December 3, 2013

Dear Family, 

Things down here have been great but also tough too, but that's how it seems to go. 
We have a lady that cleans our cloths for us and also irons them.  Most people clean by using a rock thing and soap and then hang drying.    When I say most,  I mean all.   I don't know how she does it but she makes all my cloths look brand new it's crazy!  They are literally perfect.   She somehow restores all of the original creases in my white shirts.  I don't know how she does it but I am impressed that she does all that with a rock and soap.  But everything else down here is great.   Thanks for all of the support it really helps especially when you have those rough days where you just want to sleep.  Which is like every day.  I'm tired constantly ha ha, but I am enjoying it.

No we don't have a maid that cooks for us and no we don't have a stove.  I sent pictures of what our apartment thing looks like.   All we have is a cooker and a fridge.   We have inactive members that live below us.  They are really nice and the own a bakery.   They give us bread all the time and the bread here is amazing definitely the best bread I have had. 

And ha ha no we don't have hot water, absolutely zero.  It's  freezing cold always and it only works at certain times in the day so sometimes I don't get to take a shower.   I have to get a bucket and dump water on myself.   We don't have time to eat a lot we just eat what we can.  I've lost quite a bit of weight nothing  fits and my belts are useless.    It's whatever we walk so much I don't think anything could get me to keep weight on.

 I have seen and have killed a couple of chickens and turkeys myself.  They all do it down here.  You will just see a bunch of random chickens, pigs and cows just walking around in the streets and dogs. In my town they do a huge festival for Christmas.  It's more like a fair.    All they do is light off huge fireworks all day and literally all night.  It gets a little annoying at night because they are super loud and right above your head it's something else. 

I've lost all sense of time its weird that its already been 6 weeks and changes come next week.  I'm already half way through my training now Whoo hoo!!  It's weird that it's my birthday this week.  No one down here believes I am 18.   They think I'm like 30.   I don't feel like I'm 18 either. I'm still losing weight but I think it will level off here soon.   I'm pretty skinny now ha ha.  Even my zone leader noticed I have lost even more weight.   It just means I'm working hard and sweating everything off.  

It is ridiculously humid down here it seems strange that its winter were you are.    Yes the shower and sink and toilet is very rustic and everything else.  

This week though we should be having 3 baptisms!  I'm very excited.  I'm ready for my first baptism.  We have been working very hard with the inactive members and we had a lot of people at church this Sunday so we are excited!  It is hard in my area. 

 This week has been up and down.  We did service for some members that we are reactivating and we went into the jungle and started cutting trees and branches with machetes so they will have fire wood to cook and keep warm. That's how they do it here.   We spent a good amount of time doing that and I cut 3 different huge trees (with a machete).   That's not easy and we had to carry them back, so my companion had one and I had the largest one.   I was with my companion and three kids and their mom.  This jungle has mountains so we blaze through the mountain and through jungle and corn mazes.  They have hills just covered in corn for their tortillas .   The tree I carried weighed almost 200 pounds.  They were not small or light and I had to carry it through mountains and jungles.  It was ridiculous because  it was also very hot that day. 

It was hard work but it is so gorgeous here.   It's hard to describe.   It is like  something out of a movie.  We also had a Zone P-day and that was fun.    We had groups that were from the same country and they had to make  food from their country.    The gringos made hot dogs and brownies which is super rare.   My Zone leader who has been out for 20 months hasn't had brownies since the CCM.  It  was a treat.   We also had a lot of papa fritas (fried bananas)  It was a fun thing and we pigged out so hard.    Overall it has been a  good week.   Santa Barbara will be having there festival this week.  I will tell you how that went next week.    It seems really big with all kinds of things to do.

 

Love Elder Toma