The day without rest

Pdays are not really all that relaxing and sometimes they are more stressful than any other day.

This week was full of emotions! And I am glad that it is over. We had one of the most stressful days on Saturday. We were planning for 4 baptisms (all of little kids). But 3 of the kids are being raised by the most difficult lady I have ever met. If I wasn´t a missionary and if I didn´t have love for every person here in El Salvador, I would have kicked her in the knee. She gave permission for the kids to be baptized but she is paranoid and so she wouldn´t sign for permission. There were four missionaries there and so the zone leader said maybe we can just be witnesses. So on Saturday morning the Elders came to us the day of the baptism date and said that she has to sign. So we pleaded for her to sign and she still refused. The Elders left and and Hermana Cash and I felt like we needed to go back. We went to teach a lesson and we started to sing I Am A Child of God. We both started bawling. I felt so much love for these kids and yet they don´t feel any love at their house. The mom is not really interested in their needs or wants. So we cried the whole lesson. At the end, the mom walked in and sat down. We asked her to sign the papers and she said okay! It was so strange. But then we found out that the kids have been drinking coffee so they can´t get baptized now anyway. We have to wait another week. It was a really stressful day. But we did have the other baptism for a nonrelated kid. His whole family is members but not active. He went to church a lot two years ago with his grandma. His mom now goes to the Catholic church and someone asked him there a year ago if he was going to be baptized in that church and he said ¨I am not Catholic, I am Mormon.¨ He makes me proud.

So for those of you who forgot, Friday the 12th was my half birthday. We had a little celebration. At the grocery store we bought a cookie dough mix and then ate cookie dough. I tried to toast the dough over the stove on a frying pan and it did work a little bit. But it was good to eat cookie dough but we realized later it probably wasn´t a great idea because of the raw egg.

So this morning we were looking forward to a nice relaxing pday. At 8 in the morning the elders called and said that since every companionship in the zone had a baptism last month, we get to have a lunch with President sometime and we have 4 options to eat. So we picked what we wanted. Half an hour later the elders called and said that we were having lunch today and we had to meet at the bus stop at 10 to go to San Salvador. So that is what we did all day today. We went to San Salvador which is 2 hours by bus and ate at a fancy Chinese restaurant. It was pretty fun but we just didn´t have time to do anything today.

So, answers to some questions. We write from a cyber café. The computers work just fine. They are a little slow but I guess I can´t be too picky but they are cheap. It is about 50 cents per hour at a cheap one. We don´t eat ice cream too often but it tastes just like ice cream. When it is really hot, I would rather buy a cold drink than ice cream. My spanish is still not fluent and I can´t say everything that I want to say but I can get by. It is bad to be with a gringa because sometimes it is just a lot easy to talk in English. I don´t have the self control to talk Spanish all day long. But little by little I think my spanish is improving.

So this last week has been a lot hotter than ever before! People told us March and April were the hottest months. The thing is that it got humid this last week and before it wasn´t really that humid. I am sitting in the Internet café sweating like a pig and I am not even out in the sun. I think that I might buy a huge refrigerator and put my bed in it so that when I get home I can find some relief from the heat.

On Thursday I reach my four months on the mission mark! Time does fly by!

I love you all.

Thanks for writing me. I love receiving your blog updates and seeing all the pictures.

One last thing that I thought about this week: If a black widow bites you then you get poisoned but what happens if you swallow a black widow? Is that poisonous? We both decided that it wouldn´t poison you but I don´t really know.

Love, Crystal