January 7, 2013 Email

Hello Family! Well, I'm sorry but this was a bit of an uneventful week--even though it was Three Kings day yesterday. I'm assuming that a lot probably happened that I didn't know about, but I'm not in an area where I know much about it. In Arecibo we would hear celebrations all the time, which included a lot of sirens and cherry bombs going off, and fireworks. But here there hasn't been much anything for the holiday: they coolest thing I saw was a pretty big fair, and some cool Three King lights on all the street lamps. Carolina is a really big area: it's based off one of the more principal streets so most all our areas revolve around the freeway. They're small little urbanizations of houses, which can be confusing but also really convenient because people live closer together that way. We did a lot of "Inactive/Less-Active-Member" contacting this week, and because of the set-up of these little urbanizations it was a lot more efficient than what it would have been like in Corozal or Arecibo. The city is a lot more organized than the jungle! haha. I imagine you could understand why. We found a couple of really cool people to teach through contacting members too because a lot of them had moved--that's why they were "Inactive" on the list--and new people had moved in, or people nearby would come tell us that the houses we were contacting were empty. So it was pretty efficient. We are teaching quite a few people too: there's a man named Atawelpa and another man name Julio who have baptismal dates--we set them with them this past week--for the end of January. Julio has been investigating the church for awhile but has never made any true commitment to it. We had to be firm to set a baptismal date with him for the 26th. haha. But Atawelpa is very new to the church: he has attended church twice, reads a LOT, and has really good doctrinal questions. We're going to teach him the Word of Wisdom today because he is a bit of a drinker, but I believe he's really prepared to receive the fulness of the gospel. I do like Carolina, but I'm still adjusting to the change. The city is nice because everything is so close together, and there is some jungle and mountain areas where we are going to be working. But it's always weird to be in a new area: this being my THIRD area in three transfers. It's weird to be always meeting new members of wards and trying to learn the culture of the wards: here in Puerto Rico the wards are always different. Arecibo was more of a growing, young ward; the ward in Toa Baja--the ward of Corozal--was more full of families and more matured members of the church. I don't really know what to call this ward here because I was only here for sacrament yesterday--I was really sick with "la monga", which means the flu. It sounds really bad though doesn't it? Haha. La Monga! We were living with two other missionaries, but they left to live closer to their area. So now it's just Elder Delgado and I living here. He's from Panama,but he only has this transfer left and he's kind of trunky. A lot of Puerto Ricans talk in "Spanglish", meaning they talk with Spanish and English words in the same sentence, or they have taken English words and made them into Spanish verbs. So like we would say: "Oh my friend is texting me" they will say things like "Esta texteandome mi esposa". That's what an investigator told us this week. HAHA. "Texteando." That's funny. They also say things like "Swimear" and "Checkear"...oh man. So great. Well, lastly, I am feeling MUCH better in my abdomen. Your fast and prayer must have worked :) I love you all a lot! And I miss you too. Elder Cevering