December 23

16 minutes....go!

This week was crazy too, sooo we'll see how this goes.  On Monday
after writing home we went to the beach!  Sister Bybee made us tuna
sandwiches and pasta salade and these delicious muffins and had I
eaten one more bite I would've fallen into the waves and drowned.  We
had a blast throwing around a football and frisbee. We also tried to
dig a hole and build a fire to roast hotdogs and brought in a crowd of
people to watch us and then we couldn't even get the fire to start.
Unfortunately, as we were taking a group picture someone slinked over
to our bags and stole Elder VanAusdal's backback, which we noticed
almost immediately, but even after running down the beach we couldn't
find the guy.  We did find the bag though, with every zipper unzipped
and they'd stolen his camera and $120 of American money.  Good luck
using that here...anyway, we were really sad that someone would do
that.  Desperation pushes people to do the craziest things.

As all that was happening this guy caught a guitar ray shark right on
the beach so I got some cool pictures of that which I can't even send
home... :(

We got to the Bybees with all our groceries from earlier and walked
like 30 minutes to get a taxi and meanwhile my fingers were being cut
off by the marche bag.  I literally lost feeling in my ring finger for
the next 4 days.  Then, right as we got home, we helped a bus get
unstuck from the mud and in the process Elder VanAusdal lost his shoe.
 Poor guy had a crazy day.  Then Elder Baker lit himself on fire
making carbanara but he's ok.

On Tuesday Elder VanAusdal got up haven't not slept all night, so we
went on splits and I went out with Elder Baker to keep both our
sectors alive.  We helped two guys push about 500 pounds worth of wood
up a big hill and showed up to our next rendez-vous drenched in sweat.
 There was a heavenly meal waiting for us though - grass shavings and
smoked fish in a soup with watery flour known as fufu, it was all
delicious.  She sent us home with a sack of mangos too.  I am in
heaven.

Elder Baker finished the Book of Mormon and found 6,429 mentions of
Christ, so that was cool.  It's a lot of mentions.  VanAusdal was
still sick, so I stayed home with him that day.  We watched Legacy and
The Mountain the Lord - awesome movies.  I caught up my journal and we
played some cards and made an awesome chili for dinner.

Elder Brockbank and I finally had a normal day together, which means
we spent an hour folding paper for an inactive member, ate "corned
beef" and ginger drinks at our next rendez-vous, got a mango from a
friend when it fell off the tree right next to us as we were talking,
and heard some kids playing Sonic in the neighborhood.  It was the
highlight of our day.  Other than the delicious burgers I made that
night.  Also when you give out a brochure in the sector you are
immediately surrounded by 150 people who all ask for one and none of
them come to church but you can't say no but you never know.

On Saturday we were stood up by our first rendez-vous but while we
were waiting I called this child over to kick his little soccer ball
around with me and this guy came over and was like "I know you are men
of God because you are playing with this child," and then we exchanged
contact information so cross your fingers!

This crazy man yelled at us while we were waiting to leave in the bus
and no one understood him but he kept saying "l'ecole de ta mere"
which means "your mom's school" sooo I took it as a "your mom goes to
college" and we just laughed but he was really upset because we were
white and I just don't understand.  I wish you could see how much
discrimination we go through here.  It's like early to mid-20th United
States all over again, but opposite...

ANYWAY 2 minutse left but I love and I am praying for you MERRY
CHRISTMAS I HEARD SLEIGH BELLS BEFORE WE LEFT FOR CHURCH ALL CAPS BYE!