Another Week!

Hey Everyone!!

This week was pretty good, it had some cool parts and a couple lame parts. But, overall I had fun this week. The city here is really cool, but after the newness wore off I realized that the people here are really tough! They are CRAZY catholic and don´t want to change in a million years. Every house has a box outside with a saint in it that they pray to, and if it´s now outside, then it´s inside. If they don´t have a box then they have pictures to pray to. They worship the saints so much and it´s hard to explain to all of them that even though the saints are awesome people, that we pray to God because we get all of our blessings from him, and none of them want to accept that.

And, this week we got a ton of rain, there were giant rainstorms and thunderstorms and we just had rain, rain, and more rain. And, this week one of the members got out their acoustic guitar that they can´t play and I got to play for a little while and it was the first time I´ve touched a guitar in awhile and I loved it so much and forgot how much I love to play the guitar!! Oh, and one of the days this week there was a truck that purposely drove through a giant puddle in order to spray us and we got SOAKED!!! And, we were only one street away from getting back to the apartment for the night…so that sucked. But, I just had to smile and laugh, I guess it makes for a good story.

And there´s this guy named Leandro that´s dating one of the members and he is progressing well and really starting to like the church, so I have a lot of hope for him and I like talking to him and he´s really cool, he´s 19 like me. And then there´s Sofia who is 9 and most of her family is baptized, la familia Gomez, and she wants to be baptized and we are working with her. But, this week they couldn´t come to church because the giant rainstorm flooded their house and, even though they don´t have carpet, they had 4 inches of water in their house. So, we helped them take water out for about an hour so that they could finish quicker, since they don´t have a guy in the house and the oldest kid is 12, and they seemed to appreciate that.

Oh, and I got the care package that my mom sent me and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that wrote me a letter. Those meant a lot to me and I am really grateful for everyone who took the time and effort to do that for me!! But, I don´t have nearly enough money, or time, to respond to all of those with a physical letter so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone through this!!

The last quote for this week comes from Richard G. Scott and he said, “It may be difficult to trust others, but people can and will do amazing things when they feel trusted.” I really liked this and it made me think, and I realized that a lot of times we are guarded and shut off, but if we give others our trust, then we will see them do great things and we will build stronger and longer lasting relationships in this way! So, I hope that we can all be more trusting towards others and the good and the potential that is in everyone. Thanks again to everyone who wrote me and I hope to hear from you all soon!!

Les Quiero,

Elder Joshua Clarine