A Book for Ronald

Getting Wet with Zona Comas!

Dear Family,                                                                                                             

The package must still be coming through or in the offices waiting to be picked up, I received a letter from Sister Grimmett this week, thanks for the animos and also for the great analogy. I was a little weird in the stomach this week but all in all I recovered and now I’m fine, just a little topsy turvy from a beet salad.

Apart from that I wanted to mention a couple cultural things that I never seem to send in my emails that will help you to visualize a little more about what things are like here. There’s little kids that run up to us in the street that say "hellow" but literally like that is spelled haha. They want to practice their English and shake the gringos hand. The shady characters on the corners of the street wave and shout "Elderes!" when we pass and tell everyone else not to mess with us. Other people, it depends on their religious affiliation if they will say hi back to us or not. 

Something that’s going on this month and next month because of summer is Carnavales. It’s basically a free for all water fight that goes on all month long. For example, about every three houses there’s an above ground pool, and usually a bunch of little kids just sitting in it to keep cool. Every 3 pools or so there are groups of teenagers that have water guns and water balloons to throw at people, strangers, other teenagers from the neighborhood, whobeit, they get them wet. A few years back they made it illegal, but the people keep at it. Nobody has tried to get us yet, mostly because the people have a profound respect for "preachers" anybody that has a bible and so they try to teach their kids it’s not okay to splashing us with little buckets of water. It´s actually really funny to watch because the jovenes start to fight with water and then somebody shows up with water with shoe polish in it (black) and then another shows up with paint in a bucket and they just finish like Christian Burrup after more than a few of his dates. It´s even better to watch their moms not let them in the house and tell them to go hose off in the dirt patch in front of their houses :). Good old fashioned fun.

The spiritual experience of the week award goes to Sunday. We are teaching a lot of kids, which while fun and a lot easier, isn’t exactly our goal as a mission, but well they came to church this Sunday and I had promised Ronald that if he came to church I would have his very own Book of Mormon for him. He is the grandson of a super active member who’s about 75 or 80. He’s a carpenter, and he has Peruvian wood that he’s willing to gift to me because grandpa’s a carpenter hobbyist as well.  It’s called caoba, maybe you can check with the internet and see if its something grandpa has worked with, it’s a hardwood from the jungle. Back to Ronald, he came up to me after sacrament meeting, 9 years old, and he taps me on the side...Hermano Nelson, me dijiste que si vine a la iglesia tendría un libro de mormon para mi. SO I smiled huge because he’s 9 years old and wants to read the Book of Mormon, and pulled his Book of Mormon out of my bag to give to him. He hugged the book and ran back to his mom, who is a member who is returning to activity. I love experiences with kids because sometimes they teach us to live the gospel more purely than we have been. When was the last time you hugged the Book of Mormon because you knew it was the word of God, or pulled it out to study it really and truly. I love this book. It´s true, the events and people in it are real and they really saw Jesus Christ when he came to the Americas. Read it every day, and I promise you´ll see more of God´s hand in your life.

I love you all, take care of  each other!

Love,

Elder Nelson