Starting to feel like a missionary!

orale!!!

Dad

yes, it's so nice having people to teach haha i finally am starting to feel like a missionary.and yeah our mission president is super smart and super spiritual.. sometimes i don't understand how he does it. but i'm so grateful for him. sooo yeah, i just wear the same suit every day haha i have two pairs of pants, so i mix those up, but yeah. same thing every day. i think i'm gonna by the other one soon tho! there's an H&M in manhattan where they sell full suits for 89.90   and they sell them slim, which is what i want . so whenever i go to manhattan i think i'll be buying a new suit! haha me da riza imaginandome a ti parado enfrente de tantas personas traduciendo con cara de zombie! haha i bet you did awesome. did they pay you good? and i'm sure you enjoyed your trip to california! did you go on "soarin' over california" ? i know how much you love the sensation of flying.. haha i'm trying to figure out what to do for my birthday.. my birthday is actually on the next transfer day, so allllll of the missionaries are gonna be together. i could just throw a huge party... we'll see! but i'll for sure have the sisters make me a cake.. they make pretty good tres leches, i'd be down for that! haha 4 weeks away from break.. that kinda sounds like a long time, but it goes by so fast. i can't believe i'm almost at 7 months. time flies. dile a mis abuelos que les mando saludos y mucho amor de regreso!

Mom

I'm doing so good :) our investigators are doing sooo good! i'll update you guys in a bit. pero si, yo se que tengo que practicar mucho! especialmente porque creo que voy a entrenar un misionero nuevo empezando en el dia de mi cumpleanos, y cuando averigue que soy mexicano va a esperar a que yo sepa como hablar perfectamente! no pressure.. haha but i will be okay. dominicans call plantains "platanos" and they call bananas "banano" or "guineo".. weird right? and just for fun, i'll let you know that they call oranges "chinas" but anyways the mangu was really good! i liked it.. we ate it with salami and fried cheese and onions.. the usual dominican stuff. elder vasquez says hi to everyone! he has almost been out on his mission for a year.. he hits a year on the 28th of this month! and no, he doesn't live in mexico. his family lives in new jersey! so he didn't have to come very far. NO haha i don't miss bethel. that was possibly the most boring place in the world. the only thing i liked about it is that we played basketball every wednesday. other than that, i don't miss it. haha my pants do NOT stand up by themselves.. i will be taking them to the dry cleaners very soon...aww man i don't know how i'm gonna be able to sign for the package!! i don't know what time the mail comes.. i'll see if i can figure out where the post office is and see if they can tell me anything about it. i'm sorry you're sick :( have you received a blessing yet? elder vasquez has been feeling sick the last couple of days too, its no fun! i hope you get better soon mom.. as for me, my immune system is proving me right once again. it's official, i'm a beast haha i feel so good. i haven't been sick, and i think it's gonna warm up soon, so i don't think i'll be getting sick at all. no worries! what do i want for my birthday? jeez.. that's a super hard question haha I HAVE NO IDEA! my ukulele. except right now we're not allowed to have them in our apartment. lame. uhmm.. maybe some money to buy some hats? i've realized that asking for stuff while you're on a mission is hard. because whatever you get, unless it's food, you have to carry it around with you haha so i don't know. just send me whatever you want, i'm really not expecting anything big!! and for your other question, we have a subway, mcdonalds, and burgerking right by our house, so any gift cards to any of those places would work!

now. for the rest of the story.

this past week has been awesome. in particular with our investigators. first let's talk about yobanna. she's 17, she's got an attitude, but she loves having us over. she's the one who is getting baptized on saturday. so we had an appointment with her last saturday, and she juked (she wasn't there).. which is bad because we needed to help her prepare for her baptism.. so we were a little frustrated. so we called her saturday night to see if we needed to pick her up for church and she didn't answer. so we called sunday morning. she didn't answer. so we were super frustrated and decided if she didn't come to church we were going to have to move her baptism back a couple weeks.. so we prayed and then went to church. we sat with our other investigators (whome i will talk about in a second) and then i looked to the back and saw yobanna.. i was soooo happy because she depends on us to go pick her up for church, but without us saying anything to her she came and she payed more attention than usual.. so that was good. then we had a lesson with her after church and invited her to a fireside to meet our mission president and she came and was telling everyone she would be getting baptized on saturday so we were happy to see she was excited. but when we took her home her mom was super mad and started yelling at us this and that and a bunch of nonsense and said she didn't want yobanna to get baptized and all this stuff soooo we didn't know what to do. long story short, we prayed a lot, we went back to yobanna's, she had her baptismal interview, and we talked to her mom and she's willing to let her get baptized. we're so happy! and she wants me to baptize her, so i can't complain about that :)

now, for patricio and teresa (other investigators) they are awesome!! from mexico, they live together, but they aren't married. they come to church every sunday and they pay attention and they love it and they ask perfect questions during our lessons and we love them so much.. we invited them to be baptized on april 6th, and they've been thinking about it. i'm sure they'll say yes. but for them to get baptized, they have to seperate or get married. sooo yesterday we went over and taught them the law of chastity. we told them about eternal marriage and families, and then invited them to get married. teresa totally wants to. patricio is thinking about it. but i honestly think they'll say yes. i'm so excited for them! i mean, nothing is for sure, but i think they will and i'm super happy. so yeah. that's been the highlight of my week haha

other news, my back has been hurting a little, i don't know why. it kinda feels like the back spasms i had when i was a senior, but not nearly as bad. i just hope it doesn't escalate to that point because that would be terrible! another funny story, we had a new investigator that lives in the other missionaries area so we all went to her house so we could hand her off to them. she wasn't there, but her daughter was. so we started talking to her and found out she plays volleyball.. vasquez looked at me and said that i play volleyball.. then she looked at me and said i was cute and then kept talking to vasquez. then he asked if we could come back and if she would be there to listen to us, and she said she'll only listen if i was one of the people who came back hahahaha nonsense. i thought that was funny. goodness, i love you guys so much. i hope everything is going well with you guys, cuz everything is going well with me :) miss you, take care of yourselves! and mom, get better!

Zazuetaaaa

ps. i got two new nicknames in this ward. instead of zazueta they call me "se suelta" or "se azota" haha mexicans these days!