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| First companion in LA Elder Cooley |
its really confusing because with the weather the way it is i feel like we should be preparing for 4th of july season not thanksgiving/christmas season. Except all the latin moms say "Hace frio" or basically its cold and take pity on us except that its not haha. It does get down to the 60s in the night. freezing i know. people are pulling out the jackets and beenies and hoods, even during the day. its pretty ridiculous. i wore shorts and a t shirt for most of the day because we played zone vs zone turkey bowel. we played two 45 min games today. we played against the zone that elder riska (my mtc companion is on). It was pretty fun! And after I had my first In 'n Out expierence at the busiest one in the world- Inglewood right by LAX. Ill have to say that its probably my favorite fast food burger joint...
I speak a lot of spanish- most of our work is in spanish- all of our door and street stuff is spanish and most of the lessons are too. All of our dinner appointments except one part member family (the mom is a latina from guatemala but the dad is white or a gringo haha...) and they have a daughter who just finsished up at BYU provo. We are eating thanksgiving with them. we have to be in by 7 on thanksgiving, but we get to spend a 1.5 hours instead of the usual 1 hour or we can go to two houses and spend an hour each.... and before that we are going to make shirts for the homeless people on skidrow (nickname of a street downtownish that is supposed to have a crazy amount of homeless poeple on it. we are going to put scriptures on them and the go hand them out.
i went downtown for the first time last week. it was very different from chicago. not as busy very very hilly and some really cool buildings.but all in all not a lot of buildings....
now we only have 1 guy with a baptismal date. his name is steven he is one of the only people we teach in english. he is a senior and his mom and dad only speak spanish pretty much but he doesnt speak too much spanish, he mostly responds to them in english. he reads the book of mormon every night and highlights parts that he has questions in,... and his date is now the first sunday of december- the bishop made us change it so more members could go to it...
the other guy named anthony we are probably going to drop- he is non escogido, i dont know the phrase they use in english but its from d&c 20:37 you could check. but the direct translation is "choice" people. we are called to reap the white field already to harvest. its going to be hard dropping him but he isnt taking it seriously and not keeping his commitments like coming to church (he has made excuses the past two sundays) and he didnt keep commitments with the sisters before us. He is in his 40s and lives with his mom because he is blind and she has a lot of control over him and she doesnt like the missionaries. so well see if he is still serious and if its just his mom... the sisters taught both of them before. anthony more recently like in october and steven like 5 months ago...
on a more positive note! its great getting to know the members in the spanish and english wards! we eat dinner at members, less actives or part member families about 5 times a week. 99% of them are from the spanish ward. they are so nice and humble! the LOVE the missionaries! so we get to know them over dinner, share a spiritual lesson/thought and then ask for referals and then leave... slowly (its slower than my talkative self would like but i know that my spanish is improving like crazy! im as good as my trainer who has been out for 7 monthsish, granted he was in beginning spanish and worked in malibu-97% english for all of his time before this but still i know that i am being very blessed with that!) my trainer (elder cooley) and i get along very well! we have a lot of good laughs together! we talk to some very fun people on the street as you can imagine! i love walking around in our area and just talking to people on the way to our appointments.
another family worth mentioning is the chavez family. they are soooo nice and we almost always teach the whole extended family (the granparents live with them like in mexico- they came from mex about a year ago i think maybe 3 i dunno... and then some of the wife's (named maria like everyone else we talked to in the latin world haha) 8 brothers live in the arpartment in front of their house. and so we teach the grandma, mom-maria, dad tomas, marias brother jorge, daughter ana and niece gisele and then last lesson with theother brother of maria and his wife but i forget their names. we had spicy chile tostadas (flat tacos) that were delicious. they are so nice!! and we expect a bunch of them at church next sunday!
and finally business:
i dont know if you sent the shirts- could you by any chance send a pocket from one of dads old grungy shirts? i want to ask a member to sow it onto one of my polo shirts maybe.... if you think thats a bad idea i wont.... i cant decide if its a bad idea or not... or maybe illl take it to a tailors and have them do it. i have only seen a couple cleaners in our area (the best named one is def casa de cleaners haha) i havent been into any so i dont know if they would do that weird of a job or how much it would be... i think i might send one home to save for after my mission because i LOVE them-because of the spread collar :) i hope you didnt stress over picking the right shirt at nordstroms, just in case you havent sent them my next size is 15.5 and i wear a 37 or 38 sleeve i think. my suit size is a 37 i know for sure... im sorry i didnt say the size in the other email im sorry!! thanks so much!!!
i think it will be fine just to email me, its free and im pretty sure just as fast, if not faster (the ZLs pick up mail every tuesday and we get it in our hands firday morning) and im usually fine on time on the comp- i have the full hour this week (and always from now on pretty much) i jsut didnt last week long story...
my companion and i are indeed flushing the area.in fact its technically a new area because they split the sisters area in half and now the sisters have half of the old area and we have half of the old area...
i have like 10-15 pills left...
we did not sleep in the mission home the first night... in our apartments...
sorry thats all i have time to respond to, but please keep me updated! i love hearing about the family!!!! tell emma and lucy not to stress about school and ACTs!also yeah- i wished i had applied myself more! i could ahve taken a much better advantage of an AMAZING school...
oh and my bike came- ill pick it up tomorrow because we are all (the people i came in with from the MTC and their trainers) going down to the mission office for a training meeting (13 day training)...
oh and next monday im going to give you the email addresses of my teachers so you can forward some of emials if you want... one of my teachers told me he would like that...
also can you make sure you are saving these emials? maybe printing them out.... imsure thats something i want to save...
ooh and im looking for a scripture case online if i have time, (LDS.org only site we are allowed to go on...) so i think thats the only christmas pres black leather... for a triple and santa biblia
i love you!!!!!!!
