Here's the latest from the missionary. As far as I know and its a rough translation, that spanish at the end means that he loves you all very much! And as for his birthday present he wants you to pray about people who need the gospel in their lives and direct them to the missionaries and ultimately to Christ. What a cute little missionary he is!
Yesterday my new comp arrived here at 8:30 at night. So then we had a Noche del hogar at the Stake President's house planned right then, so we took off for that. Then we ended up getting back at almost 10. But it was definitely interesting. Being with a Mini kinda stunk. He was a nice guy, but I had to do practically eveything. Teach, contact, buy everything, etc. by myself. Every once in a while he would offer some help contacting, but usually he just gave his testimony in the lessons and that was it. But the best thing about that was that it gave me a week to grow up in the mission big time. When I was responsible for doing everything, I realized how I could change and what needed to be better about how I did things.
Anyways, now my kid is here. His name is Elder Salgado and like I said he is from Peru. He came directly from the Peru MTC, so it was a pretty big culture shock for him. He is going to have to learn the meanings of some words that don't mean the same thing in his country. Ahorita here means later on, but in Peru it means right now. We haven't gotten a chance to really get to know each other because he just arrived last night. But over time we will get to know each other better. So it will be interesting seeing how that goes. But I'm happy that at least now I have a real comp. So, today we had Santiago P-day so we went to Santiago with Elder Thiel and his comp. I'm not sure if I have ever talked about elder Thiel before. He's pretty sweet, he was my ZL in Navarrete for 3 transfers and now he is my DL here in San Fran. But we got to do some cool stuff and had a good time in Santiago exploring and getting lost a little bit.(Not too much). Oh yeah and we are going to make Father-Son pants, so that's sweet. I'll send pics when i get my camera fixed finally.(Should be soon, the electronics guy said it shouldn't be more than a week or 2).
But Sunday, I received some pretty crappy news. The husband of the lady who cooked for us in Navarrete was killed last Saturday. He was supposedly investigating something that happened to one of his children and someone got angry. They came to his house and he was the only one there and from what Elder Gomera told me they killed him there. Now Hermana Katy is WAY bad off and isn't responding to anybody and their son has calmed down but isn't doing great either. It's ridiculous, I had just seen him 7 weeks ago and now to find out that something like that happened is a little overwhelming. They still don't know who it was that did it but they are trying to find out. All I can say is that that man will have to take up that sin with the Lord, good luck.
As for what i want for my birthday, read my last letter, then read D&C 18:15-16. But since I know that you will probably send me things anyway, choose what you like, missionaries don't really have a ton of options.
But really...I'm gonna say it in Spanish because it's more of a command...
SEPAN que les amo, nunca lo duden y cuidense!
Les quiero muchisimo a todos!
Elder Alex Gruber
