April 2, 2008

Dear Family,

Thanks for sharing all your stories with me. I love hearing about everything... it reminds me that there is life out of the ctm. i think that's healthy. does kevin have his call yet? It is now my last p-day. The end is in sight. I probably won't be able to email next week because i'll be transferring and moving in and teaching people the gospel... so don't be concerned if you don't hear from me. but you might, so still write, kay? And I didn't actually send the letter that I told you about until last week... so it still might be a few days out. but it's coming!Last week we made a full exploration of the area that we can explore around the CTM: our district walked the perimeter. It was interesting to see all the different types of housing and stuff that's around. It really is quite different from the states. I'm excited to be out in it every day. But on our excursion, we ran into a farmer's market. it was full of delicious fruit. they cut us off pieces of sample mango. i love mango. it's my favorite. And there was this one booth where they were frying up these delicious pastery things with meat in them. at least they looked delicious. as soon as we finish emailing today we're going to go buy some. i'm excited. but as we rounded this booth a cop car came plowing into the field and the two cops jumped out of the car with their guns unholstered and arrested some young-ish kids... it was exciting. and it inspired a nightmare about how i was responsible for some innocent by-stander getting shot by cops because i was listening to music in a tennis court outside of the ctm at night... i rewired the lights in the tennis court to play music... and it was supposed to play it soft, but then it blasted it. and then cops came to arrest me, but they got the wrong person... dreams are crazy. i don't know why i'm sharing that. maybe because it's funny. and maybe because i've been having more bizarre dreams here than in the my entire life. i've also probably made my bed more times then in my entire life. and eaten the most rice and beans... and mopped the floor 8 times. that's another most, probably. fun stuff.

We went proselyting again this week. it was our best proselyting ever. we went to 'praza ramos' (if you want to say ramos right, the r is a glottal h sound and the a is super nasal so you basically have to honk out the ramos. try it. it's fun.) it had this big opera house and a park and a strip mall... and not very many people would talk to us, but we had some awesome conversations with people who were totally interested. it was great. our first positive contact was Alexandre. We talked to him for maybe 20 minutes. he said he used to be a drunk but finding christ had changed his life... but he was still looking for something more. we basically gave him an entire first discussion (the restoration) and he asked a lot of questions and we gave him a book of mormon and told him which parts to read and he even asked how he could get somebody to tell him more about it. i am so excited to be on the streets. if i were a real missionary, i could have set up a follow-up appointment right there! We even had some more awesome contacts. At one point we were all out of cards, but we still had a Book of Mormon left, and it's hard to make contacts without cards... because if they're not too interested, you don't want to give them your book of mormon, but you don't want to walk away without giving them something... so we said a prayer to find the right person. and then sister martin though we should cross this one street that we hadn't crossed before... and then the second or third person we tried to talk to was really interested. so we talked to him for a while. and then on our way back to the bus, this guy stopped us (amazing!) to ask us about our chuch. We answered some questions, but then we didn't have anything to give him cuz we'd given out all our stuff... so we asked him to wait while we dashed back to our elders at the bus to get a book of mormon and a card. And we went back and talked to him for a few minutes and then our teacher came up (because we were late for the bus) and got his address and phone number so the missionaries could come talk to him. So, to sum up, the Lord answers prayers. I love it.

Oh, one more thing. My comps had a kind of hard week last week. Sister Martin on Monday/Tuesday and Sister Tittelfitz on Friday/Saturday. Nothing serious... just the i've-been-in-the-ctm-my-whole-life-blues. So anyway, after some hard times, Sister Martin opened up with some of the things that she had worked through and it was exactly what Sister Tittelfitz needed to hear. And what I needed to hear too... It basically amounted to whenever you most don't want to work is when you have to work hardest. because those feelings of laziness and ornery-ness are really, trully from the devil. and you have to exorcize him. by working. so because we were all ornery and lazy, we have now enacted a stringent schedule of memorization and hard work this week. and it's really made a difference. so being a good companion sometimes means laying down the law and sometimes means being supportive... and it takes spiritual guidance to know when to do what and how to be a good companion. i am excited to have new companions and work with them and learn from them. it's awesome how companionships are awesome. Awesome.I love this work and the gospel.

I love you all.whitney