Another baptism!

Dear Mommy,

All right first thing's first so all of you can stop worrying about Elder McBride, he's home haha. Turns out he had called a friend in California a few weeks prior and set up his "escape" for the day that we had our exchange. But yeah, he was picked up by his friend that morning, didn't buy anything on his card so they couldn't trace him, and drove back to California so he can be a bum without a job and live with his mom again... Ta-Daaa!!! haha. Okay that's super rude of me to say, but gosh dude that's simply unacceptable. If you want to go home, at least be man enough to tell your mission president and do it the right way instead of running away like a seven year old kid... not cool at all.

On a much more uplifting and exciting note, we had a baptism yesterday woot woot!!! Alvaro Lara is now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I thought I was going to grow some gray hair last night at the baptism though... The baptism started at six, and Alvaro didn't show up until 5:59 instead of 5:30, and both of the speakers showed up at 6:15, so Garcia and i were scrambling to put talks together about baptism and the holy ghost respectively until they showed up... AAAAH! haha. One thing that is funny about this branch that I haven't seen in any others is the fact that they start 10 minutes late for EVERYTHING and they always stay for at least half an hour after whatever meeting they're in is over. Hispanic people love to talk it's awesome haha even if it's just about random stuff. Yesterday after correlation meeting, Elder McVey and I went on an exchange to invite one of their investigators to church and the baptism before church started, and ended up talking to him for nearly half an hour just about random stuff. It's just part of the culture I guess... and I love it!

So you got Preach my Gospel mom? That's sweet! The Koli Poki thing is really helpful, but one thing that'll make it even more helpful is if you do it with a little notebook and a spanish-english dictionary so you can look up words you don't understand and write them in that notebook to study later. Holy cow it's a pain sometimes, but it really does help you to do that, so get to it! Don't forget to read out loud either, because that will help you speak it better as well. So Katie likes Jesse and Joy? Sweet I KNEW she would! haha I did write her a letter last week though... has she not gotten it yet? I wrote her a huge one this last week I promise haha I've been slacking on it so bad, so i wrote a letter of epic proportions that has the translated lyrics to the sweetest Jesse and Joy song ever.... hopefully it wasn't too heavy for just one stamp... it had like seven sheets of paper in it haha.

Mom, you're gonna hate me, but I haven't had to play the piano yet in the mission... I've been afraid that I'm losing my touch, so I have started practicing when we're in the building sometimes haha. Not just hymns, but primary songs to work on sight reading... I played one this last week that reminded me of you so much mom it about brought me to tears haha. You remember that one Christmas song that starts out "Picture a stable in Judea, picture a starry silent night..."? Playing that brought back memories of learning that song with you when I was little... I love you mommy.

Sorry to get all nostalgic there haha... so you've got a recital coming up? That is going to be a sweet concert! you need to kick some butts to get some certain kids practicing the piano mom haha exercise some authoritah! So is the weather treating you guys nicely or is it still good ol' bipolar utah weather? Here it's been surprisingly good! This week, we've had almost a full week of sunshine minus yesterday where it rained, although it cleared up again last night, so yeah no complaints here.

I still haven't heard from Devin, but I hope he emails me soon! Shoot that would just make my day if he actually got baptized... I miss that kid haha. Now we just need to get Kyle baptized and then we could be "the Mormon fatties!" haha.

All right, I'm out of ideas on what to write for this email, but I love you mom, and send my love to everyone else in the family, okay? Have a great week and keep studying spanish as well as your scriptures!

Con amor siempre,

Elder Kurt Kay Mooney