I'm Getting Old

Well it was definitely a surprise to get on my email today, expecting nothing and seeing all of the messages you were able to write to me.  Sounds like Waterton is just as good as it's supposed to be and that you are all enjoying it a lot with all the hiking and the horse back riding, which yes Madison, I would definitely go when I get back.  One thing that I don’t think I'll be able to accept though, is how much everyone is growing up.  It really doesn’t seem like time is passing in the normal sense here in NY.  Sure, it's flying by, but it almost feels like the time back in Canada should be standing still.  I mean, Sarah's now 18, Christina's starting High School in September and Daniel Jr. High.  Cooper's now riding a bike, I mean everything just changes in spurts it almost seems.  Mainly I've been measuring my time with General Conferences and we're almost at my third one.  The Eleven months I've been gone for so far have just flown by, kinda like this last week.

It's amazing how fast the time flies and if you really don’t use it all as wisely as you can, you lose out on a lot of opportunities to share the gospel, which being my purpose here,is a pretty important thing to master and make sure that I do.  This last week we've been kinda thinking a lot about how we've been spending our time and have definitely found some things that we need to change a little and make better.  For the most part we are definitely doing our best to lift up our voices to all and give everyone the chance to hear this wonderful message that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I have also found during my time here, that things like reading the scriptures and going to church can actually be a lot more enjoyable than I thought they were in the past.  My favorite time everyday is the hour between 8 and 9 when I have an hour to dedicate myself to reading in the scriptures and although some days I'm tired and cant really focus I've found that if I approach my studies with some kind of question in mind I will always find an answer in my Book of Mormon reading.  One thing I've also decided though, is that I prefer to read it in Spanish and that I probably won’t read it in English, cover to cover again in my life.  I'll definitely study certain parts, but I was told of a promise that one of the prophets gave about remembering the language after the mission.  That if you constantly read it in your mission language you won’t forget it and will always be able to use it and Spanish is definitely something that I never want to lose.

Anyways, this last week went very well, we found a couple of new investigators, but my favorite ones are the Sister and Father of a recent convert.  Their names are Sandra and Gabino Camacho and the member is Maggie Camacho.  They were taught a while ago by another missionary, but after he left the missionaries that took his place didn't care about them nearly as much and they lost their desire to be baptized.  That advice that Deanne gave is definitely important.  I can testify that if you don’t really show the people that you are there to help them, they really aren’t gonna have the desire to listen to you.  And that’s definitely something that I am really committed to not getting into the habit of doing.  Especially after talking to the member and really understanding how important this is to her and how hard it was when those other missionaries stopped caring about her non member family.  I couldn't even imagine how hard that would have been for her, especially after her father and sister told her that if the first missionary had stayed just a little longer, they would already be baptized.  So I have really fixed it in my mind that I am not gonna be the kind of missionary who doesn't express that love and I think also the appreciation for them actually listening to you.  I find that some missionaries are a little to unexpressive of that.  It’s definitely important I think for people to understand that it's not just a blessing for them that your there, but for you as well.  It's kinda like my purpose says, "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ through Faith, Repentance, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end."  As the White Handbook says, "How great is your calling!"  Everyday I appreciate more and more this time I have to be here serving the people here in NY and am grateful to be here and work hard. 

Thankfully though, along with the hard works comes the P-Days and such is today.  So today we are going to go to the Museum of Natural History.  The one in the movie “Night at the Museum” and so next week I'll have a lot more pictures posted on that website for all of you to enjoy.  As part of that plan to go to the museum we want to have as much time as possible, so I'm gonna end this letter now.  I really enjoyed all your messages and I wish the best for all of you and that you all enjoy the rest of your time in Waterton immensely.  I love you all and look forward to hearing how the rest of your holiday was next week.

Les Quiero MUCHISIMO,

Carson

P.S.  we're supposed to be getting struck by a hurricane on Sunday, but don’t worry, I'll get some pictures for you.  Plus I've heard it's not gonna be very big.  A tornado was supposed to hit the Bronx on Sunday, but nothing ever happened, so yeah.  I'm kinda hoping and praying for a hurricane, because it'd be super cool and I want to see what it's like.  Anyways, have a good one.

Bronx Zoo

Hey everyone.  This week I really don’t have a whole to say.  We still haven’t gotten back to Carmen's house, but I'm not to worried, she's super busy all the time.  We're still going to keep working with her.  We've done a lot of work for the English program this last week it seems.  Two of our new investigators are ones that we have had to give away to the elders in the English program.  The hard part is that Elder Hulme doesn’t want to because they really are our best investigators right now.  So yeah, it's been a pretty busy week.  On Thursday and Friday I went up to Scarsdale to have some training meetings, one for trainers and the other for DL's and ZL's.

It's always god to hear that things are going well back home, and that I'm missed by the ward.  I mean it doesn’t surprise me, I am just that awesome.  JK.  A question I had though is what is Sam's mission address?  I meant to write him before he left, but never seemed to have the time.  so if you could get that to me that would be sweet. 

On another note, I found out that I can go to a Yankee's game in September, so that should be pretty sweet and Elder Hulme and I are also going to plan some trips to Manhattan and stuff.   So I should have some more pics to send home to you.  The hardest part is that I never remember my cord for uploading the pics onto the computer.  Hopefully I remember next week or the week after.  I'll be sure to include a pic of the chapel/stake center.  Also, what happened to Jason?  Did he move, or was he just released?

And as for dad's question about the Spanish, I'm really bad at it. It’s definitely something that I need to work on improving, not just for me, but also for Elder Hulme even though his Spanish is already really good.  I also need to vastly expand my vocab.  That’s my weakest point right now, as well as a few grammar principles, but overall, I feel fairly fluent in the language, I just lack a larger base of words to use. 

Finally, as for your idea about the talking thing, I think you’re crazy plus the ward has a missionary Sunday every fifth Sunday.  So I'll be speaking at the next one of those which should be great.  I don’t mind the speaking part, it's just the preparation.  I just don’t feel comfortable talking in front of a large group of people without my talk entirely written out for me.  I am trying to change that and my time and teaching here has definitely helped me a lot. 

Finally, like you, I'm amazed how fast the time is going by here.  I'm almost at the hump mark, and it seems like I got to the mission field 2 months ago, not the 11 that have gone by.  It's really crazy.  I've definitely noticed that as you grow up, time goes faster.  I don’t know why and some days I'm grateful for it but others I'm just like "whoa, where'd the time go?!?"  Anyway, I gotta get going, but I love you, I miss you and I hope you all have a great time in Waterton next week.

Love,

Carson

Lessons Learned as a Trainer

Hey Family.

Things are going great here.  This last week was really great.  First off, as I said last week, I have a greenie, and he's really cool.  He's from "La Fabrica" aka Utah, but was born near San Francisco.  He grew up there until he was 12.  So yeah, this week has been a fairly big change, and also a great chance for me to increase my patience, and my Christ like attributes.  Patience, because it's all new, and Elder Hulme has needed to ask who and what things are a lot.  By that I mean he asks, I answer, and then like 1 hr later he asks again because it's slipped his mind.  And I've noticed that it bugs me a little, but also as I thought about it, I realized how much of a change it really is for him, and I remembered what it was like for me during my first cycle.   I was kinda doing some thinking this week on what my trainer was like, and how my first cycle really affected the missionary I am now.  And what I realized was that my first cycle really wasn't very good.  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I really didn't learn anything about missionary work.  As much as my trainer liked his mission, he really was worn out, and didn’t really want to do all the work anymore.  As part of this realization, and in my thinking process up until now, I realized that as little as my trainer taught me, he definitely showed me a great example of what I don’t want to be, and how I should work and everything with Elder Hulme.  And Elder Hulme has taught me a lot during this week, and being with him constantly makes me want to be a better and better example for him, so that he's set on the right foot to becoming a fantastic missionary, which I have the faith he will become.  As for the whole District Leader trainer thing it's really not a problem.  The District leader "duties" really don’t take up a lot of time, nor do I really have any meetings to go very often.  So yeah, it's really not too much.  I'm just focusing on improving myself and through so doing becoming a better example for those in my district and out.

At this moment we don’t have a lot of people to teach, but we are definitely seeing some success, and we've been finding some new people to teach, or to hand off to the English speaking Elders.  There aren’t really any Caucasians here, but anyone we find who speaks English has to be taught by them, unless they want to attend the Spanish ward.  But the majority of people here in the Bronx speak Spanish, or both.  And the majority of Spanish people are either from Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic.  This cycle we have been planning on a way to get to know more of the members in the ward, so we've been making a lot of appointments with them, because in reality the best way to work and find people is through the members.  I really didn’t get to meet any of the members during my last cycle, so we're trying to make a good connection with the members in our area.  The other day one member invited us to come by and teach her aunt.  It was really cool, because they live together and the member was just baptized like 8 months ago or so, and she lives with her aunt and a few other people.  So we were visiting the member one day, and she asked us if we could come back the next day to teach her aunt a little more, and to try and help her accept the gospel.  The name of the Member is Venecia and she's pretty awesome.  She's missing all her teeth too, which just makes her super hard to understand, so Elder Hulme doesn’t really understand her.  He understands most people if they speak fairly clear, but for her, he just looks at me and says "what?!?"  Which to be fair, the same thought goes through my head occasionally with her.  So we went by yesterday, and taught her aunt Carmen a restoration lesson, and it seemed like she really understood the need for a restoration and I think she honestly has a desire to find out if it's true.  So we left her with a book of Mormon, and a little bit of reading to do by the next time we pass by on Monday.  Right now I think our biggest obstacle with her is that she works every Sunday, and her job requires her to be there for 24 hrs 3 days a week, and Sunday is one of those days.  But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.  For now we'll just focus on helping her receive a testimony that this is the true church.  Another thing I noticed during that lesson is how the Holy Ghost can work through us.  My Spanish certainly isn’t perfect yet, and I have lots of things I need to fix.  But When I was really listening to what she was saying, I was able to speak much more clearly, and when I was trying to think ahead on how I would phrase something, it just didn’t want to happen.  So this last week my testimony has really been strengthened on the power that the Holy Ghost offers in helping with the missionary work, and how, really, my Job as a Missionary is to hold open the door of my mouth, and allow the Spirit to use me as a tool to teach the people here.  So yeah, things have really been going good this last week, and I honestly think that this opportunity I have to be a trainer is a huge blessing.

As for the questions about my ward, the Ward here is pretty sweet.  I'd say it's probably a little bigger than Heritage ward (unless it's grown a lot recently).  So that kinda gives you an idea.  We meet in the Stake Center which is in the middle of the Bronx.  It's actually a really cool looking building.  One thing that Elder Hulme and I are gonna do is take more pictures.  That’s definitely something I've gotta get better at doing.  I really don’t have enough pics and stuff.  So far I haven’t had to speak once in church my entire mission "knock on wood".  And I've only had to teach classes at church like twice which is also pretty sweet.  Most of the wards and stuff here are big enough that they don’t really have to call on the missionaries to speak in Sacrament meeting.  The missionaries do speak every fifth Sunday in my current ward, only three of them though.  So I dodged the bullet this last time. 

And as for my journal writing, it has gotten better, still not 100% but probably like once every other day or so.  Having a companion that wants to write in his helps a lot, because rather than talking and stuff we both write in our journals for a little while.  And as for the member meals, we really don’t have a rule.  I never ask for them to feed us, we just ask them if we can come by to share a message with them and stuff, and normally they do feed us just because that’s the way the Latino culture is.  They just like to feed people.  Occasionally even random strangers will invite you in to have a little something to eat.  Something that I thought was kinda funny though this week was as we were knocking on doors in this one building.  We were walking down a hallway towards a door to start knocking, and the first door we came to was this Dominican Woman in only a bra and pants.  It was kinda weird, but we talked to her for a little while.  It was just kinda funny especially the face of Elder Hulme after we left the door. 

Anyways, that’s about all the time I got for today.  I Hope all goes well this week, and that you all have a fantastic week.

Con Mucho Amor,

Elder Carson Dilling

P.S.  If no one is going to use my laptop you could pack it away with all my stuff.  But if they do use it,  NO GAMES, OR LIKE, THINGS ON THE INTERNET.  Ok.  Perfect. 

I'm a father!

Note: This is a late entry from Aug 3, 2011

Hey, I don’t really have a lot of time this week, but I felt I should fill you in on what happened during the transfers.  I am officially a father.  That’s right, I'm training this cycle.  My new companion is Elder Hulme.  He's from Orem Utah, and is a really cool guy.  We're both way excited for this next cycle, and we really have some high hopes for what’s gonna happen this cycle.  unfortunately Elder Hampton returned to his house because of personal reasons, so that’s sad for him. 

Those pics of Sarah and stuff look pretty sweet.  I also see that she got a new laptop.  What’s going on with mine?  Is it in storage?  The pic of the sign looks really nice, as well as the weather.  Is it very humid there at all?  Anyways, I really don’t have much time right now.  SO I hope all goes well, and I'll be sure to have more time next week.

Love Elder Dilling

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



Well, things sound to be going pretty swimmingly back on the home front.  Things here in New York are also going way good.  I'll be tearing up the cheque right after I get back to the apartment, and I think the Bank account would actually be the best way of sending me money from now on.  Cash is always nice, but the bank way just seems so much easier.

Anyways, congratulations Mom on your test thing.  That's probably quite a load off your back.  Also, that plaque is really cool, is that sitting on one of the showroom shelves?  If so, I'm sure that’s a good conversation starter and could give you lots of missionary opportunities.  I'm also putting up some pictures that you can enjoy.  I don’t have any with Elder Hampton yet, or of the apartment, but I do have a picture of our toilet that you might enjoy.  Elder Bowker caught a little friend in his study room, so we tossed him in the toilet.  It was pretty sweet.  You can also see his attempted and failed escape plan.  This week was just an all around fun enjoyable week.  Saw and met lots of awesome, and crazy people. 

So let’s start off with the crazy.  On Saturday I went on a split with Elder Miller and near the end of the day, we were walking to a look-up that we were going to do and then on the way, some guy sitting on a bench calls us over, which isn’t really all that uncommon.  Anyways, he just asks us to talk to his friend who is obviously homeless and has set up shop on this particular bench.  His name was Carmile, and he's a pretty nice guy, just a little confused about some things.  So we get over to the bench and he's trying to tell us that we're missionaries for a catholic church here in the area and that he's seen us serving dinners at said church (If you want to look at the church it's on the corner of University and Fordham Road).  Anyways, after we cleared all that up, he started telling us his life story, about what his parents did and what he and his brothers did and all sorts of fun stuff.  So here's some of what he said in his story.  For one, his father built Manhattan and was the biggest construction boss in Manhattan.  He was producer of the movies,” The Producers” and one other big movie.  When he was a kid he worked in the subway tunnels and often got lost.  His mom was a seamstress and she was also the lady who found Marilyn Monroe, John Travolta and many other movie stars.  In fact, if you named one, she found him/her.  He informed us that Al Capone was also the Indian Geronimo, the very same who beat General Custer at Little Bighorn or something like that.  And that there was only one plane at the two towers, the second tower was set on fire by some isotopes from the computer room in tower one and that it was the result of the computers.  He also told us that the Italian Indians walked here to America when the world was all together in Pangaea.  He also came up with the idea for color TV and gave the idea to his uncle to create one.  He also had his uncle bring Hollywood over here to New York, because it was better here. 

He was just one funny fellow, who kinda ate up like 1hr of our time, but we both decided that it was time well spent.  I think he was just happy to have someone to talk to who was also willing to listen to him.  It really is a rather sad story and I kinda feel sorry for him.  But hey, what can I do for him right now, aside from pray for him? 

Other than that I had another split this Monday, but for this one, I stayed in my area and my Zone Leader, Elder Deitz-Hermosa came with both Hampton and I.  Hermosa is also Canadian, he's from Montreal, and has been in the mission about the same amount of time I have.  He's just an amazing missionary.  Anyways, we had him with us all day and we were kinda winding up the day.  we had had two of our appointments juke us and so we just decided to knock the building that the last appointment lived in, even though we knew that is was a big drug center and a number of drug and gun dealers live there.  We started at the top floor like normal and I knocked the door and through the door told the person we were missionaries (people always ask "who" before they open their doors).  She told us that she couldn't open the door at the time, but that we could leave a card in the door.  So I stuck one in the door, but this time I pushed it into the door a little more than I normally do.  I don’t really know why, but I did.  And because of that she was able to grab it from the inside.  So we continued knocking the building and just before we were about to walk down the stairs to the next floor, the first door opened and the girl inside told us to come in.  So, we entered and met Darlin and her husband Herman, who both looked VERY black, but they're from Honduras.  So we were excited to have found a new investigator for us, things had been a little dry here lately.  So we started getting to know them and find out that they are very poor and that they have had to choose whether they want electricity, or an apartment to live in.  Suffice it to say, they decided to pay the rent instead of the electricity bill.  Which is sad for them, but they seem really awesome.  I mean, REALLY awesome.  They have committed themselves to coming to church on Sunday, and also to the English classes on Wednesday’s and Thursday's.  We even bumped into them yesterday and she told us without us saying anything that she was going to come to the church tonight.  So yeah, they're way legit and I'm super excited to work with them and help them receive the blessings of this gospel.  They also have a young girl, like 1.5 yrs old.

Aside from that though, not a whole lot of new stuff has been going on.  One of the ties I got from Grandma Smigel is a huge hit with all the elders here, all of them were commenting on it the other day and umm.. yeah, that’s about all I got for know.  Umm, oh yeah, the other day we caught a mouse in our apartment and I know that most of you aren’t going to approve of this, but we killed it too.  He did put up a pretty good game of hide and seek though; it took us like 30 minutes to find him once we first saw him.  He was super fast, but we did catch him and dispense of him shortly there after.  We’re hoping he was the one and only mouse, fingers crossed.

So yeah, I hope you all enjoy this email and that you have a great week.  I look forward to next Wednesday and remember I put up some pictures, so you can enjoy them too.

Les Quiero Mucho,

Elder Dilling



Why are P-Days on Wednesday?

OK, so first the money thing.  When I arrived in the Bronx I had to buy a Metro card (bus card) which costs 30 dollars.  All I had left of my mission money was 34 dollars, so when the next P-Day rolled around, we hadn't received the money for the next month, so I had to use my card, and I just decided to pay for everyone, and then have them each pay me back.  So I'm not really lending out money, it just made grocery shopping a whole lot easier.  Also, I got a cheque from Grandma and Grandpa Smigel on my birthday, but I have no way of cashing it.  I've tried multiple ways.  So what I was thinking is that it would probably just be easier if they put the money in my RBC US account, and I just rip up the cheque.   So let me know about that.

As for my Mr. Mac shirt, I haven’t received anything as of yet.  But I'll keep an eye out for it though.  Some more sponge pudding would also be great, but maybe you should hold off for a couple months.  I ate almost both packages on my own.  It was delicious, but not so healthy (the other elders didn’t want too much of it).

In response to your question about the Bronx, I live in "The Bronx Little Italy" which is pretty cool, and one of our members works in that bakery you saw across the street on Google Earth, and gives us deals occasionally on the $1 pastries, which are super good.   And then as for the Bronx Zoo, we plan on going there later on today.  Just need to go and get a haircut, and we're good to go.  So that should be way sweet.   I'll have some pictures to send home next week - a few of my area, and then of the zoo and stuff.  The really cool thin, is that on Wednesdays everything is extra cheap in NY.  It's called donation day, so you can go to museums or the zoos, and all that fun stuff for like $1.  That’s the reason we have P-Day on Wednesday’s.

And the carding technique is only to get into the building, so that we can knock the peoples doors.  We don’t try and get into their actual apartments. We only do it to get into a building if there isn’t anyone around to let us in, or if no one is leaving the building.  I've only had to do it like 3 or 4 times, mostly on the old crappy apartment buildings that don’t really have good security.  If you pulled hard enough you could probably force the door open.  Also, the buzzers don’t always work.  It's pretty ghetto here.  We’ve got a few projects in this area too (a project is a government owned building).  They're super dirty, and for some reason the tenants/ guests like to use the elevators as bathrooms.  EWWW!  They smell pretty bad.

This week has been pretty good.  We've been focusing a lot on finding people, and last Thursday I was able to confirm someone a member of the church, which was pretty cool/hard.  Giving blessings in Spanish is way hard.  Aside from that we've been having a little bit of success from contacting, and my district is doing great.  We also got special permission to go with the ward to a special service project on the 23rd.  We're going down to the super ghetto area of the United States to an area called Hunts Point, which is located in the poorest zip code in the United States, so that should be pretty cool.  I've heard there's some pretty cool graffiti down there as well.  Maybe I'll get some pictures of that.

I have a quick funny story.  Yesterday Elder Bowker and I were on a split in his area, and we decided to knock an apartment building, so we go to the top floor and start knocking.  It was pretty normal, lots of "no's" a few "no thank you’s" but there was this one door which was kinda propped open, and a dog was standing there looking like he wanted to be pet, but we didn’t pet him.  We just knocked on the door and kinda peeked into the room.  And when the lady saw us she said (in Spanish)"Oh no, who left the door open, the Mormon devils are here!!"   Her husband comes up and says they're not interested, and closes the door.  Elder Bowker and I just kinda look at each other like “what the heck that was funny”. 

Anyways, I gotta get going now, but I hope you all have a fantastic week and I look forward to hearing back from you next week.

Much love,

Elder Dilling