Hi Mom.
I am SOO sorry about last week. We took forever to get back from the temple, but I'll explain more later in the e-mail. This will only be the biggest highlights of the two weeks.
First, S*. S* is still fighting it hard. She had her youngest daughter come to town last week for Thanksgiving, but her eldest didn't have break until Thanksgiving day, so they left on Wednesday to visit her. We got to teach her daughter a little before she left and she's pretty cool. Her Ex-husband was in the lesson on Monday. We were teaching the Restoration and S* started HELPING TEACH!!!! we had exchanges the next day, but they talked to her about it to figure out what's going on, she said she wasn't helping, just sharing. She also said that she believes the Book of Mormon, but not that Joseph Smith is a prophet, can someone explain that to me. We fixed that problem and then she wasn't sure about the Prophets after him. Now she wants to be able to say that she KNOWS all the things we taught her are true before her baptism. She is a struggle. We left her to read on her own and let her know we won't be coming by every day this week.
THANKSGIVING. This was a really fun day. We had two member meals that day. One was with a less active we taught once but he isn't in our area, so we gave him to Elder Buck and Elder Rangel and then got special permission to go have a meal with him, because we have almost no members in our area, at least until two Sundays from now!!! We over ate that day and then ran to a less active members and taught her and found three new investigators, Her daughter and two grand kids. After this we went to Hermana L*'s, one of our few members and my first Cena in the mission. She gave us a second meal and Elder Garcia wasn't having it, but he couldn't say no, so he started shoveling all the food onto my plate. I tried my best to eat it all, but with the meal before still in my stomach, I couldn't do it. I got most of the way through the meal, Elder Garcia cheering me on, and then asked if we could take it home. She said yes. Elder Garcia, at this point is in the bathroom. I start putting it all away and then I get a really bad feeling. I know exactly what's about to happen. I stood up from the table, (it was outside) walked to the left a little, just out of sight of the door, and lost my cookies. Here's where it got real fun. The member only spoke Spanish and I didn't know how to say "bowl" in Spanish. So I start asking in Spanglish for a bowl, "Tiene un 'bowl'?" and she has no idea what I'm asking for. Luckily, Elder Garcia decided to make a timely appearance from the bathroom and I make a straight shot for it. I threw up twice more and then we left after I tried to apologize for getting sick. I don't think I'll ever forget that Thanksgiving.
IT RAINED SUNDAY! super fun, we did service all day for a member
Elder Michael Blanding loves the rain!!
V* is progressing super well. She needs to get married and her boyfriend just started taking the lessons. She's the one with the little Monstritos, and boy do I love them. They never seem to have clothes on. We brought the Relief Society President to a lesson with us and were lucky they had clothes, real lucky. One sat on the couch with V* and The Relief Society President. The other was hiding in the back room for a little bit. He peaked his head out and I saw that he had on a SEAHAWKS SHIRT. He went to rummage through the fridge to get food and ate it, but I just needed that picture, so we called him over and the result is below.
[I can't publish the picture for the safety of the child, but he is a cute little monster!]
The temple trip was fun, we got up at four and started for the bus stop to take us to the next stop where we could buy day passes. We had a guide, A*, the new member I took out with me three Sundays ago. This was the biggest mistake we made. He got us down to the temple just fine. we missed the earlier session, but that wasn't a huge deal. He then got into the cafeteria and we had lunch there, none of us (Elder Buck and Elder Rangel came to) had planned on that. It then took us THREE HOURS TO GET BACK. This is why I had no time to write you last week. When we got back we only had an hour to e-mail, shop for food, and get what we needed for the rest of the week. We needed to make a decision, and, unfortunately, e-mail had to suffer, because we had no food and things that we needed.
Doing really good on the weight loss. I hit below 180 this week, but it didn't last. right now I'm just over 180.
Spanish is good, we had five days this week, but this week coming up we're going to do paisa (Hispanic) week. Basically it's going to be really fun to act like a Hispanic.
i-Pad's are happening, probably this next month. I probably won't have to pay for it, but if I do I'll let you know.
I have a place to SKYPE, time is unknown, let me know what time Jason's doing it and I'll try to plan accordingly, they know the deal.
I probably will stay this round of transfers, but send it to the mission office anyway. It's best that way because then I don't have to wait in the apartment all day to get it.
And the Kids had better helped with Christmas. Tell Chris there is more to life then Video games.
love
Elder Michael Blanding.
Oh, and P.S.
If you think I like it down here and don't want to come back look down
