August 24, 2010 with Elder Draper

Hey all,,

Transfer Day, and I'm still here with the same companion. I'm really lucky. I get to be in this area for 6 months. I absolutely love this area. I kind of was ready to leave just because i've been here a while and my companion and I are really different, but things are working out really well and we have plenty of work to do here. The area is amazing though. I never really need to buy anything. I started eating dinner, but then I started getting fat, so I'm stopping that. I have plenty of money, so that's not an issue. I'm just gonna keep saving it up until I have an area where they don't feed us well and I have to buy lunch every day. I think I have a whole extra month and a half worth of money saved up, so that's not an issue. The Giro(don't know the translation) is pretty big for how cheap this area is, so when I have an expensive area, it'll be nice to have something saved up. I've been hearing horror stories of other areas where they don't feed you anything.

We had that baptism of the family Caraballo last week. We invited Pres. Da Silva and Pres. Arnold because they were already gonna be there. While we were filling the font, there was a problem with the water and it came out really nasty. We hesitated and started to give up thinking we could just do the baptism the next day on Sunday because the rest of the Zone had their baptisms together the next day. When we told that to President Arnold, he gave us a nice reproach and said "You guys are giving up so easily? If they're ready to get baptized, let's baptize 'em" We had already started draining the water, so we had to stop that and start filling again and we had to run around to houses nearby to ask for hot water because ours had stopped working. It was a really exciting night. Also, the keys to the font were completely lost and no one had any idea where they were. We finally found an alternate way in and got it opened on the girls side, so we had to enter from that side,which was weird. Oh well. It all worked out well. We got to have 4 baptisms with a Seventy present. That was cool.

The day before we had a zone conference with him. I got to see Elder Erickson again, which was nice. He finishes the mission today, which is really weird. The conference was really nice. I realized how many Ericksonisms I had picked up when I was with him again. I talk just like him. It's really funny. Anyways, in the conference, I got to eat lunch with Pres. Arnold, which was cool. No interviews, but I got to talk to him pretty one on one..

Weather: It's really hot and really humid. I have no idea why. There's a thing called Santa Lucia here that happens every year that's about to happen where it rains for like a week straight. So I guess this heat is just getting us ready for that.

Here's some more pictures. One is us with Cecilia and flavia. I don't know if I got a picture in of Vanessa(let me know if i didn't.) One is us with the Caraballo kids and their cousin who should get baptized soon. One is Facundo Caraballo with my nametag. He's already thinking of going on a mission. He's my first male baptism. Hopefully the first of many. Finding men is really hard down here. The culture makes it difficult for men to think it's cool to be religious. We recently found a melquisidec priesthood holder who had moved away and been in the military and had gone inactive, who recently is wanting to start up again, so that's really exciting too.

Love you,
Bryan