"The members of the church are really great and treat the missionaries like superstars"

written February 24th

Well.. we got transfer calls last night and sure enough there was a surprise. Elder Morley is off to finish his mission as a traveling AP! I am excited for him knowing how much of an opportunity, though hard, it was for me to grow. I will be receiving my new companion, Elder Gibbons, on Wednesday. I have met him before and I am positive we will get along great.

Only one of the investigators that I mentioned last week was able to make it to church yesterday. The other one had some things come up. We had some great lessons with both of them last week and I am exciting to see their continual progress. The one who came to church yesterday is making plans to get married to the girl that he has been with for 7 years so that he can get baptized.

We are working with 3 member families who have friends that we are teaching. I love working with the members... it makes me feel a lot better about the conversion of the people we are teaching. It is very sad for someone to be baptized and to then see them fall away. The chances of that happening plummet when you have good members involved.

I am really missing some good American food right now... haha.

I have some nieces and nephews that requested to here some cultural things because they think it is cool. I have really mentioned anything pertaining to that in a long time because it all seems normal to me now. I racked my brain trying to think of what is different this week and here are a few.

1. All windows and doors have things called ´rejas´. They are bars that protect from them theft. It is weird thinking of doors and windows withouth them.

2. Between 1pm-5pm everything shuts down, even big stores, so that everyone can go home and sleep or relax during a time called the ´siesta´. You would think that would make missionary work easy because everyone is home but many people look at that time as personal time and will not even open their doors.

3. People don´t really have yards here. Homes are laid out on blocks and are close together - usually touching. Every other block has something called a kiosko which is a store that someone runs from their house selling the basics. People don´t really go to big grocery stores very often.

4. The main forms of transportation are on foot or on a scooter/moped.

5. It´s normal for someone to open their mouth and see only a few random teeth inside.

6. The members of the church are really great and treat the missionaries like superstars.

I will share some more next week.

Love you all!

- Elder Rainock