Suarez is from Ecuador and he its pretty cool. We macheted the heck out of some people this week who are just full of apostasy, which is fun because showing people that their stinkin pastor is not following the bible is very satisfying.

Happy birthday Danny. I still haven´t bought you a present, because there really isnt that much cool stuff where I am. You have to get into tourist areas, or the field if you want to find cool stuff. I bought a hammock for myself, but I still want to buy a machete and a Llama bag for teresa hahahahahaha.I think I allready told you this, but I bought some sweet T-shirts for myself at this store that just sells bootleg clothing haha. Super cheap. Maybe I´ll just get something cool for you when I come home in two years lol. Speaking of which I´m allready done with almost 1/6 of my mission. It really does go by fast, believe me I´ll be home before you know it.

Something way sad that happened this week was that a little girl got run over and died, And the very same day we passed by like two hours before to set up an appointment to teach them. It is wierd that I said goodbye to her and then she was dead 2 hours later. It was really sad, and I don´t really know what to do as a missionary to help. We allready went to the viewing, and I think they allready barried her. The sister also go run over but just bruised up her arm. But we´ll see. Anyways I dont want to pay much more, so I talk to you next week. Congrats on the mission call and the first day of work, and the priesthood, peace out.

love elder DeVictoria.