June 1 E-Mail

Okay mom, quit freaking out.  I'm sure you were ticked yesterday when you didn't get an e-mail.  The mission president wanted us all to proselyte because of the holiday.  It didn't really make a huge difference here but it was still good.  We got to go to a couple of BBQ's.  This week went by pretty quick.  It seems like I was just here e-mailing you.  We just come to the church because they have a geneology library that we use in the computers in.  There will probably be a p-day coming up where you don't get an e-mail cause were gonna try to go to the temple, and we can't e-mail when we do.  Tell Tyler happy birthday.  I forgot to put it in my last e-mail.  It's crazy Seth and Sierra get hitched in a couple of weeks.  Find a place to live yet?  Crazy.  I have talked to that Elder Jacobson a couple of times. He is training my MTC comp. I was blessed with the trainer that I got.   We get a long great.  Yesterday everyone was talking about going to the sand dunes cause I guess there are some good sand dunes about 30 minutes away from here.  Who knows how good they are compared to Utah's, but I hated hearing all about that cause I just wanted to go haha.  Oh well.  It sounds like all my friends are doing great.  I know how Jared feels with all the names.  I swear everyone here is either Javier, Juan, Jose, or Jesus.  And also with the being so tired you just get back and want to crash.  My companion takes a while to plan at night but I'm usually in bed by 10:00 or 10:15.  Mom, Othello is about 20 minutes away.  So not bad.  I spent a couple days there this last week on exchanges.  It was good to move around a little.  But the hispanics over there speak a dialect called misteco or something like that.  It's way hard to understand.  It sort of sounds like Chinese or something.  But it was a good experience to go see the work in different places.  Then last Tuesday we went to Moses Lake for Zone Conference.  We got lost and drove way out of the way and we were late.  But oh well.  It was good to see around a little bit.  The place we live in, we have our own bathroom but we share a kitchen.  Mom you would like it here.  There are dogs everyway and tons of puppies right now.  Most of them are mutts though because they all just roam around and do there thing.  The chihuia's are everywhere and love chasing us on our bikes.  I know I didn't spell that right.  We saw some baby goats the other day too.  They had been born like 20 minutes earlier so that was cool.  Then last night we talked to a lady who was cutting throats on chickens.  She just had her knife out there with blood everywhere and she was plucking out the feathers.  We are going to her house on Saturday for a cookout because her daugher is graduating.  That should be pretty fun.  This week we taught like 30 lessons.  Which is a lot for this area.  So we worked hard.  You keep saying that somewhere on the internet it said the population was like 3,000.  Well everyone here says there's like 1,500-1,800 people.  So I think it's smaller than you think.  We have been getting fed quite a bit.  I can't remember what all I told you in the last e-mail, but we have four dinner appointments a week with members.  There's one lady who will cook for us any time we want though.  She's way nice.  It's hard when we go to her house though because she lives there alone so were not supposed to go in cause there's no guys there.  I still can't speak any spanish.  But am continuing to understand more and more.  We had 3 investigators that came to church on Sunday so that was awesome to see.  The branch only had like 25 people in it so it's way small and it's hard to find spanish members to fellowship our investigators.  We have a few baptisms on date for June 26.  We are working really hard and praying they will go through.  There are a ton of broken families because most people are here just working and the rest of there family is in Mexico.  It's weird cause just random people live with random people.  The mission President's wife asked us not to drink soda.  It's impossible here though because the water isn't very good at all so all we get offered is beer or coke.  So we take the cokes.  A member the other day gave us some ties.  That's always fun to get new ties.  I don't have a lot more time.  We're gonna head to Othello soon to shop and play some soccer.  But I love you all so much.  I know this church is true and that if everyone was a member then the world would be such a happy place.  But, we all have our agency.  I know by going to church every Sunday, reading from our scriptures, and praying, that god will bless us so much.  I was reading this morning in 3rd Nephi 12:1-2 I think.  It talks about how we that have a testimony are so blessed and will be so blessed.  Because we have that faith to know these things are true without seeing them.  It also talks about following the prophet and apostles.  I know that we have a prophet and apostles today that are called of god for our benefit and that we need to listen to them. Have a good week and I will talk to you all soon!!!!  Thanks for everything. 

Elder Schvaneveldt

Ps, no one can say the last name!  It's great!