Email October 21, 2013

Heeeeeeeellooooooooooooo Family, What a week. HA. This was one of the fastest weeks of my mission: it feels like two days ago I was writing. I'm feeling good today: in every sense of the word. I'm kind of tired because I haven't been sleeping well--for a number of reasons. Haha. Wednesday night I was feeling sick, so I didn't fall asleep until about 3 in the morning. WOO HOO. Then Saturday night our neighbors threw a karaoke party (I thought Puerto Ricans would sing better ;)) and at the same time there was a festival here in Aibonito called the Festival of Chicken. Creative right? Haha. I LOVE PUERTO RICO!!!! But the party and the festival kept me up all night. Elder Contreras slept really well: he says he's used to that kind of thing happening in Honduras. Yesterday was really great: two of our investigators came to church! One came for the second time, and she seemed to really enjoy it. It's different to her because no one is having seizures on the ground, no one shouts, and no one is dancing. That's more typical in the churches here in Puerto Rico. The thing she really likes is the peace in our church. She says it has more "order" than her church, which she likes. But unfortunately, we haven't been able to teach her. We set up appointments but they all fell through. Another investigator came to church also. She's an old investigator who can't be baptized because she's not married to the man who lives with her. The problem is, the man doesn't want to leave from the house, but she doesn't really love him. It's a really bad situation. She has to pay everything in the house, but things have been really tought for her. Her oldest son has a mental disability and can be really agressive, and her daughters are both young and she has to take them to school and pick them up. Then her husband is verbally abusive to her. From all that, she ended up in the hospital for something that I didn't understand: she had a mental breakdown or something, but when she explained it I didn't understand. She used a lot of weird words. She uses a LOT of weird words, and bad words. HAHA. We were really glad she came to church because she really needed it. That about sums up our week: we had a lot of appointments fall through this week. The only other exciting thing is that we've got a reference of a family from Honduras that we're going to contact this week. Should be exciting. The title is from a story one of the members told us. For you to understand this story you have to understand that the Puerto Ricans in Aibonito (I haven't heard it anywhere else) have a really famous saying: they use the phrase "the devil" to explain a lot of really random things. For example, the main street here in Aibontio gets packed full of traffic in the afternoon because everyone in the world picks up their child from school. To explain how annoyed they were with the traffic, they say, "That was a traffic from the devil!" Ha. They say it about a lot of things. When it's really hot outside they say, "This is a heat from the devil!" Or we even heard one member say, "He's uglier than the devil!" talking about someone. HAHA. So, anyway, there's a member here in Aibonito who calls herself our mom. She's so great! She gives us lunch every other day. And she's one of those people that uses the phrase "the devil" a lot. In Spanish "the devil" is said "el diablo." She was telling us the other day that she went down to the city Caguas to buy glasses for her son, and they went to a frozen yogurt place. It was so funny to listen to her explain it. HAHA. She said, "It's great: you can just go up to the machine and take us much yogurt as you want!" Then she said, "But, ave Maria, they weigh how much yogurt you take and they charge you according to the weight, and that yogurt weighs more than the devil!" HAHA! It was so funny. I'm going to try to send some pictures now. So I love you all and miss you all! Elder Cevering