Letter from January 22, 2013

Heyo,

         I hear its beans cold and freezing up therr? alot of snow yet? Elder Perchon in the mission office showed me a picture that his family sent him of the snow in the yard! Hes from spanish fork, im not sure if it snowed more down there or up north too. There was like 2 feet in the picture! Is it like that in good ol´ N.O.? wow i sure hope its gonna wait for me until after july to melt hah.   But whatever, its as always super hot here, for the first time in a while i actually feel a little cold in the mornings when we go running, im sure it was still about 71 degrees.. Im getting more wussy each day here hah. 

     We had a really busy week as far as visiting people, having about 5 to 6 lessions a day. We have alot of investigators that have alot of interest and are "progressing" as we say, means reading and coming to church, etc. So whenever we have a super full week like last week it goes by WaY too fast! Im trying to think back what we even did. We had a sweet lession with Carlos, (the kid we contacted when he was thinking of what church to join) and another investigator that lives around the corner, Estela. Carlos brought a portable DVD player over to estela´s house and we watched the restoration video. Even tho the screen of the dvd was like 3 inches tall, the speakers didnt really work and the neighbors had reggaetone playing.. It was still actually a pretty good spiritual lession! People here are so accustomed to loud noises and hearing everything the neighbors say, theyre able to block it all out of there minds. Some families actually share the same roof! For example Estelas house, they just put a wall up in the middle of the house to split it up hah. these ain´t no walls of wood, insulation, and sheetrock.. normally they just throw up one piece of plywood or maybe a curtain hah cheap, easy, and defintely not reliable.. Sweet, hah.   On saturday we werent able to have the marketing class cause the teacher was out in another pueblo stuck for some reason. At 9 in the morning he called us cause presidente valdez didnt have his phone and said that we were still gonna do that class but start at 10. So we had to run to the church, yes literally run, to tell everyone that he was still coming. But by the time we got there everyone was already leaving cause presidente valdez told everyone it was cancelled. People were even there at 7 waiting for the class to start! Its a super legit class that hes giving, and its for free so a bunch of people showed up but we werent able to do it yet :( booo. But next week its supposed to happen. we´ll see.       

  Yesterday we had a Pday Activity in the captial, It was actually a BBQ! We ate man burgers and hotdogs. I say man burgers cause theres a few dominican restaurants that make burgers but the burgers are tiny!  After, we burnt ourselfs playing fútbol and basketball for like 3 hours under the sun. Its the only time I get burnt, cause when we proselyte we always try to walk in the shade! 

   On sunday we went to the captial with the branch for stake confrence. holy cow, the church is growing way too fast here:)! They filled every chair in the building, there was even people standing out in the hall! Its crazy to think that the church has only been here for like 30 years and theres already tens of thousands of members! Last stake confrence 6 months ago there wasnt as many people as there was this time. The members really know how to be missionaries, they always invite there friends or neighbors. There were two families from our branch that brought some friends. and nothing better for their first experience than to be at stake confrence! The members are doing work here in bayaguana, we got 6 legit references/referrals, whatever you wanna call them, this week. Bayaguana´s legit, but im sure im out of here in the next transfer in 2 weeks! I´d like to stay with all these investigators that are progressing, were going to put baptismal dates with a few of them this week! WOT! 

To a few of the questions. 

No, mom i dont feel scared traveling by myself here hah. Suprizingly i actually know my way around the captial. 

Yes, Elder Guevara is still waiting for his VISA, im guessing he´ll go at the end of this transfer in 2 weeks.

No, we didnt kill the dog with our airsoft guns hah but we did shut it up! 

Yes, theres a butt load of new missinaries now becasue of the new age thing. Theres more missionaries with less than 6 months than missionaries with more that 6 months in the mission! super cool.  Welp im sweating my face off cause this internet center doesnt have working fans and were out of time! But thanks again for everything! Oh mom we had a member make us banana bread yesterday! We have the recipie too so dont worry about sending some haha. 

Tell haylee good job for reading so much!! im 100% sure she reads better and faster than me now! hah

Love you all!!! Elder Cowley