Semana 27 - Yuto

¡Hola Todos!

Phew, what a week! Dad was questioning about our branch council meetings last week: we had me, my comp, and 7 other women this last week because there really aren't any men that are members! Things are going well with the branch though. We actually carved a bat out of a thick branch of wood, stuffed plastic sacks with clothing (for the bases), and used a mini-soccer ball all to play baseball with the youth! I was pretty much the only person there that actually knew all the rules of the game! It was pretty fun though. Also speaking of the branch, I gave a talk yesterday in church. I picked the topic of faith and how we can increase our personal faith (largely pulling from Alma 32). It turned out pretty well, but I'll definitely want to make a couple more drafts before it's perfect.

The owner of the house where we were moving to said no...for family reasons, he has to live there now. He quickly pointed us down the street to his niece who was renting a house nearby: we already have the contract ready for her to sign here in the next few days! We're hoping to be moving this Friday.

I'm teaching a bunch of weekly classes now: piano, choir, and (recently added on) English! I'm also helping out a bunch of kids with math as well. The trickiest I've had to deal with so far has been negative and fractional exponents, which I think I learned about midway through high school, so I think I could qualify as a good math teacher here!

I had my first stab at eating 'hígado' (ee-gah-low) the other day. If you take a look at the translation, that comes out as 'liver'!!! It was cooked well-done though, with onion and a sauce on top, so it wasn't too bad, but I know I wouldn't be able to eat it frequently! Speaking of firsts, I had another first on Thursday. We had a zone meeting about 2 hours away that we had to travel to really early. It turns out we missed the bus ride up there in the morning because we didn't know that it doesn't enter into Yuto, it just passes nearby. So what did we do? We hitchhiked! Both there and back too! I thought it was a funny little thing.

I think I've been withholding too many drugee and drunk stories from this mission; I'll let one slip out. I was sitting in a circle with some members talking with them when all of a sudden, this drugged up old guy walks up and starts talking to me. I can't really walk away or tell him to go away, so I just said 'uh-huh, alright' a bunch. He pretty much just repeated the same phrases over and over again as he started to vent out his complainings to me: "I have A LOT of money......A LOT of money," and "I never robbed...I've never robbed anything!" Every once in awhile, I asked him something to get him to spit out more of the story. Every response led back to these 2 phrases, but I figured out some of the story. He was dumped by a woman and wanted another. He has a lot of money and never robbed (I don't believe it...you'll know why in a sec), so therefore women should just be flocking to him, but he's not getting his way. He didn't tell me where, or in what, he lived, neither did he show me his monstrous load of money. As he kept babbling on though, he slowly kept progressing towards me. First he was just standing, then he sat on the ground next to me, then he was on his knees, then he was on his knees right in front of my face (I figure it was about 5ish inches away)! I didn't really get too bothered though, I was actually just having fun chuckling in my head. Well, after about 10 minutes of this, a policeman shows up behind him with a bigger 'buddy' of the man (just to add to my incredulous chuckling within), the police guard called him by name and told him he wanted to talk with him. After about 2 minutes of patiently waiting as he sputtered his last few words to me, they finally took him away. Yeah......kids, don't do drugs.

Well, that's about all I have for this week. Love you all!

-Elder Powell-

P.S. Hope you all had a HAPPY PI DAY!!!!!! ;)

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