9-27-10 email

Hey Mom,

This week has been a pretty good one, I am learning alot each day, Im still pretty sick, i was feeling better until this morning around 3 I woke up and had to run to the bathroom! Thats okay though its all part of the experience right?? We picked up 14 new investigators this week, but only 3 were at church, probably because it was raining, in fact it still is raining right now, its been raining non-stop for almost 3 days now, thats okay though being from mesa az you learn to love the rain because we never got it there! So I'm enjoying all the rain, hope fully that love of rain will stick with me because i have about 19 more months of it to go haha! Im sure when i return back to az I will be happy with the dry weather for awhile. The people here are very prepared to hear the gospel, almost everyone is willing to listen to the message that we share, they probably let us in just so they can see a white person, everyone who sees me just stares at me haha its pretty funny, then I smile and wave at them and they turn either turn their head really fast or their jaw drops and they are like a deer in headlights haha its pretty entertaining! So we met this lady this week who was so excited to see us, she has had a book of mormon and has been reading it and she loves it! The area that I'm in right now hasn't had missionaries for a long time so most people haven't seen missionaries before! So her name is Inness she is prob about 60 or so years old and she has a beard, well a little one haha but she has has a very strong testimony she says that the book of mormon is the word of god, she prays pretty funny though, she is basically like those Christians who scream ALLELUIA AMEN!! So when she prays me and my companion just kinda look at each other and smile!

Most of the time when we share the message of the Restoration of the gospel, people just have this astonished look on their face because they realize at that point that the Catholic church is wrong haha and they are just like "wow that makes so much sense" and just seeing the look in their eyes is fun because you see that they felt something, they felt the spirit testify that the things we shared are true.

Just living here makes you feel kinda depressed, because the people live in such poverty, and its very sad to see, the other day I was thinking how i wish i could help everyone one of them, then i realized that i can, by sharing the gospel with them! Their really is a difference in people who have the gospel in their lives! For example basically everyone in our branch which is maybe 15-20 people all live a better live style than the other people, all of them have jobs and some have cars (its very rare here to have a car of your own) They are just happier people and thats because they have the gospel in their lives. Its amazing to see, at least for me.

So its still kinda frustrating not being able to speak Spanish fluently, like last night we were teaching a 20 yr old guy and he doesn't believe in god, and its hard for me to not really be able to help resolve his concern, because I talk alot haha but here I cant haha , I suppose its teaching me patience haha! So this 20 yr old guy is probably the nicest person I've ever met he would literally give me teh shirt off his back if i needed it! Thats just how the people are here! So last night it was raining really hard so he gave us a ride home, he is one of the few people who have a car, he has a old school volts wagon bug, they are very popular here haha! I dont know if you have every ridden in one of those but they are so small and funny, i just couldnt stop smiling on the way home haha.

So i think the weirdest thing i ate this week was well there were a few weird ones one was some kind of soup i think it was soup but it was just chopped green beans boiled eggs and chopped jalapeños, it didnt taste too bad though, another weird one was just 2 fried eggs and black beans haha weird combination. Im getting more use to the food here but its still weird!

I finished reading the book of mormon for the second time this week, its an amazing book my goal is to read it 5 times while Im here and 2 times in Spanish! A chapter that i really loved and stood out to me this week is Moroni 7 I think you should read it! Also read Jacob 6:12 its a good one! Have the boys read them too!




Love, Elder Stradling