Week One

November 6, 2013

Mother, I miss you all very much. Wednesdays are my P days just so you know. We have one hour to write every P Day and i think it will always be from four to five our time. I think there is an hour difference. I'm doing well here. Today was great woke up and went to the temple and then basically had all day to do whatever I wanted. We played a lot of soccer and Basketball, it was much needed. I'm exhausted all the time. We are in our beds by 11:30 but I have 4 hispano elders in my room and they stay up and horse play until about midnight every night, it's kinda fun though. We try to communicate with each other. They teach me spanish and I teach them english its fun. We wake up at 6:30 every morning and every second of our day is planned. We are either learning spanish or studying the gospel. 

We eat three meals a day and the meals are pretty dang good. The food is always cooked fresh but I can tell I am going to get tired of eggs, tortillas, and potatoes. There are tons of kids here probably around 150 elders and 35 hermanas. The building is under construction and so there is always hammering and drilling in the background and I am now used to it. 

I was called as a District leader my third day here. It's more of a hassle than anything else just paperwork and meetings but I'm not complaining. I'm happy to help where help is needed. I started with one companion named Elder Golledge. Hes a nice guy from California. Skinny and not very athletic. I feel like he moves in slow motion and it gets frustrating. Fortunately, i just got another companion, Elder Darrow from Alaska. He is in our district and his companion went home tuesday and so the President put him with us. He and I get along swell. A lot of the same interests and we think the same way. I needed it hahaha. 

I PAID 200$ for overweight baggage!!!!! Can you believe that? Oh well. Looking back now I should have just brought two. Oh well, we learn as we go. Also my athletic shorts are not in my bag, I must have left them home. Will you check for me. Also, no letter in my luggage but I did find those ferrero rochers ;), and many little notes. Thank you so much. They make my day. 

Yes most of the teachers are from Guatemala and just know basic English. All the meetings and everything are in Spanish as well. It's hard but I'm improving. As far as allergies go I must have adapted because I am great now. The first days were miserable because of them but I'm all cleared up now. Yes, i got all of the pictures in the last email. It was great to seee everyone. They all looked great. 

Lets see......what else..... its so humid here. I sweat buckets when we play sports. We have one hour to play sports before dinner at 5:00. It's crazy how green everything is. We don't get to go out at all except for today when we walked 100 yards to get to the temple. We are right next to it. The MTC or CCM as we call it is completely gated with armed security guards 24/7. Apparantly the gangs are pretty rough around this area. Walking to the the temple we pass a gas station which has guargs standing out front with bullet proof vests and pump action shotguns. Kinda cool. 

We have one investigator right now. Thank goodness he speaks english otherwise we wouldbe in trouble. His name is Fabio Portilla. He's a construction worker here. We have met with him a few times but communication is hard and he gets confused. He asks many questions that we don't have the answers to. He's a good guy though and we enjoy meeting with him. As far as anything i need..... I think I'm basically good except for athñetic shorts I could definitely use those. Also, they told us to let you know besides the address just to put elder Nicholas Bryan on the package, but to be honest I dont really care either way. 

I love you very much mother and miss you much too. Tell all I said hi and that I'm doing great. Excited  to get out of the CCMand have a little more freedom. 

Much Love.