The World is Ghetto Here

Well I have left a growing, random legacy in the mission. I eat strawberry greek yogurt with halves of digestive crackers (these plain cookie things. They don´t change your digestion at all.) as the spoon and everyone I show it to loves it and it is now spreading even after I leave. It tastes dang good. Also, I learned how to make couscous this week and it tastes amazing and it is so easy. New menu item! I´m getting pretty good at cooking. My favorite is frying up peppers and meat and throwing in whatever else you want like other vegetables and meats and it just tastes good and it´s actually healthy. I also have my moving pantry that comes with me to every area in a bag which consists of all my extracts and powders and most importantly my American brown sugar I got in my last area. 

Turns out that this new area has many people with very interesting ideas and less logic. For example, there was a man the other day in the street that assured us that you could be baptized by reading the bible because "the word gives us power," and so baptism by water is not necessary. Or some people in the street who recognized and told us that they needed the church and knew that they were lost metaphorically but decided that their way was better. And my companion is near the end of his mission (Finishes in 5 weeks but I didn´t say that.) so he´s getting more blunt with people in the street. It´s good sometimes but sometimes it´s a bit much although that kind of stuff stays out of their hearing. I can´t remember all the exact things he says right now but it´s pretty interesting. Although he does have some great contacting techniques that I´m now applying. And sometimes people need bluntness so I´m trying that too.

Well we just have a boss of a ward mission leader, like my companion said. He is by far the best I´ve had. I´ve had wonderful ones in the past but this man magnifies his calling like mad. He makes these charts and info sheets for every investigator that they´ve had here. And he even tells us details about recent converts and old investigators from a year ago that need help that we should go pass by. You can tell he really cares about his calling. And I happened to get here on the week when he invited all the missionaries to his house for dinner. He´s something like the financial manager for Spain and Portugal so he had a pretty nice house as well. 

I found out that one of my teachers from the MTC, Hermana Perera, is in this ward! I don´t know if I ever mentioned my teachers from the MTC because there was like no time to write when we were there. So there was Hermana Perera, who I believe is from here; Hermano Pickup, from Texas; and Hermana Camarero, from Barcelona if I´m not mistaken. I saw Hermana Camarero when I was Vallecas because she was about to go into the temple for her marriage. She´s interesting because she only taught one transfer and in that transfer only taught one class. Us. We´re her favorite class. I saw Hermano Pickup many times because he was part of the bishopric in Alcalá de Henares which was the other part of our district in Torrejón de Ardoz. He went on his mission to Ukraine and married a Spanish woman. Long story. And he tried to name his son Dodge--awful joke--and his wife was ok with it until her mother-in-law told her the joke. And now Hermana Perera is here. So ya, fun stuff.

Not much else in news. I just found out that an investigator from my old area, Barrio 5, is being baptized in a week. Like always. It sucks to miss the baptisms of these people I´ve worked with and loved by a couple weeks, but I learn things from it. Mainly it reminds me that the work isn´t about me, its about them and so it doesn´t matter if I´m there are the end, I´m just glad I played a big part in their conversion. But don´t get me wrong, I would still love to be there and baptize them myself. Sadly, President won´t let us go to baptisms in old areas because some geniuses abused that power by going two hours away to baptisms of people they taught once on intercambios.

Speaking of areas, I have just hopped over the river to get here. The borders of this area touch my old area. I can see the royal palace from some of this area too. I´ll miss that area so much. It is my favorite overall. I´ve loved parts of other areas much more but overall that was the best one. I also wished I could´ve stayed for things like baptisms and my birthday and whatnot. But I better stop talking or else I´ll get more trunky for my old area. Love that place to death.

Ya, the piso isn´t too great but I finally got unpacked and stole, with permission, furniture from the other Elders´ piso so ours is more habitable. Slowly I´ll get used to this area more and more. I´m still kind of lost. But it always gets better and better as we go on in each area. I´m not sure about my desires to stay in this area or what will happen with transfers before I go. We´ll see what happens.


No closing to his letter, but I did find his new companion's blog and so I'm attaching his photo (just in case Elder Morgan doesn't send pictures before his companion goes home--which is highly possible).

Elder Eskelson from Smithfield, UT