Elder "Martinez"

Hey Mommy!

Oh man I am so jealous that sounds like a freaking saweet trip! I'm sorry about having to fight off the pounds though... I know how you feel! It's funny here because all of the Spanish elders are kind of in that boat just because they feed us SO DANG MUCH FOOD! When I was with Smithee, he wouldn't eat anything the whole day just so he could handle the amount of stuff they give us at dinner time. Other elders try to pick up their dinners so they can just eat a normal portion (definitely bad for PR with members), and some on planning day take what's called magnesium citrate to... well... for lack of better terms, clean you out haha just so they aren't packing around an extra 10 pounds of food in their bellies. But yeah, it's really funny to see the different ways people try to keep it off. It wouldn't be so difficult, but you've only got 30 to 40 minutes in the morning to try to burn off a 2,000+ calorie meal, along with whatever they may serve you afterward for dessert, and whatever you choose to eat during the day. So far so good for me though... We've been running every morning since Garcia and I became companions, so all my clothes from before the mission still fit.

Speaking of clothes, can you do me a favor? Run down to Mr. Mac and find out who their tailor is, then smack him for me? I don't mean to bag on these suits, but honestly, I think I'm getting better thread-wear from the suits I bought at Goodwill! My houndstooth pattern dark brown one has the hem blown out on the left pant-leg on one pair, and the other pair of pants the little extend-waist elastic ripped out and I had to sew it back in in the MTC... thank you for showing me how to sew mommy!

Okay enough ranting about my suits haha. Our investigators are doing quite nicely this week... minus Sunday, which was a total flop, because we had planned on having five come to church, and guess how many actually showed up? One. Yeah, that was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing ever. We arranged rides, we visited them all on Saturday, made sure they were going to come, and MWEH (supposed to sound like a duck, but I don't know how else to spell it haha). Luckily, the one who showed up is the one that we have a baptismal date with. His name is Alvaro, and he's a total stud! He's 29 and was dating a member in the branch who is less-active, but he ended up basically dropping her, and is now mostly just interested in the church! We have been teaching him, and he understands EVERYTHING! It's amazing honestly... He comes to church, and participates and answers questions that most of the members won't answer. He's going to be getting baptized the 20th of this month, so here comes baptism number two woot woot!

The one thing that I love about being a missionary though is not the baptizing part. Don't get me wrong, it's all awesome and cool that they become members, but it's the relationships you build with them that makes it so worth it to be out here. Like with Silvia and her family. Gosh I love those guys they're so sweet. We've been going over pretty often to teach Silvia's husband Salvador, as well as their daughter Guadalupe, and through doing that, we've become really close friends with them. It's funny, we were over at their apartment one day talking with them, and just about how a lot of things in English are hard to pronounce, and then we got the fact that "Mooney" is hard to say for Spanish people. I told them that It would be easier as a missionary if I could just change my last name to something Hispanic so everyone could pronounce it, and so they said that they would adopt me as their son and I could just use "Martinez" as my last name while I'm a missionary haha. Anyways, they're super sweet people, and so are all of the people we've been teaching.

Aside from those guys, we've been teaching a couple whose names are Jesus and Yara, and they're so cool! He's just barely 18 and she's 17, and they've got a 10 month old baby named Audi... yes like car haha. Anyways, they're so sweet and have a testimony of everything, but there's one hitch... they're not married yet. They both want to, but have to wait for Yara to get papers so that she's a legal resident. They're about two months away from doing that, so I might still be here for when they get married as well as get baptized. It's so cool though because as we've been talking to him, we only have four lessons and once those are gone, you kind of have to find other stuff to teach, so we've been talking to him a lot about eternal marriage and going to the temple after he's been a member for a year, and he's eating it up! I think they might actually take a trip down to Utah just because he wants to see the Salt Lake temple so badly, and he said as soon as they've been members for a year, they want to get sealed there because it's so beautiful. We're thinking in the next couple of weeks, we might take them over to the Portland temple and have a picnic with them, and maybe show them around the terrarium there in the foyer of the temple. Anyways, ah exciting stuff with them.

Aside from them, we have Dana who is still having problems with her grandma... gosh she's a butthead. That, and yesterday she said she wanted to come to church, we set up a ride for her (because she's only 14), and when the family giving her a ride stopped by, she was ASLEEP! At 12:00 noon she was still asleep so what the heck! We've gotta stop by today and see what exactly happened with her.

Lastly, we have Pedro Vazquez. He is a freaking stud, but he needs to get baptized! His wife is actually an endowed member of the church, and they have three adorable little kids (one of which she had this week!), and gosh they are such a sweet family. Even the names of the kids are adorable! Pedro (Pedrito), Perla, and Paulina. It's hilarious because Pedrito is always dressed up like a storm trooper, spider man, or one of the power rangers running around the house, and Perla LOVES Hanna Montana, and always wearing a Hanna Montana T-shirt that is more like a dress on her, and puts on a pair of sunglasses ans she sings and dances around; but what really cracks me up is she gets mad if you call her Perla. If you do, she gets this angry little look and says, "NO! Soy Hanna Montana!" haha. In my personal opinion, it's a little weird to see a little Hispanic girl insist that her name is Hanna Montana, so along with her mom Rocio, we've opted for the name "Juana Montana" haha.

We finally saw them for the first time in over a week last night because she was in the hospital for most of this week with the baby and all that jazz, but they're doing great now. We are basically trying to build a good relationship with Pedro more than anything right now because he's been taught everything, and he's, well, stubborn haha. We're hoping that he'll get baptized soon, but who knows. Poco a poco, lentamente, it's gonna happen.

Anyways, enough about investigators haha. Life is good here in the mission. I have absolutely no complaints about elder Garcia because he's a total stud. I love teaching with him, and everything we've been doing this week has been saweet! That's the update for this week, and I hope everything is going amazingly at home!

Love,

Elder Kurt Kay Mooney