[Two emails since he usually emails a reply to my email then starts a new one which I share]
wow what a week… [I just told him about our boring normal week.]
We just use the recordings of the hymns because I really don't want to play and either way the "piano" they have here in Sn Pablo sucks (half keyboard and the sound istarable). [I asked if he played the piano for any of his meetings.]
as for cool missionary stories... not really. there have been some moments that were kind of cool but only if you know all the background, and that would be boring and take to long to write out. sorry. maybe I will include a small one in my weekly letter. [I asked to send some cool missionary stories…~sigh~]
Here is his real email to us this week:
On Wednesday (I almost wrote miércoles, Wednesday in Spanish) I will hit my adjusted "Hump Day" (adjusted because of the 2 weeks they are taking off my mission). I can't believe that in 2 days I will be able to say I have less time left in the mission than the time I have in the mission. It is a weird feeling.
This week we had another special zone conference with Pres. Christensen. He talked to us about how it isn't enough to be Good Missionaries, we need to be Excellent Missionaries. He also told us that it won't be easy to become Excellent Missionaries. It will require a price to pay. A price of all our disobedience, all our energy, everything else we have been holding back from the work and every single thing we have been holding on to of the world. We also had interviews this week with the president and he asked each one of us individually if we were willing to pay the price. I, of course, said yes.
We also had a small miracle this week. We have been teaching a woman named E* for a while now. We haven't had very much luck in finding her at home with time to receive us (she also has a lot of family problems, husband who beats her (they are separated but still married), children who don't support her and other things). We ran into her in the street a few weeks ago and put an appointment that ultimately fell though but we found out that she is still living in the same place (we had thought she had moved out). We went by last week and put an appointment with her for Tuesday at 7:30pm. We showed up at almost exactly 7:30 and as we rang the bell we saw her walk up to the house. She had just got home. We had planed to bring a member with us so that we could enter the house even if her son wasn't there but for some reason or another he couldn't come. She went into the house to see if her son was there so we could come in. He wasn't. We told her we would come by at about 8 to see if her son was there but we didn't have very much luck. We decided to go by the next day to see if we could find her. As we were on our way to visit her that next day we were walking down the street and next thing I realize she is about 10 feet behind us. We start talking and she invites us to come to the house. We go over hoping that a man will be home and by a miracle her son is. It really was a little Miracle that we were able to find her in the street and then teach her.
Elder Blanding