Baptism, Zoo and Bananas

This week was pretty good. Sunday we had a lot of people show up for church. One of the people is getting baptized this Saturday. Willier is 17 and way excited to get baptized. We also have Sabastian, the 9 year old, all of his family are members but him so this is an easy one. We have Alexander, he is 26, he didn’t come to church yesterday but he still has his date and is progressing, he showed up to church last week with a book about Joseph smith, so we taught him and he is way cool. The family of gold left for the dads work but will come back in two weeks so we are going to continue when they get back.

Last p-day we went to the zoo. It was way cool. You get to hold stuff and it’s like there isn’t a person with the animals either. You walk around and there are big parrots sitting there and you can walk up and put them on your arm. I have pictures of me holding a baby sloth, a huge boa constrictor. I did have a zoo guy with me for that one haha. It was awesome!!!

My teaching and my Spanish is way better. This week I realized that I can understand pretty much everything. Sometimes we will ask people who can speak Spanish better, and some people say me and I laugh. Since Elder Zuniga is from Costa Rica, he has a different accent, and they don’t know that he doesn’t know a ton of English.

The food here is really good so much cleaner. I love the maduro banana, its’ so good, it’s like a soft banana, fried a little bit. Man its good!! We eat banana for every meal even breakfast.

Loving the Jungle, the Ward and the People

Iquitos is freaking awesome. It is so green and my area is way cool. It’s mostly city and the people are way humble and awesome. I pictured the jungle to be jungle like walking down the street and seeing monkeys in the trees and snakes in the trees but it’s not like that, my area is city but it’s still way cool. The roads are cement and there are roads that are dirt. It rains every morning because we are in the rainy season, but it’s still hot. I wear my boots a lot because of the mud. We live in a little apartment that is part of a house of a member. We walk to our pension for breakfast and dinner like the last area but its closer. Iquitos is cleaner than in Lima. There is less dust and there aren’t that many dogs.

In one part of my area there are monkeys in a park chilling on leashes so I took a couple pictures of me playing with them, one is big, I have picture of one on my head. . In my area there is a big soccer stadium, so you guys can look on google earth and see what my area looks like. My ward is called Las Castañas. This morning Elder Zuniga and I went to write our letters to the President at a place that overlooks the Amazon River. It is so green and big, there were some houses floating there and guys in little canoes fishing. Everything here is moto. They don’t have cars they only have motorcycles, there are so many in the city.

The members here are cool, we sat down in Sacrament meeting and the Bishop gets up and says well we will now have our first talk by Elder Ridge. It was cool to get up and talk in Spanish without any problems. Right now we have a family of gold that we are teaching. They live in a wood house and don’t have electricity so we teach them in candle light, it’s cool, they are awesome. There is this boy in the ward that is 9 that was waiting for his uncle to get back from his mission so that he could baptize him but now he wants me to baptize him so he is getting baptized on the 7th of March. The people here are awesome, they welcomed me with open arms, literally, I had a couple little kids run up and hug me first time seeing them on Sunday. We get accepted like crazy too, when we knock on doors almost everyone says come in and teach me but thing is getting them to progress.

I am going to the Jungle!!!

Well we have changes and I know your excited to hear so here it is............ I’m going........ to..... IQUITOS! I’m way excited! I’m freaking going to the Amazon River, Wow,!!!!!

My companion is Elder Zuniga. I already know him because he was here two changes ago. He is way cool and is white as I am but he is from Costa Rica, he speaks a little bit of English but not a lot, he is also District Leader so I will get to know all the areas in Iquitos. I am way excited. It is so hot there, everyone tells me that you will die because of the heat. Man I am so excited I can’t stand it!

I leave Wednesday morning and I have to put my stuff in the offices on Tuesday. I can only take one suitcase that weighs 40 pounds there. Today I am going to take out money from the bank just in case I need it while traveling.

Well I didn’t give the blessing one of the counselors did, because the Bishop announced it wrong so we just went with it. Our baptism was cool because the girl Lorene wants to serve a mission, she bore her testimony in sacrament meeting before she got confirmed, it was awesome. Javier was cool too, it was good to finally get the teaching done and get him in the water.

I have not gotten my third package yet an since I am leaving I don’t think I will ever get it. My health is good. I am drinking water. I don’t have fleas that much. Yesterday I ate cow lungs, it was gross. I will try to get you some pictures. Well, I love you guys, next e-mail will be about the Amazon Rainforest! Man I am way excited!

Short and Sweet

Well, I don’t have a lot of time but this week was awesome, we had two baptisms on Saturday, it was awesome. My zone leader is telling me that I have to go right now so I can’t talk right now. I hate this 30 minutes thing!! Next week I will write you guys more detail because next week you will know my changes. Thank you, thanks for the support, I love you guys! Sorry