Feb.14, 2011 letter

Dear Family, 

This week has been pretty good.  We have an old investigator that has a baptism date.  He couldn´t get baptized before because he had to work on Sunday but he´s changing jobs so now he can go to church.  Yesterday we talked with an 18 year old boy named Angel.  He talked to us for a long time about all of his doubts and questions about churches he´s gone to.  He hasn´t been baptized into another church so he won´t have the question of why he has to do it again.  That has been a problem with quite a few people.  The church would be perfect for him.  We didn´t have time to teach him so we left him with a Book of Mormon.  We also taught an older couple.  They were taught before and they listened to us and accepted to be baptized, but they aren´t really understanding much.  We´ll see if they read and go to church.  The 16 year old wasn´t at church yesterday so we´ll go by tomorrow and see what happened. 

I had some really good food this week.  The branch president´s wife made really good hamburgers.  The family that fed us the pig skin last week made us Sunday lunch.  It was alot better than the pig skin.  We went into their backyard and knocked down coconuts.  We made fresh coconut juice.  It is just like the ones in Costa Rica but they were yellow instead of green, and they were free.  We also had rolls with shredded pork. 
For the weather reports, just let me know which days it will be raining.  We have between 11 and about 3 to write.  We get just under an hour to email home during this time.  There is a different address for pouch mail.  Its some address for the church office building with my mission name on it.  My companion said that it gets here about as quickly as a regular letter.  The letter address is on my facebook page.  It takes a few weeks for dear elders to go through the mission office.

I saw a tiny snake cross the street one day.  I saw 1 dead scorpion at a members house.  There are quite a few ants, spiders, and other things in our area.  I see a few everyday in our house.  The floor is all tile so it´s easy to see them.  The home situation here is really interesting.  Some people live in little huts, some live in huge houses, and a lot of people live in houses that start out small and get added onto.  The people buy their house piece by piece.  They start out with a little room, save some money, add on, save some money, and add on some more.  There is a family here that lives in a 2 room hut and they are building their house right next door.  Pretty much every house is made of cinderblock.  We only work in town.   There are some small villages but we don´t get out there very often because we have to pay for transportation. 

The area is safe.  There aren´t any drug dealers as far as I know.  I like sleeping in a hammock every night.  I don´t have a net, but there aren´t really any problems with mosquitos.  I haven´t seen any Americans here.  There was 1 in a bigger city that was traveling.  I don´t think there is anything touristy here.  We aren´t allowed to see ruins.  Its been a rule for about a year now.  We study until 11, eat lunch arround 2, and tract for the rest of the day until 9.  The chapel is an actual building.  You can see in on lds.org maps.  Elder Vickery´s bike is fixed.  It needed new gears.  The bike shop here is really cheap.  We go to internet cafes to send our weekly e-mails.  I´ll try to send pictures next week.  We don´t take siestas.  Ask Rachel if she updated my facebook.

Love,

Elder Gubler