MARCH 1, 2010

Hey Family!!
how´s everything going everything is going good in Santo Domigno!!! Just work work and work. Ha it´s tiring but fun!!

This week has been pretty hard and frustrating and stressful. We could either have a really good change and we could have 4 baptisms or we might just have 1. We just have to wait and see what going to happen.

One lady has snake problems in her house so she might have to move. She has around 6 little kids and she might have to leave to work in Esmeraldes which is a coastal town 2 hours west of here. It´s in our mission too. The population there is mostly black. Anyway, she might have to go there to work to pay for the first couple month payments on the house which would be no more than 50 dollars a month. She is so so poor but still gives us pineapples everytime that we go over there, which the pineapples here are amazing! I mean absolutely amazing! I have never tasted anything so good in all my life but they make gringos sick so we usually end up giving the pineapple away or we just eat them and then suck it up when we get sick. It´s seriously almost worth getting sick for a couple days. Ha, ha. The one girl that I was suppost to baptize, well her cousin that she´s living with jumped off a bridge into water. They didn´t know that there were rocks down there and she busted up her knee on a rock. This was like a week ago and she barely got the surgery yesterday. It took a week! The hospitals here are horrible! So horrible, about every week we give someone a blessing that is about to die or is basically dead. It is then that we get to see all the hospitals. Seriously there are rats running around, dirt and blood on the floor, it´s crazy. I am so grateful to be from America, so grateful. So now they can´t go to Guayaquil because they have no money besides they are kind of occupied with this so we have to wait. They might just call and see if they can get it authorization over the phone.
Then this one other lady she might have cancer and have to go to Quito to get some medicine this lady is amazing i will tell you more about her in a letter.

We had Zone Conference with President Sloan too this week. That guys is a stud he looked tall in the picture but he´s really not at all ha he´s probably 5 ft 8 inches. He´s an awesome guy though. He only has 1 and a half lungs and he gets tired really easy but he stayed here and didn´t go back to the US because he loves the missionaries. He´s so awesome. He told me that he was going to give me a lazy latino this next cambio and that im going to stay here in Santo Domingo so I will leave here on like April 19th. More than likely it means that I will have been in Santo Domingo longer than almost anyone else thats here. Ha, I went from the youngest too the oldest thats been here in this city, it´s wierd.
I am excited though, he said that he wants me to push this comp that I am going to get. Im excited I like working hard and it helps with the spanish too.
Oh yeah there were some small earthquakes here just little aftershocks from the one in Chile. It was wierd I felt sick when it happened, thats really it.
This is my last change with Elder Caresia. I really am going to miss him we´re pretty tight. Oh and last night we had to walk probably 3 miles in the hardest windiest rain i´ve ever seen it was crazy there were no taxis and it was such a long walk, ah it was rough.
This next cambio I will hit my 6 month mark, crazy huh!?!?
Don´t send a camera whatever you do I can just get one if I go to to Quito. I went on splits with my ZL and he said that there are places in Quito you can get them for like 50 to 100 dollars cheaper than the US. But if you do send a package soon send some more candy. ha ha You crave stuff from America here because, there is not much from America here. But some skittles and snickers would be the best, just a bunch of those and maybe some fruit snacks too. Thanks and if you can find those movies, that would be cool, but if not, it´s fine.

How´s everyone at home doing? Keep me updated and love you all so much!!! Write me back!!!

Love, Elder Hamblin.