Week 22

Hey guys thanks for all the emails... I think I figured out why I haven't got any of your letters or packages in 8 weeks... There is another Elder Davis in the mission and two elder Davids. I asked my Zone leader why it is taking so long and he said it was most likely for that... With a little luck I'll get some at the changes meeting on the 10th. 

No we don't celebrate Thanksgiving... it exists, but nobody does anything. But a sister who is going to live in the states next year is excited about it and wants to celebrate with an American so she invited us to a turkey dinner!!! Pretty pumped for that. 

We had a p day with the president... Played soccer for about 4 hours and I grew to like this guy quite a bit. He is super competitive and was yelling at his team when they didn't do something good and threatening to send people to San Miguel (the hottest place in El Salvador) if they didn't get their act together. hahaha His wife had to keep reminding him he was a mission president and shouldn't use certain words and it's just for fun and it was hillarious!!!

I had the flu this week... That sucked. Spent one day in the house, but I hate laying around all day so I just went for it the other days. I felt horrible but I'm feeling a lot better now. 

Contacting is so boring so we started making games out of it... My favorite is when my companion picks one random word and I have to use it with the next person we see in the street... Trying to work words like "soccer field" "chicken" and "tortilla" into contacts made it pretty fun hahaha.  Then we picked clearly super difficult people and made 50 cent bets on who could get them to agree to a lesson. haha Super fun! 

I got everyone in my ward Mission leaders house to go in on a Christmas tree with us! Us 4 elders and everyone there all pitched in 5 bucks and we bought a little tree!!! So that was awesome!

Life is pretty good, hard this week, but good.

Thanks for everything-- Elder Davis

P.S.   If you can send me some super sick quotes... Church quotes or just normal quotes... I feel very quote deprived these days. "Thanks yous very muches man" (as the latinos say) Elder Davis

Week 21 Hi

So this week was a ton better than last. Thanks for all your emails and support. The family of my friend are doing better... Still hard of course but thanks for all your prayers. 

This week was really good actually... Nothing at all went to plans, and the entire week was just thing after thing happening, I don't know why, but I was happy the entire week. 

The highlight was the baptisms to finish it off. We baptized Jeffrey from an inactive family we found (I'm pretty sure he is the doppleganger of Tyler Doman... they are exactly alike) and Mauricio.

Mauricio was a drunk crying on the street corner when a member went up to see if she could help him. She invited him to church and he came the next week. He has had the hardest life in the world... When we first met with him he was working for 3 dollars a day (12 hrs of work) living alone in this empty house with literally nothing... Not even a bed- he just slept on the tile floor. The minute he began to keep the commandments he began to receive a ton of blessings. I have never seen anything like it in my life.

The day after he decided to keep the WOW he found much better work... Then people began giving him things... a cool phone, dinners, one day we were sitting on his floor giving him a lesson and his neighbor knocked on the door asking if he wanted these 3 couches and cabinet that he didn't need anymore... It was crazy awesome seeing the Lord bless him so much!! Then 4 days before his baptism he relapsed after a bad day and God robbed him of all his blessings. He lost the work he had, his phone broke, none of his friends would talk to him... then he started keeping the commandments again about a week later and started getting a ton of blessings again. It was just crazy to see God give and take his blessings so clearly based on whether or not he is keeping the commandments. Now he has over a month without drinking and is happy and 100% different than the man we first met thanks to this gospel. He has strengthened my testimony so much!! 

But yeah life here is good.  Super hot-- thanks for everyone telling me about snow and stuff haha But good.

Love you, have a good week

Elder Davis 

Week 20 Hola

Hey guys thanks for all the emails again this week! Super awesome!

This week had its up and downs, but mostly downs.

Played risk for 4 hours Monday.. that was fun.

Our recent convert Juan is already in Alma in the BOM and is loving it! So that was awesome. Also gave him the priesthood last Sunday so that was super awesome!!

My Spanish is fine these days... what I'm worried about now is my English. We have an investigator who speaks English and I keep accidently changing into Spanish mid conversation.  Holy cow I hope I get a gringo companion the transfers before I come home, or I wont be able to talk to any of you. hahaha

But yeah a youth in our ward named Roberto died this week. His family is super poor and his dad asked him to look for work as well as school. The problem was the only work available was on the other side of town... so he went to school in one gangs territory, but worked in the other. They didn't like that and he went missing Thursday and found his body Friday. Super horrible. He was the most chill kid in our ward. Most of the youth here end up getting caught up in drugs or gangs or partying and things like that, except him. He was at church every Sunday early, the only one to prepare the sacrament, always was trying to help the other youth stay on the right track, and super eager to go on his mission. He was such a good friend to me! Especially the first few weeks when I couldn't understand anyone and life was really hard, he would always joke with me and cheer me up...Super terrible and hard week. Just glad we know about the plan of salvation and where he is right now.

So yeah, tough week but next week should be better. Just focusing on the work and trying not to get down.

Love you all,

Elder Davis

Week 19 Another week

So this week was like the hangover after the super crazy, fun, and fast moving last week. We had to drop about half of our investigators for not keeping commitments and not progressing so that sucked. We tried every day this week to find new people but didn't get very far. Pretty dang tough... but not all bad. 

We didn't have changes so we were really happy about that!

My comp has a chess set and we started playing a game every night before bed... super fun because we are always insulting each other all day calling each other dumb and stuff (just jokingly- he really is awesome and it's just fun to make fun of each other) and now we finally have a way to determine who is smarter. hahaha 

Last p day we found out that this volcano is within our cities limits and got permission to go with this super awesome inactive guy who has a cousin with a car! Half way up the road the car started to jerk pretty bad... he just slowed down and kept going and then the jerking got really bad and smoke started to come out of the hood. He pulled the emergency break and we all bailed as fast as we could! He grabbed the fire extinguisher he had on the dashboard (now that i think about it- entering a car that carries a fire extinguisher on the dashboard was probably stupid haha) and tried to put out the fire in the engine... but the extinguisher didn't work so we sprinted to the side of the road, grabbed handfuls of dirt and were able to put it out pretty quickly with that. hahaha

In the end we never got to see the volcano and ended up hitchhiking our way back into town... but  it was an awesome adventure.

Halloween we did nothing different.  The church of Toby (ex Mormon who served a mission in Guatemala, was bishop then stake president, but then got excommunicated for stealing tons of tithing money and went and became a leader of this other church  and now is one of the richest most powerful men in El Salvador who half the country practically worships) had a party in the park. But other than that, it was normal... Day of the dead was a little bigger. Everyone went to the graveyards to put flowers on the graves of their family members, but we just kinda walked around all day having nobody to visit because they were all at the cemetery. 

Overall I'm doing good! Thanks for all the emails and support

Love, Elder Davis