week 20: no electricity, no bueno

Hola Everyone,

   This week was pretty busy. We had a service project this Tuesday that took up the majority of the day. We were helping someone move a bunch of stuff out of the garage and into a room in their house. We had divisions Wednesday with the District Leader, and we tried to visit this guy named Antonio and his family, but he had a drunk cousin over. His cousin lived in the U.S. for 22 years and was so excited I spoke English! He immediately started talking to me. It was a very interesting conversation, in which he told me, among other things, that the blacks in America are more dangerous than the whites. Finally we just said we had to go and that we'd come back another day.

    We had to drop a few investigators this week, but we found these two people that were awesome, and even came to church. One of their family members got baptized not too long ago and they're interested. We had a ward activity this week. It was a dance for the youth and young adults, so we helped out a bit with setting up and a few of the games. It was pretty fun. The only other thing worth mentioning was the primary program. I had a lot of fun watching it and the church had about 110 people which is great for this branch.

Hope all is good,

--Elder Thompson

Bit and pieces from family phone calls:

We got our fridge delivered on Friday.

On Saturday, we woke up and had no electricity in the apartment. Turns out, in this area missionaries pay the power bill every month, instead of every other month like my last area. We went to the building where we needed to make the payment, but being Saturday and a government building, it was closed. We went today to pay the bill, and as luck would have it, it's a holiday of some kind, so the building was still closed. With no lights at night, we've been making good use of the flashlight my mom sent with me. We have no hot water, and showers are SO COLD. I've never showered so fast! A nice neighbor is letting us run an extension cord from their apartment through our window so that we can charge our phone at night. Hopefully we are able to make the payment tomorrow! 

Cheese empanadas...best breakfast ever.

I woke up one day this week and the homesickness hit like a ton of bricks...thank goodness it just lasted for the day. 

I feel like the language is coming along well, especially when I'm talking one-on-one to someone. It's a lot harder when there's a group talking...still hard to follow the conversations and be able to join in...so pray that I'll keep getting better.