February 25, 2013

hey mom!

i´m glad you finally got my letters! i´m pretty sure i gave them to the zone leaders before christmas, but sometimes they don´t take them to the city for a long time so it´s anyone´s guess as to when they actually left, but at least they got there, if maybe only a little late! :) i´m also glad to hear it´s still snowing. i really miss the snow and being cold haha. oh well, only about 8-10 months left! :)

well, this was a much better week. i´ll start with that couple that got baptized. honestly they´re struggling a little bit. not cause they don´t like anything of the church, but i think they´re honestly just racist and don´t like me. it´s hard, like i still want to help them, but i can´t really. we´ve gone by a few times and they always say they´re busy or sick or something. i kinda was afraid of that as we were teaching them, that they just wanted us to help them get married and then ditch us, cause whenever we talked about the church and stuff she was always just like oh ok, that´s nice, but then when we talked about marriage she would get all happy and animated and stuff, so it was kinda weird. i don´t know, i guess only time will tell, so we´ll see.

so you assumed correctly, i´m still in the same area, but thank goodness with a new companion. i´m actually training a newbie fresh from the mtc, and he only had 2 weeks there so he´s super new. his name is elder villanueva from peru, and things are so much better than they have been. he actually wants to work and has ideas and talks to me and it´s just tons better. it´s definitely not the perfect companionship and it still has it´s difficulties, but it´s better. it makes me think about when i was getting trained, so i´m trying to have patience. i know when i was getting trained i couldn´t speak very well, but i still had ideas every once in awhile and wanted to help more, and would maybe get mad when my trainer just did everything, so i´m trying to be aware of that. he kinda thinks he knows everything and knows what we should do, even tells me that taking this one street would be faster even though he´s only been in the area for 3 days, but oh well. at least we´re out in the street and we´re teaching so i´m happy. honestly i wasted a lot of time with my last comp and it was hard, but i´m also district leader so we put a super high goal as a district for baptisms so we´re gonna work hard to get it. we actually have quite a few people to teach, which honestly makes life harder cause we always have to be running from one place to another and visiting everyone and thinking about their needs and everything, so it´s harder, but i feel better. just this last week feels like i´ve worked more than i did the last 8. it was basically just an average area last change, but if all my weeks this change are like this last one, i feel like this could become one of my favorite areas. like i feel like my relation with the members just soared, people give us references, we have all kinds of people to teach, it´s just awesome. i couldn´t tell you why, but it´s so much better. i really think this is gonna be a sick change :)

this morning we went to this place called Chicá, and it was just like this mountain range around here, and it was actually really cool. you could see super far, and it was fun to just walk around and explore. plus it was actually kinda cold, and with the nice breeze it was quite pleasant :) we climbed high enough to be in the clouds and it was sweet. i would send some pictures, but i seem to have lost the cord to connect my camera to the computer...i am just super bad at hanging on the things haha, i don´t know what my deal is.

ooh i almost forgot, there was one pretty bad thing that happened this week. so the day of changes my eye was really bugging me, and i tried washing my contact and everything but it just wouldn´t go away. finally i had to just take it out and throw it away, so i spent the rest of the day with just one contact, which i dont know if that´s bad, but oh well haha. so the next day comes, and i wake up and my eye was like stuck shut with this sticky crap, and i was like freaking out cause i had no idea what it was, so i called the nurse and she told me for sure it was pink eye. so that was great haha. not sure where it came from, but i had to go buy some antibiotic eyedrops, and then i couldn´t wear my contacts all week cause it just hurt super bad. it was hard leaving the house cause they sun would just torch it, but finally sunday morning it was better and i finally put my contacts in and today it´s about 98%. the nurse told me to never wear contacts again, but i haven´t had any problems for 15 months, and i won´t use my glasses, so i´ll tough it out haha.

but yeah that´s about how my week went. definitely a lot better, and i´m super excited for this change. i think we could see a ton of success. so again thanks to all for your prayers and support, i really feel it. hope even though it sounds like a quiet week it´ll be good, and we´ll talk soon!

much love,

elder paskett