Received Mon, June 28, 2010

Dear Family,

I am going to start this week by answering all of Mom's questions to make sure I don't forget any. I realized last week after we left that I forgot to say what I was planning to do with my bike. My bike is pretty thrashed and I think I am just going to leave it here. It costs like over $100 to take it home, so I don't think its worth it especially because I have my own bike at home still.

The rain: We had a HUGE thunderstorm come through here this week. You probably remember from my e-mails that the thunderstorms here are pretty crazy. The thunder is so strong it sets off car alarms all over the place. Well one of those storms rolled through here on Wednesday last week and we were trying our best to stay dry, but after a while we got so soaked that we just stopped caring and pretended like it was perfect weather. We walked through this one complex that was completely flooded, and we walked through water that was up to our knees. We also walked up and down the streets trying to talk to people who were standing outside of stores too afraid to go to their cars. It was a good way to start a conversation. Hopefully people didn't think that we were just crazy.

The temperature: It has also been really hot all week. Its been in the upper 90s, including the days that it rains. We are always wet from either the rain or sweat, or both.

Watch Tan: Its almost gone now because for some reason I started to get that itchy rash thing that metal sometimes causes for me, so I took my watch off for 5-6 days. Now its pretty hard to see. I definitely still have a pretty hardcore collar tan on my neck and a farmers tan and a white legs tan/lack-of-tan.

I think those are all the questions! On to my week. Things are still going really well. The Mendez's are still planning on getting baptized on July 10th and were still hoping to get at least one more person on that weekend. There are a couple potential people...we'll see what happens.

I've heard all about the world cup too. That's the reason why so few people showed up to church. And that's the reason why so many people decided to drink the night away on Sunday night.

This week we've been running into tons of people from Colombia. Most of the people in our area are from Guatemala...I think I've written about the part of our area we call Guatville which is just packed full of thousands and thousands of Guatemalans. But whenever we're out of guatville we run into people from everywhere. This week we've found like 6 new Colombian investigators. I love teaching people from South America, because since its so far away, only some people make it all the way up here, and generally they are a lot easier to work with. My companion is pretty funny. Whenever he talks to people he always tries to copy their accents, but we talk to people from all over the place so hes constantly talking in random different accents, but hes barely starting to learn Spanish so he has a pretty thick gringo accent, then when he tries to mimic other accents it turns out to be some pretty creative Spanish. It is pretty funny.

It has been a weird past couple of weeks knowing that these are my last weeks here. I usually don't think about it very much. I think my companion thinks about what I'm going to do after the mission more than I do. It definitely makes things pretty stressful knowing that this big change is going to happen soon and its constantly coming closer and closer and closer. I am of course excited, but hopefully I'll have some really good last couple weeks here.

That is all I can think of to write about. Last P-day we had an awesome P-day. We played volleyball and soccer against the English district, which was awesome. I scored a double hat trick when we played soccer, so I obviously enjoyed that a lot too. I like played pretty much every sport, except for basketball. It was a good P-day. Next Monday we are going to go to an activity with our ward, combined with the English ward, where we will have a 5th of July breakfast, then play baseball and soccer. I am excited for that one.

It sounds like everyone is doing really well. I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!

Love,
Chase