I'm not Illegal Anymore!

I´m legal! I finally made it through the residency process and now I have a card and everything. I was theoretically illegal for about a month back there too. Although, like I said earlier, the police never check white people. They always check Latinos and Africans. It´s sad. But now they can´t catch me. 

There are no pictures from Toledo. I can´t remember if I mentioned last time that my camera died on the bus going to there. Ya, you could say I´m pretty bummed. I´ll probably go another day because that´s a popular place so I´ll get some then. Toledo was beautiful! Even the library looks like a castle. It´s quite the workout since everything is on a huge hill. We didn´t get to see much because some people just wanted to talk and take the same pictures over and over again, but we got to do quite a bit. We accidentally entered the cathedral on the worship side and it was pretty fancy. Although we were a bit saddened by the prayer candles. They´re not candles anymore. They are a grid of lightbulbs and a 10 cent slot to turn one on. Wow. Apostasy is getting modern and lazy. We didn´t have time to buy anything. Next time, though! 

Tell Kamalei to learn to say "Que lo que." All the Dominicans here say that. They´re interesting people. I love them.  All the black and african culture mixes with latino culture and it makes fun things. And learn about baseball!

Transfers are actually today! We received them on Saturday. This weekend has been quite the drama and fiasco with that. In the end, Hermana King goes to the islands and we just got Hermana Floyd.

Yes, we have real brown sugar here but it´s rare. The sisters found it in a chinese shop a little north of our chapel. Most of the brown sugar here is like side walk salt texture. It´s super rough and doesn´t do what you want it to in recipes. I love collecting recipies! Hopefully when I get back I´ll have a good amount. Food is a great way to connect people. I guess because we all use it and want it.

So, our other Nigerian, Izekiel, didn´t show up a few weeks ago. One of his friends in the church found him and found us and told us what happened. He didn´t come to the baptism on purpose because he didn´t want Henry, my first baptism, to baptize him. Considering that he himself asked me to baptize him, it makes no sense. I was in white in the picture that Mom saw because I was waiting to baptize Izekiel. 

My birthday! Well, nothing feels different. I blend in now with the normal age missionaries. President and Hermana Jackson called and sang their fancy Happy Birthday song they do for everyone. It´s awesome. We ate lunch with some members. In the evening I made a bajillion pancakes and syrup, my companion made cupcakes (without a cupcake pan. It´s what´s on the inside that counts.), and someone brought a cake. We put a 1, an upside-down 6 and a random Real Madrid trophy on it. We never got to the cake because we were so sugared out. Although there is a nice Ecuadorian tradition of the person having to take a bite out of the cake and someone tries to push them in, but I escaped and just had a bit on my nose and chin. The next day the hermanas made lunch to celebrate my birthday also.

We gave a Temple tour! I´ve never done one before, despite being so close in Barrio 8. You walk around the temple explaining stuff and the gospel with symbols and then you get to sit in the waiting room and feel awesome. Our investigator didn´t want to leave. And I found out that the olive tree by the temple is a few thousand years old and from the Garden of Gethsemane. But I wish I could´ve given more of those in the past. They´re boss. 

We found a awesome guy from Mexico! He is from Guadalajara (Which is confusing because that is also a city like 20 minutes from here) and he kind of reminds me of Danny. He helps us teach his Catholic friend in a way too. He also somehow found and brought us maple syrup. Then the even better part was that we found a family of 7 Romanians that want to hear a lot. I´m excited to teach them all! Obviously we have found other people than these, but these were just special. 

A recent convert couple got sealed on Friday! They had essentially a reception and it was nice. There were some beautiful talks on marraige. Later my companion showed us one of the videos that they mentioned about a man who takes care of his paralyzed wife. He combs her hair and makes her food and takes her out dancing even though it´s just to watch. Speaking of dancing, they had a dance and they´re kind of funny here. They´re mostly adults doing basic latino dances and they enjoy it thoroughly. So do we. Especially when they did a flamenco song and it was a bunch of 50 year olds being boss. 

Well another week has come and gone. I miss you guys and love you more! Have a great week! You´re welcome for the eternally long email! I´m not joking about printing a book of all these for my descendants and myself. That bad boy´s going to be long.

Os quiero!

Elder Morgan the Younger