9 Mar 2010 sorpresas son una pasada

Good news! I havent changed much at all on the mission, I am still just as scatter-brained as ever. So much in fact, i had to learn the word in spanish: despistado. I forgot to tell you that we have changed our P-day to, well, today. Surprise! Elder Kopishke (sp?), president of the Euro Area is coming to visit. Should be sweet.

Aaron, thank you for your faithfulness and your advance email. In return for your efforts, i will take your children as apprentices and teach them each one of my sub-par skills (guitar, wakeboarding, spanish, knitting, etc). Many may think this an uneeded risk placing such young, moldable minds under my stewardship. They may be right, but it is all i can offer. As for the rest of you, just because i wont be reading until next week does not mean you can skip out on this weeks email.

So anyway, on to the happenings...

Mom, you are gonna freak! Last week we had a lunch appointment with some members who are sweet. That is not the freaky part. The husband's name is Mike and he is from California, and his wife's name is Pilar and she is a crazy, hiped up spaniard lady. Every few years they shift between wher they live, USA or SPA, and now they are here. That is not the freaky part either. We were small talking it up and i asked them what they do for work here. Turns out they are both english teachers. Still not freaky. He then went into more detail about it and it turns out he does something a little different. He is a trained EFT coach and professional reflexologist. You may now feel free to freak (if you want, now that i wrote it down i realize i did a really bad job of climaxing it). I felt so at home talking to him about the craziness of the EFT. His stories are amazing. He has had a ton of success in his coaching. Everything from crappy students to hurt/trunky missionaries to investigators having difficulties giving up catholicism. The coolest part to me is that i have gotten to the point where i am pushing myself a ton. I am just dying to give it everything and be what i know i can, but i know i have a lot of bad habits. A lot of baggage from stupid stuff. Companions, mistakes, lest downs, turn downs, and just the overall pressure from the dimishing mission clock. I have made a lot of good feeling steps in the last few weeks, and i was getting to this point where i felt like i couldnt add much more without getting rid of a few things weighing me down. He was sent at such a perfect timing. Little miracles like this are so cool. When he saw the look in my eye when we were talking about it, he went ahead and offered to do some work with me. We are gonna have a go at it this week. Mom, i know we all call you crazy, but you are rubbing off on everyone. Dont get me wrong, we will never stop calling you crazy, but now we will have to include ourselves every once in a while.

Yesterday was pretty funny. I invited President to come to a district meeting one of these weeks and he decided to take me up on the offer the same week i made the invite. We had been going for a few minutes and he called us up telling us he was outside. We let him and his wife in, they sat down, and we got things going on the road again. The first thing i said to him was, "Well President, we are playing a game and you are up next." The look on his face was priceless. He already makes awesome facial expressions, but this one was amazing. After our get to know you game we moved on to "happy thought hour" where everyone shares their favorite happy thought from the last week. It doesnt actually take an hour to do, but its sounds better than "happy thought minute". After the happies we had the hermanas make a spanish study skeleton. Turned out great, really boney. Then to bring it to an end we practiced awkward contacting situations. Any contacting practice is super fun so we ended well. When President finally recovered from his shock we got some pretty good feedback which is always helpful. His wife told me i have a style that has a lot of Bon Ami. I dont even know what that means, but i love it. Then to top it all off, we had a feast of spanish pastries. Apparently it made an impression on him because today we heard from a few missionaries that they heard about our district meeting. Dont know what impression it was because the missionaries just laughed when they said it. I am just happy i made it out without a scratch. I kept forgetting president was there. I kept making jokes and then remember he was there. He didnt laugh at too many, which is fine, but his wife was having a ball. I will consider it a success.

We have a baptism this weekend. His name is Carlos Ruiz and he is so funny. He is a big old buff peruvian. Everytime we go over to teach him and ask him how he is doing he always comes of with a different way to describe how he is. He always manages to explain his current state of being by connecting it to the him breaking the word of wisdom in some absurd way. He thinks the laws of the church are hilarious, because to him they are common sense things. But he loves teasing about it. So we always get a good scare at the beggining when he explains that he was feeling tired but he is better now that he finished his pot of coffee spiked with rum. The best part is that is combinations never make sense. We get along really well.

Shoot, out of time.

Well, loves,

Elder Sky