Mother's note,
Chad's letter came with a few random Japanese characters, and I have no idea why. I think you can still get the meaning of his thoughts. We got short emails later in the afternoon... not sure if the email/internet service is reliable. The best way to write Chad now is dearelder.com (and it's free). The mail strike is over, but he hasn't gotten mail for weeks - just email.
Dear Family,
"Hey howdy hey! Cambios (transfers) are this Thursday. I don’t know if I will have the same
companion or not, or whether I will be in this area or not, so that is
exciting. The strike is over, por fin (finally). It is finally
warming up here. It is in the awkward stage of cold in the morning and
evening and hot in the day. I usually wear a light coat every day, but
that can get really hot when the weather is warm.
Yesterday, there was a
lady, Marta. Right from the beginning
she told us she was suffering depression because of all the deaths in her
family. 營 didn’t count, but there have been a lot of recent deaths in her
family, and she was really sad. 燱e used the Book of Mormon,
2 Ne 9: verse 11 and a verse or two after verse 11. 爐o quote and translate
loosely, “创So Christ really suffered all my pains? 營 could read this whole
book. I磛e
already been baptized as a Catholic, can I be baptized into your church? 创 營t was amazing, she was crying, the spirit was so strong, and she
said she felt the Holy Ghost. 營 was so happy to share with her the Plan of Salvtion.
營
was able to testify that I know that I will see my Uncle again, and it was an
awesome spiritual experience.
The people here are
poor too, and someday I might write a book about all the people I´ve seen here.
Hasta luego."
Elder Withers
Dear
family,
This week was great!
It was superrrr duperr busy because we had all sorts of meetings and the
baseball game but it was great. Because a lot of people here smoke and drink,
teaching the Word of Wisdom and helping them overcome addictions can get
tricky...so President is having all of the missionaries in the mission take the
church's addiction recovery class. The senior couple missionaries teach
it and we walk through the whole thing. It is really interesting, and is
basically atonement 101. So we had that this week, and then we also had a
launching leaders class. A different class but also taught by senior
couples. And we had zone training. And then it was the game!
The game was sort of
culture shock, I'm not going to lie. We left our apartment at 4:00 in the afternoon, and drove about 40 minutes
to the nearest metro station, which was in Vienna. The Hermana who was
driving that day, isn't exactly good...so you take rush hour traffic, the GPS
giving commands, her companion giving out a scream every so often, her
horrendous driving....and you have a near death experience. She almost
wrecked twice, and by the time we finally got there Hermana Woodbury and I felt
like kissing the pavement. We get into the station, and it was a dingy
little place with lots of people. Public transportation is never
glamorous, which is always a fun adventure! We hopped on the green train,
and were on our way! We had to switch trains about halfway through to the
orange line, and then we arrived at the stadium. The subway ride was
about 40 minutes overall. And there were tons of missionaries on it.
The Elders, in their white shirts and ties were all standing in the
middle holding to the overhead railing, and us Sisters were scattered
throughout on random benches. The normal civilians were honestly staring
at us the whole time and some asked "where is your group from?"
"What are you doing here?" "Why are you all so
young?" We just said, "Hey, we're from all over the world,
we've been assigned to represent Christ in northern Virginia, and we have an
opportunity to go to a baseball game!" It was funny. Once we
get inside the stadium, all we could see were guys walking around with beer
bottles, women walking around with beer bottles, and vendors selling beer
bottles. There was some super twangy country music playing in the background,
and the National's mascots (random presidents...so their mascots are inflated
bobble head people!) walking around. We mosey on up to our seats, take a
seat, and enjoy the game! Truthfully the game was boring.....all I know
is that we won 6-1, but it was fun to see other missionaries. They also gave us $5 bucks for concessions, so I
had an ice cream cone, and then we went home the way we came! It was a
fun night, but we didn't get home until 1:00am....so we were dead beat tired the rest of the weekend, but I
think I have caught up on sleep.
Something kind of
funny, Hispanics love rugs and door mats....but they put them upside down.
So the ones that say "Welcome" are flipped, and instead of
inviting guests into their homes, they welcome themselves outside. Funny
:)
You know how Chad
would always listen to the Spanish radio channel, and how we would always make
him change it? Those channels are actually appreciated here, and it is
still funny to me. Every time I hear someone belting it out in their car to
these songs I just think of Chad and how much he would love that. It's
starting to grow on me too.
We sometimes help kids
with their homework in the evenings as service because their parents can't
read/don't speak English enough to help them. So that's kind of fun.
We also sometimes help mom's translate forms and show them where to sign
and what to send back for permission to stuff.
Also, yesterday was
apparently the El Salvadorian holiday, so there were some fiestas going on, and
for a while we could hear some hilarious karaoke coming from some where.
Either hispanics can't sing, or they were hopelessly drunk, but either
way it was really awful singing.
Our zone, the Ashburn
zone, is on absolute fire right now. We are the only zone on track for
our yearly baptism goal, and we taught over 100 lessons last week! It's a
fun place to be right now.
There is one member
who always calls us if there is a storm coming, a personal weather man
essentially...and its awesome. We really have no idea what to expect
weather wise each morning, so that's really awesome.
I am still learning
lots of Spanish. I finally feel like I have some sort of handle on it and
feel much more comfortable having a conversation and teaching the lessons.
One book I wish I had gotten at the MTC though, is called 501 Spanish
verbs. It has all the conjugations for all the verbs. I am just
learning Spanish way slower here because I still use so much English, so if you
could send a copy of that to me soon that would be awesome. My companion
has one and it is super duper helpful. Thanks a million.
I love you all
soooooooo much. More than all of the people that we squished into one
subway on Friday,
Hermana Withers
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