To the people I love dearly,

        How has everyone been? I am doing great! This place is way awesome. My companion is Elder Moore, he's the same guy that met up with me at the Ontario Airport. He's from Upland, he's a cool guy. We get along really well and have some things in common so it's pretty cool. All of the NA (north american) elders are awesome. There are only 10 of us. 10 NA elders and like 12 NA hermanas. Then there are about 35-40 latino elderes/hermanas. The majority of them are from here in the Dominican Republic, but theres one from Argentina, a couple from Honduras, and one or two from Panama. They leave next tuesday to go into the field though, then a group of Haitians are going to come. That'll be interesting, since you know I LOVE french..  But yeah everything is great! I'm still not feeling very well, that cold just wont leave. It's progressively getting better though, so i'm just going to wait it out. oh, but you know how I have ear problems? Flying on airplanes is the absolute worst possible thing for me to do haha. It hurt so bad when we were "descending" to land I almost couldnt take it. Oh my gosh. I can't hear out of my left ear still. Like i'm deaf. Like Helen Keller would be proud. So that's kinda annoying haha. One of my teachers said I should go to the doctor but I told him that God had to take away my physical ears so I could gain spiritual ones. So that's my story and I'm stickin to it... And it's definitely helped, I feel the spirit here all the time. I liked when Dad said that he remembers the spirit he felt when he was at the MTC and all 6000 elders stood and sang called to serve. My most spiritual experience yet was the first time we all stood and sang "llamados a servir" in spanish. It was really powerful.

         So spanish. It's been really tough trying to speak in spanish all the time. I am remembering a lot of the things that I learned in high school, but it's hard to speak still because I'm still thinking in english and translating it to spanish when I talk. I can't wait until I can just talk without having to think in English. So we have and investigator too, his name is Jose. Elder Moore and I contacted him and we've been teaching him the lessons. In spanish only. It has helped us how to learn to rely on the spirit when teaching. There's nothing cooler than when you just say what you are feeling in perfect spanish and use words you'vbe never heard before. that has happened a couple times. It's weird, but it happens. The gift of tongues is a real thing, that's for sure.  

         So let's see if I can remember some of your questions.. Um today was temple day, we went this morning. Thursdays are our P days, so we go to the temple from 8:30 to 12:30, eat lunch, and then we have personal time from 1 to 5. Our districts email time is from 2:15 to 3, so i'm kinda in a time crunch. I'll probably send some pictures next week, but i'll try at the end to get them on here. But then we get our haircut, laundry, play basketball, etc.. Playing basketball here is interesting. We play "reglas Dominicanas" which means you don't have to take it back when you get the rebound. you just put it right back up. it's the most irritating thing ever. you basically give the other team free points if you miss. oh and apparently there arent any fouls. so it's pretty hardcore. we play out in the driveway on hoops that are like 10 ft 4 inches. which makes a huge difference. just ask greg... uhh oh im not sure if you've sent that package yet or not, but i've been told that the mail gets "inspected" here before it gets to me, so basically they steal your stuff haha. so if you havent sent Pypers letter or that stuff yet, wait until I get to Puerto Rico.. Dearelder.com is fine, but yeah it takes a while to get here. You can email me anyday of the week, but I can only get on the compuiter on thursday afternoons. Sorry for the bad spelling too, im trying to go fast.  Goodluck with the house and everything. Have a good trip to Kansas. That's pretty sad that my truck is gone, but whatevs. I eat straight up domincan food here, which is basically diarrhea waiting to happen. Not fun haha But it tastes really good! yesterday we had some banana soup stuff. totally funky, but delicious.