Saturday, July 23, 2011

It is HOT here!

Hey everyone, Things sound like they're going great, and from the sounds of it your summer is pretty good.  When do you go down to the Cabin?  I'll be honest; I really don’t like summer right now.  It would be awesome here if I didn’t have to wear a white shirt and tie, but I'm dying in this heat.  It's especially bad when I forget my water.  Normally on those days we just stop by the church a couple extra times because it's in my area and there's a water fountain and bathroom.  One thing that New York doesn't have is public bathrooms.  Which can definitely make things interesting?  So far we haven’t seen any more mice or cockroaches which is good and the "little friend" did end up in the sewer system, but it did take two flushes to get him out of the hole through which he tried to escape.  I like that idea with the ants too, sounds really fun.  I'll definitely have to keep that in mind.  We are fortunate and don’t really have any other bugs, especially since they cleaned up all the garbage that was outside our apartment door.  As to the question about bed bugs, that’s a big NO.  We don’t have any as of yet and lets pray it stays that way.

Anyways, just a few notes for Sarah.  First off, if you can avoid cafeteria food all the time, DO!  It can be good, but it gets old fast and cooking is just more fun anyways.  Does your apartment have a kitchen?  Remember too, soccer is a secondary thing, you do still need to keep your grades high if you want to play no?  And finally, just a quick favour from you Sarah.  I don’t know if you ever check my facebook, but if you do, feel free to accept any friend requests from people living out here.  They should be pretty easy to spot and I can’t accept them so I'm just gonna give you permission to do that.

Now onto a slightly more missionary related subject.  The Honduran family is starting to fall apart a little bit.  For one, they didn’t make it to church on Sunday or come to the English classes.  Elder Hampton and I stopped by last night and found Darlin, but Hernan wasn’t there.  Apparently on Tuesday they had had a fight and are now separated (they weren’t married).  Also, when we were talking to her yesterday, Elder Hampton and I both felt something was a little fishy.  Our thoughts are that it is something drug related, mainly because of the apartment where she lives and the other people with whom she lives are kinda sketchy.  However, we're not gonna pass any judgments just yet.  We have set an appointment up for tonight and hopefully that will go well.  Also, I had a split with my other zone leader on Monday and we found another guy who seems pretty cool.  He's from the Dominican Republic and apparently he won’t let people from any other religious group in his house.  Also, he really doesn’t like church because he doesn’t feel that people should get paid for that.  So we explained a little about our church and he said he'd come.  So hopefully he makes it.  He also wanted to show us some pictures of his family.  When he got to his son, Elder Ribeiro (my zone leader form Brazil) and I were just like "Holy Crap, that guy is huge!"  And I don’t mean fat, his arms are like freakin redwoods.  Apparently he's a model of some sort and well, saying he's a tank probably the best way of describing it. 

As for letter writing, I've been meaning to do a little bit of it and write a few people outside of the family.   I have written Jaren a letter, that was like 2 months ago more or less and I'll definitely have to write Gayle a letter of thanks.  Also, I have a few comparisons I wanted to make to the summer there.  First off, "what summer?" I definitely think that the time is flying by super fast as well.  Second, "water balloon fights."  All we have, since we're not supposed to play in water of stuff, is the mist coming off of the open fire hydrants and the super sweet refreshing feeling of walking through said mist or just splashing a little water on the face.  Third, "playing video games and watching TV."  Well, it's more like not playing video games and asking people to turn their TV's off.  Although, it sometimes can take us longer than others in order to get people to comply (when there’s something really good on or a soccer game), but the TV does go off eventually so that we can teach.  Fourth, "shooting", whenever I find an elastic band, I shoot the other elders in my apartment just because it's fun.  We had a little battle the other day. 

Anyways, things here are going great.  I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to hearing back next week.  Also, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY SARAH!!
Los Queiro Mucho,
Elder Dilling