come and knock on our doooooor

First week of the experimental trio is done with. Can't say it wasn't interesting. We had a lot of appointments this week which meant we were very busy with lessons and stuff which is great. A lot of them were Spanish ones since they had more progressing investigators than we did but it was fine. Basically we just sit and listen and try not to look too uninterested. I'm starting to pick up a little bit of what they're saying. When I hear word like "iglesia" or "companeros" or "hablas espanol" I can tell what they're talking about. Either way we can't contribute much to the lesson which means tough duty for Elder Campbell. I've sorta memorized a prayer in Spanish now but it's more of a prayer to say in the companionship than with investigators. I'll have to do another one for that.

Me holding a Damascus sword made by our blacksmith friend. Don't worry, it's super dull. 

It is pretty interesting being around another language now. I feel like it's a peek into what all the other missionaries in other countries are experiencing, and especially a little peek into Nic's world right now. Hispanics are a lot different than the other people in Virginia cause I think they don't care as much about what other people think of them. The people we work with have a lot of that "what will my friends think of me" question that we can only address so much. Hispanics are just like "yeah sure I'll get baptized what do I have to do?" No fear. It's great. There's a Spanish family of four named that will probably get baptized this month and another Spanish guy (Pablo) that basically committed himself to marry his girlfriend before he was baptized. They were reading in Mosiah 14 or something and then he stopped and said he needed to be baptized, and asked if he had to get married. We said yes (well, he said yes) and then he asked how and he explained and he said he'd do it. See? No fear.

That's not to say our non-Spanish investigators are bums or anything. Megan, the one we set, committed to stop smoking cause she knows it's bad and her 6-year old son wants her to as well. So that was good. We also had a baptism last week of the two UBYs I mentioned a while ago. I don't feel like I did anything to make it happen except ask them and teach them. They knew all the answers to all our questions and just knew everything. Our zone leader said after the interview that he had never interviewed such genius kids to get baptized. But there you go, a couple numbers in my book. Cause those matter.

I also killed a missionary. Elder Gleave the other Spanish missionary needed to get down to Richmond with the Spanish missionary car so I went down with him and dropped him off on his final hoorah. It was weird cause his sister got permission to see him on Monday so we had lunch at Chili's with him and his sister and his sister's friend. It was very very weird. Very. Weird. Probably more weird for him though. But yeah he's home now. And I killed him.

Me and the deceased. 

We ALSO had to deal with the moving of the apartments. Because they're shutting down the apartment in Fishersville we were responsible for cleaning it out and getting it ready for someone else to move in. That was dumb. But now all 3 of us are in the dinky Waynesboro one (relatively speaking). But I really like being in a trio. I'm looking forward to this transfer.

That's about all I have time to say. I feel like a lot more happened than I'm able to write so that's a good thing. Maybe I'll have to write a letter or two. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.

I'm pretty excited about the Padres. I'm just not excited that they waited for this year to be the best team in the NL. Of all the years. This one. You will record playoffs.

Uh yeah that's all.

-Elder Ryan Parker