12/13/10

Man! This week was fun. And I'm only slightly sarcastic. Monday last week I spent a lot of money and it turned out that most of the stuff I bought tastes like crap. Too bad. I gave all that stuff to my companion. Tuesday Presidente Callan and his wife (Mission President btw) came so we had a zone conference. During the zone conference they fed us lunch. I was stuffed and could barely eat it all. It was some kind of sandwiches. Besides tomatoes I'm not sure what the other stuff was, maybe ham and cheese. Since I am companions with the District Leader I have to do exchanges every week. This week we exchanged with the zone leaders.

I was with Elder Evans. This was a two day exchange. After the zone conference we went to his apartment to get his stuff and we had an evaluation of the zone conference and we talked about what our goals are for this exchange. After that we went to go back to my area and the guy on the bus told us they would be passing by hotel rosa, near where we live, but it turns out he lied. So we had to find another bus after the first one took us to some random area of the city. It was raining like crazy so even though we were on the bus we got soaked between the first bus and the second bus, then the second bus to our house. When we got back to my apartment I changed out of my suit while Elder Evans set his stuff up. We tried to follow the plans that I had made, but we got lost.

I am terrible with directions and remembering and stuff like that, so we were lost the rest of the night. We did a lot of contacts though. We even got free empenadas from a guy who we contacted. Later I found out that I was really close to where we were supposed to be and if we only turned right on this one street I could have found my way. With no success in direction we managed to find our way home and we went to bed. The next day I was actually able to get around, but it took a little longer than when I'm with my companion. We were supposed to eat lunch with this family that lives behind the bishop, but it turns out it is a holiday, or something like that, and everybody is at their parent's house. So we crashed the Bishop's party with his family. He insisted, so I called our lunch appointment and explained why we were going to be late. He just laughed.

Bishop Azcona is the only member of a completely catholic family. We sang a Christmas song, I shared a scripture, they gave us some hot dogs and pop, then we left for our real lunch appointment. It took 45min to walk to the house of Hno. Medina, the father-in-law of Gorge Gomez. Gorge is a RM of 5 years and he had the pleasure of baptizing his wife. They went to the temple last year. They have a two year old named Mitchel. We ate with the entire Medina family, it was basically a south American version of a barbeque. We got a lot of references from them. We visited an inactive member family of like 20 that lived nearby and we tried to get them to come back to church, no luck. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful because my origonal plans were ruined. That's ok though.

The next day we went to the Zone leaders house to re-exchange. We did an evaluation of how it went and then Elder McShinsky and I went back home. I am really thankful for that because Elder Evans is too intense for me. He only has a couple of months left in the mission so all he talks about is baptize. The next couple of days were painful. I had a little bit of Chivivi (That's Guarani for Diaharrea), but I didn't know that you aren't supposed to consume dairy products or it will make it worse. So I had a glass of Milk at a members house. My companion knew I had Chivivi, but he didn't warn me or save me. So All I remember about these last three days is that my stomach hurt and I have become really familiar with the bathroom. It's getting better, but I still have it. I'm trying to eat more rice, crackers, apples, and bananas to get rid of it. In my opinion it isn't working fast enough.

We visited a less active family. The father drinks and we committed him to come back to church and stop drinking. He's going to come next week. We finally got to teach a guy our age named Richard, he was too busy with work and school before, but now he's done with that. We showed the Restoration to a man named Carlos. His wife is a member and they have a cute baby named Nidelyn. We committed him to baptism. He told us his doubts and he said he'll pray about the book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. The spirit was really strong. I bore my testimony about receiving an answer before we left and that made me feel the spirit even stronger and it was another confirmation that all this has to be true.

That's all I've got time for today. Can't wait to hear more from you guys.
Love,
Elder Zacarías Santiago Singson