Aloha!

Things are real good here in the DR.   It's been a great week for mail. :)  I am doing well and it is crazy that I'm leaving on Tuesday. There are lots of people here in the computer lab today with all of the Latinos but a nice elder from Nicaragua finished and gave me his computer.  I think p-day is Monday in my mission so I probably won't email until a week from Monday.  So, it's been a good week here.  Oh, I didn't see any damage from the storm, but we were thinking about our Haitian friends and wondering how they were doing with all of the rain. It was a little wet on Friday and we weren't sure we were going to go on splits but it cleared up and was quite sunny. So we went. We went on splits with the missionaries in the West mission and are supposed to do the same thing tomorrow. My comp was from the DR and didn't speak a lot of English but it was good. We knocked doors for a little while and tried to set up appointments for them to come back and teach a 10 minute lesson on Sunday. (When I use "we", I'm using it very loosely.) :) I basically let her do her thing and she said I could try, so I just said that we were missionaries from the church and tried not to mess that up and then I looked at her. :) We also went to a couple of lessons. I bore my testimony at the end of each of those. The first one we taught was the law of chastity. It was a little different because the girl was Haitian, so a member translated what my comp said. I actually had just studied the law of chastity that morning, so I understood some of what was going on. At the beginning of that lesson, we sang a hymn and guess what it was? Teach Me to Walk in the Light - of course in Espanol and the one thing I didn't bring with me was my hymn book, so I did my best to sing along. :) We also went to another lesson and talked about the Book of Mormon. It was a good time. I was nice and sweaty when we got back. All I can say is that I'm going to sweat more in the next 16 months than I ever have and I am also going to have some sweet tan lines. :) When we were driving to our area, one of the sisters from the DR was really close to her house (based on what I could understand). I think that would have been hard driving by familiar stuff but knowing you couldn't stop. Crazy! One of the elders here is going home because he is having knee problems. He is supposed to have something done at home and then hopefully come back after 6 weeks. Funny story - so when I was writing in my planner about one of the lessons, I was going to write L2 and it made me think of law school. Then I was like "what did they call us in law school?" and then I remembered it wasn't L1, it was 1L. Thanks Dad! :) Also, our teacher was demonstrating how to teach the law of chastity and asked us what we knew about it. One of the elders said, is that the same as caridad (charity)? Chastity is (castidad). I busted out laughing because we used to joke about that and I kept making myself laugh everytime I thought of the elder saying this. We have a great district here. I forgot to tell you that we had a good Fast Sunday. We actually fasted for Saturday dinner and then breakfast on Sunday. I wasn't sure about doing it that way, but I actually really liked it especially since we went right to lunch after church at noon. Maybe it will be a new way of fasting for me. We also went shopping on Monday again since they were taking the Latinos. We walked to more of a grocery store, but it was good and a nice store. I think we watched the same devotional Alexis might have watched by Elder Bednar. He talked about the 20 mark note. It is a great talk about doing what you should and then realizing that you are guided by the spirit. I am so grateful for your support. I can't image doing this without you. Some of the Latinos here have amazing stories of only being a member for a year and coming on a mission or not having their family's support and still coming. They are great people. I think my mission president is speaking at our Sunday fireside this week so it will be good to see him and his wife again and then on Tuesday. The West mission president spoke this last Sunday. I also had a good time at the temple today. We did a session first and then did a couple of initiatory. It was really nice because I got to do one initiatory all in English and then another worker came and did part of the other in Spanish. I was really glad to be reminded of those blessings before going out to the field.  Anyways, I love you tons and tons. You are seriously the best peeps ever! Love, Elena