July 5, 2010

Hey everyone! This week was a busy one for me! I got to go meet the new Mission President, President Humphreys on Friday and it was super good. He is a gringo from California who served his mission in Argentina, his mission President was Richard G. Scott! Super cool...his wife doesn't speak any Spanish (I found my new best friend) so during the mission conference she has a missionary translate her words into Spanish. the conference was short, but it was good. At the conferences I get to see my friends from the MTC and it is always nice to see them but my companion and my other best friend from the MTC aren't in our area so they go to a different conference. the conferences that we have are in Concepcion and it is about a 2 hour bus ride from my zone. As we were buying our tickets for the bus in the bus station a fight broke out between a thief and 3 guys beating the crap out of him...I kind of got in their way and got hit, but only in the arm and I got out of the way haha. It was crazy, the police didn't do anything about it and the guy who stole stuff was getting pounded. "Thou Shalt Not Steal" has never been so true. After that I realized that it's important to always be safe down here and always pay attention to your surroundings. this week is going good though, this last week we received 14 new investigators! It was really good. I think we are doing a good job and we are working hard every day, but we could always work harder. I sent a picture or 2 of Concepcion, it is beautiful and the church there is amazing, it is up on a hill above the city and the view is amazing. I hope I get to serve in Concepcion before my mission is over, it is way nicer than my city Chillan! haha I don't know if I mentioned in my last letter, but the food here is good, a lot of potatoes, soups, chicken and chorizo. The toughest thing about the food is that we eat only once a day for lunch (provided by a member) at like 1:30 p.m. and we can't eat again until we get home to our apartment at 10. They have something called "once" (like the number 11) and it is like dinner, but we aren't aloud to eat it as missionaries, even though it gets offered to us all the time. It's weird. Anyways, keep praying for our investigators, I love you all and hope everyone is safe and well.
Yours Truly,
Elder Cody Dastrup