The Work Is Still GOOD: February 18, 2013

Dear Everyone:

1. Have you started getting any new missionaries? The word on the Missionary Mom email list is the visas are coming through for all the missionaries who went to Provo and then to Iowa and Texas while waiting. I haven’t heard anything about receiving new missionaries or anything but I hope so!! That would be very exciting!!!
2. Have you eaten a Bauru sandwich? I looked it up online and it looks like it would be pretty tasty. Not yet, we are planning to try and buy one today in fact because Elder A. hasn’t eaten one yet either. We found this fruit in the supermarket and we have no idea what it was (starfruit or carambola--according to Google) so we bought it and tried it out, but unfortunately it wasn’t that good. L But, Elder A. and I still had fun with it. 
3. On a similar note, are you still being fed by members at lunchtime? Are you fed by them every day? Yes, and it is every day except p-day, and even then we usually get money for lunch about once a week instead of eating in their home!
4. Does it get cool enough at night to sleep comfortably? You said the houses have no heat, but do they have fans or any way of cooling things down? It gets cool enough at night to sleep now that I have learned to sleep with zero sheets! And, we have little floor standing fans in all the missionary houses. But nossa!!!! During the day we are literally melting right now!! It is getting so hot!!!
5. Last (and sort of least), did you get Princess Leia pictures with Elder S. and Elder R.? I didn’t have time to take one with Elder R. and I have one with S. from the CTM but it wasn’t taken with my camera so I only have a hard copy.

And, yes, I know all those people in the list that Alivia sent who got their calls!! WAY COOL!!!! The Ravens shirt is dope, by the way!!

I know Grandma has a birthday coming up next week and Grandpa next month. I will send birthday cards for them together, so it won’t be there in time for Grandma’s birthday, so please give her some birthday love from me. (Did you get my birthday note yet, Mom?)

We didn’t have a baptism this week which was a blessing for me actually, because after 3 weeks in a row of baptizing you show up on the mission website (yeah, we have our own website, it’s pretty dope) and it is so much pressure and it is so hard to want to baptize for the right reason instead of just to stay up on the site and climb the ladder, so to actually fall off the list on the website was a big blessing for me!!

The work is drying up here a bit so we have been pounding the pavement a lot this week and will continue to do so for a while because we have almost zero investigators and almost 600 references in the area book. This past week we contacted 98 references. A contact signifies:

• The address doesn’t exist (happens a lot)
• The person moved (happens a lot)
• They say that they don’t want us to come back (happens a lot)
• They never were at home when we passed by there on three different days, or
• We start teaching them (pretty rare).

Our goal for this week is to contact at LEAST 100 people(!), so hopefully we can find some people who are ready to hear the Gospel and that we can fill the church this weekend with investigators. We had zero that went to church this week, so we won’t have a baptism this coming week unless we get a miracle! But, the work is still good. I love working with Elder A. He is really cool and a great friend!! I am kind of jealous of the hammock that he has so I’m going to try and get one cheap (about 15 dollars) J today.

We bought pizza on Friday night and bought our two favorite types of Guarana to see which one really was the best, so we each did a blind taste test to prove it once and for all!!! As you can see, Guarana Antarctica lost and Guarana Kuat was the winner. They are both really good and if you are only drinking one separately from the other it is hard to tell which is best.  

As you can see, I have started a collection of sweet, really cheap, kind of fake, but really sweet soccer jerseys!

I think that´s about it for this week,

Lots of love,

Elder Cummings