November 21, 2011 - Email to Family

 Hey my beloved family.

This last week went rather fast!  I cannot believe that it´s Thanksgiving again!  That was a really fast year that just took place!  I cannot believe it, literally the time is flying by so fast.  We had a really good week and we found 3 new people to teach!  That is pretty good right?

Well about that whole staph infection deal.  To start it off it´s like a boil under the skin and they hurt really bad.  I punctured it and drained it out for like 4 days straight and got my hands on some antibiotics.  That was really hard to do, and I still have one on my neck.  So that leads me to a question.  Can you send me an emergency package of antibiotics??  With the package, if you love me send a CD of Mannheim Steamroller and Josh Grobans Christmas CD.  Haha it´s Christmas and I don´t have a lot of music.  It´s the only thing we can do as missionaries is music!  We have a Mannheim Steamroller CD so you can burn that if you want!  Thanks mother, sorry I feel like I am always asking for stuff!!!  I hate it but the antibiotics I need to fight it all off! 

Okay so this week was really fun.  We had Zone Conference, which was sooo much fun.  I like our Zone and all the missionaries in it.  The lesson Pres Clegg gave was amazing and Sister Clegg´s was amazing.  They are truly inspired people called by God to lead us.  They are awesome and they spoil the missionaries!  We found 3 new people to teach this week.  The first one is named Pepi.  She is super old and has been meeting with the missionaries for 14 years.  She is a nice lady and hasn´t seen the missionaries for like a year.  She asks us to come over and to visit her because she lives alone and likes the company.  She fell once and broke her hip and 3 days later her neighbor found her and saved her.  She is a beast, she laid there for 3 days with out food and couldn´t moved at all.  She is like 70 something years old.  The second is Moises, he is a younger guy that is 32 years old from Spain.  He is a good guy and believes everything we have told him, but I am pretty sure he is a drug addict.  I am positive I saw Marijuana buds all over his table, so we will see he has only been taught once.  The other is a lady from Bolivia named Sonia.  We contacted her a long time ago and finally passed by and got a lesson with her.  So we are going to try super hard with her.  I think we are going to see really good progress with her.  She just needs to read the Book of Mormon I think and really pray with her heart.  We have only taught her once too because she is new.  I dropped Juan yesterday morning because he wouldn´t come to church; so I am done and fed up with him.  We have tried so hard with him and prayed a lot but he just won't progress or grow up.  Claudia, she is done, Henry and Paloma, they are done too, oh and I talked to Betty and she said there is too many serious bad things happening in her life right now and she can´t listen to us.  I tried my hardest to bear my testimony over the phone to her.  She won't even meet with us to give her Beach Boy Cd's back.  haha she gave us her Cd's to listen to but of course we didn´t listen to them.  She wanted us to translate two songs for her so she could understand what they are singing about.  Haha so we just looked it up on the Internet and printed them out.  Well Adrian the little 10 year old is awesome.  We taught him yesterday after church and that was a lot of fun. 

This week we are having a combined district meeting, well our whole zone this Thursday and having Thanksgiving.  We were going to have another Thanksgiving with the guy that we can send packages through but he is going to Portugal this week.  So oh well.  I think another American is inviting us over still.  I don´t really care, it doesn´t feel like the Holidays.  Well I think I answered all of your questions!  I love you all so much!  Thanks for all you do for me and you are amazing!  Have a good Thanksgiving! 

CODY

November 14, 2011 - Email to Family

Hey family that I love!

 

Well this was a good week and very different.  It is really weird not teaching as many lessons as I used to.  This area is very different and hard!  I like it a lot.  El Puerto is a great little city and the people are super nice, however with that comes lazy and kick back attitude.  So with that we are possibly dropping 4 people that we are teaching.  The first is Claudia.  She cancelled on us like 4 times so I am done wasting the small time we have on her.  I know that my efforts aren´t wasted, but when they are ruining time we could use to find new people and search for the people more prepared, that isn´t cool!  So Claudia is most likely dropped.  Henry and Paloma, they won't come to church and he didn´t answer my last two phone calls, so they aren´t going in any direction of improving.  We are going to have a lesson with them to see what´s up and ask if they are here to learn and progress or do they think we are jokes and wasting our time with them.  The last is Juan.  He is a sweet guy and we really don´t want to drop him, but he has had 5 months to drop smoking and still isn´t trying very hard at all to drop it.  We had a really good lesson with him, but he is taking away time from us.  We did a really good job in the street this last week, and my contacting has improved a lot, I can talk a lot better with people.   My Spanish has jumped a lot.  Yesterday I had to translate the young women's class into English for a girl while the teacher was speaking in Spanish.  That was fun and I surprised myself in how well it went.  I knew everything that she was teaching.  I love listening to the lady speak, she is from Madrid and there they speak the PURE clean Spanish.  She is the Presidents wife here in the branch and she is beautiful.  She is a super nice lady and a BOMB missionary because she helped get Petri in the water.  So this week we were in the streets a lot.  I am helping Elder Brown out a lot with the Spanish.  I love serving with him, he is funny and I love the kid to death.  He asks me to correct him, which is weird, just 5 months ago Elder Shaver was the one correcting me.  Elder Brown is a good kid and has a more happy and positive spirit about him.  I have really enjoyed the time with him.  We are staying in the apartment we are at.  The health Elders came and checked our piso and walked through it with the landlord.  Which was nice because they're adults. So they tell the landlord this has to be fixed.  Hopefully we are getting better beds and that will be fixed.  It has been raining a lot more here, it was pouring on the way to come email you all right now!  While the health Elders were here he had the opportunity to check out my staff infection that I had failed to tell you about mother.  I figured that I would wait to tell you when it had gone away.  So it´s all good, I was in pain for about two weeks and I couldn´t even sleep on my back because it was on my tail bone.  But hey the good news is that it´s gone!  I also got it on my neck but it´s going away too, well gone almost.  So I may be making some purchases soon for Christmas, so don´t get all upset!  I have been trying really hard to not spend money and buy things I don´t need.  The reason the American base didn´t charge me is because I took out American money, not EUROS.  So for Christmas, I guess I have a couple of things I can think of that would be nice! 

My list to SANTA:
1. The Prophet of the Restoration (you know the cool one they played up at the Joseph Smith building)
2.  Exercise Band things, one that has the medium Resistance.
3. Okay this is the big one, IF you haven´t come up with something else because I don´t really need anything.  Okay so there are these bigger electronic dictionaries that conjugate the words and have a lot of words.  The little one you sent me doesn´t have hardly any words! Sorry but they don´t have them, or they are words that they use in Mexico and no body here understands them.  There are some that are pretty pricey, but that is what I would like for Christmas.  Look for the one that has the most words, I heard amazon has the best ones for cheaper, maybe.  They said that you should send all the packages before the the beginning of Dec 7th or we won't get them.  SEND THEM TO THE BASE.  You can send me 2 HUGE flat rate boxes for 12 bucks.  DO NOT PUT SPAIN at the bottom.  Tell them that you are sending them to military. 
4. Peanut butter.  Like a big jar or crunchy and creamy
5. Deodorant
6. Ties
7. YOUR LOVE. (CANDY)(MTN DEW)

 

Love you all,

Elder Code

November 7, 2011 - Email to Family

How is my lovely family?

Well I am doing really good.  I love my new comp he is super funny and  a clean freak.  Which is nice Elder Banbury was a slob and Elder Shaver never picked up his socks and that made me soo mad.  Elder Spencer JM Brown.  He is from South Jordan Utah.  We represent UTAH.  He says to look him up on facebook, he is a nerd.

Well this week was different.  I really don´t want to talk about investigators because I really feel all of them are not progressing.  We have Adrian, who is 10 years old and he will be baptized in December.  I have been teaching him for a long time and his grandpa is going to come and baptize him.  He has to be taught by us and be interviewed by another missionary.  He is funny and a good kid.  He is Spanish and Swiss.  His mother is from Switzerland.  But we don´t get to teach him that often.  Henry and Paloma are not coming to church and I fear never will.  They have told me at least 7 times they will come and never do.  I have tried everything.  Same with Claudia we even went to her home and she wouldn´t answer the door.  So I am done with those three.  If they don´t come to church they cannot be baptized.  So really I don´t know what more to say about investigators.  Sorry.   All I know that it is time to start finding new ones to teach.  I am not going to be doing it alone or on my own strength or the strength of my companion.  We are going to search with the power of Christ because that is the only way we are going to find people.  I am annoyed with our land lord guy.  I have to deal with problems in the house because our piso SUCKS.  Well, I have to do it all in Spanish and some of the Spanish people are can be prideful, so, we may just end up moving!  That would be nice I have been sleeping on a crappy couch for four months now because we own 3 beds and 2 of them are broken.  Well it sounds like you and dad are doing good!  That is fun to hear that you all are going to go snow shoeing and loose weight.  Dad told me to make sure that you are loosing weight every email haha. 

So this is weird I am all alone to take over El Puerto.  This is the first time that I have had to do this.  It is different and I want to find new people to teach because the others clearly don´t want to change, yet.  So we are going to find people that are already prepared.  It is weird I have to speak a lot and I feel like my Spanish has jumped in a more comfortable way, like I can understand people more.  I still need to increase my vocab.  I am helping Elder Brown out with the Spanish.  He is really hard on himself.  It is weird to be the one correcting someone.  Elder Shaver corrected me so much.  He was super hard on me.  But it payed off and I love him for it now.  Elder Shaver was an amazing trainer, I love the kid. 

So Petri, I ended up giving her the Holy Ghost.  I tried really hard to put in Elder Browns name and the Branch President but she wanted me to do it.  I thought it would be a good experience for him to do it.  But yeah she is all done now and super happy.  They laddies in the ward are taking super good care of her.  Well that is about all this week.  I am about to upload some photos.  The shortest kid that is brown and not Elder Rodriguez is Elder Basurto.  He was my district leader and he left to Cáceres!!!!!!  He is going to tear that place apart.  Elder Basurto is CRAZY.  In a good way.  Well I love you all!  Thanks for all you do.
hahahahahahahaaaa DUSTY!  SO FUNNY, LOVED THE PIC.  Good for him.

Love, Elder Cody

October 31, 2011 - Email to Family

Petri's Baptism - October 30, 2011

Hey, so I am here on American soil, well not really because Spain owns it, but I am on the American base right now!!!!

So, this morning I played Racket Ball and basket ball (on an American hoop) and ate some Taco Bell!  Now I am emailing for free, which is awesome!  A guy from the ward has been taking us around the base, it's awesome.  I also got a Mtn Dew!  So yeah I have been getting spoiled today.  It is a Holiday I love Halloween. 

So the NEWS!  I am staying here in El Puerto and I am getting a new companion named Elder Brown.  He is 6'7" and played basket ball at UVU.  He has like 3 months less than me in the mission, so I am senior companion again.  I have heard he doesn't speak too good yet, I am ready to help him out.  I am looking forward to that because El Puerto is my city now and I get to kinda direct the work.  I have a lot of good ideas and ways I want to do the work here.  Hopefully we will be getting some new investigators because the ones we have need to start doing stuff or I will be dropping them.  

Petri, Alona and her daughter

Petri got dunked last night and I still did the baptism!  I baptized someone for the first time in my life.  That was really cool, I loved it!  It was a super cool spiritual experience.  I felt really good and scared all at the same time.  This is super weird hearing a lot of English, I have forgotten how to speak to people in English, well I have forgotten how to greet people.  Well Petri was super happy and she still doesn't have the Holy Ghost we will see who gives it to her on Sunday, maybe I will have to do it too.  The baptism was really small, she didn't want a lot of people there.  But it was small and simple and a really amazing feeling.  I felt really good and the old Spanish ladies in the ward do a really good job at welcoming her in the ward.  We found Petri through this lady named Alona, she is from Russia.  Alona  is awesome, she is going through a divorce right now and she has the cutest kids alive.  Her husband doesn't want anything to do with the church.  So the picture of the baptism with the lady and her cute daughter is Alona.  So the baptism was just awesome.  I didn't have to re do it.  The prayer I did twice because the first time I forgot to say her name.  So investigators this week we did okay.  There is no one new.  We did teach Henry and Paloma finally again and set new dates with them to get baptized, it is to make them work and do commitments.  They don't do anything for example yesterday morning I called Henry and they said they would go to church and they didn't show up.  They don't read or really pray to know if these things are true.  They don't take us seriously.  We need a member in there to slap them around a little.  Claudia is doing good, but she cancelled on us 2 times in a row I  was rather upset.  So I am almost out of time, sorry this is kinda short but I have pictures!!!  So this past week the Spanish garbage is on strike and all of the streets are packed full of trash, it smells soooooo bad.  It is gross.  

 

I cannot believe that Jerame did that to his knee again.  I feel horrible.  I hate that sooooo bad.  I am not going to play sports like that to blow out my knee again.  Well I am in love with soccer so I am going to play that still.  I want to focus on triathlons.  I am glad that dad likes his new bike, it looks siiiick.  I am excited to ride it, but not train on it haha!  Well I am doing super good and the time is flying by super fast.  Thanks for the video!  haha the dogs were super funny I liked that email a lot.  I love you all and you're in my prayers!

CODY