Hey Family! okay... first of all, I thought of something I need. STAMPS. good old fashioned american stamps. I am currently using some 44 cent stamps Elder Hancock gave me. They are commemorative Vancouver olympics stamps and famous seamen.... His dad is in the navy or something haha.

And if you could send me a cheap pendrive... that would be awesome because you cant buy more than 8 gb here and its 150!. Pesos. So really only like 36 american dollars... but still. you can buy like a 32 gb for that much in the states... But if not this time, maybe birthday present or next christmas. Also, Elder Packard, the senior missionary dropped by the apartment the other day to install a water filter and told me about an elder whose parents sent him a couple pairs of shoes and its going to cost him almost a 1000 pesos to get out of customs... So like 2 or 300 ish US. But a 1000 looks more impressive. SO he gave me some new tips... Make sure packages are small, not super heavy, and nothing rattles in it. Also make sure the address is written directly on the package somewhere too because they take off the labels sometimes just to spice it up i guess....

Okay anyway. Thank you so much! This week was not so hot. We had so many people tell us they would come to church or commit to something and then chow, nothing happened. I think missionaries and telemarketers are probably the most-lied-to people in the world. But we are selling something so much better! and its free! When people back away from the table of the bread of life and the living waters its because THEY didn´t understand. Elder Lawrence of the 70 told me that if they didn´t understand, its because you didn´t teach well enough. Talk about lighting a fire under you right? Besides that, the week was pretty good. It was elder Espino´s birthday on the 17th. He is 23. hence the 23 on the pancakes I made him! I got up and did about 12 pushups and then started making the batter--from scratch (The flour already has all the baking powder and soda and everything in it so really its pretty easy). I made some pretty big ones and then walked in trying to fit Feliz cumpleanos to the happy birthday song we know and love and he was needless to say, surprised. I left after taking the picture to shower and get ready and when I came back to study like an hour later, there were about 2 bites taken from it. I seriously wasn´t offended or mad or anything. I didn´t know if he even likes sweet stuff because we´ve been together like a week. It was just hard because they were sitting right there and they were way tasty... I took about 1/365th of a pancake every couple of minutes.... I felt weird eating his birthday (pan)cake(s). For lunch that day we had a barbecue on a cookie sheet and a couple of bricks we found in the back yard. It was really good. And yesterday the Diaz family made him a really good cake that we ate for dessert. Very fun.

I ate ubre this week. Its cow utter. Terrible. There wasn´t even any free milk.

We passed by a house the other day because this lady I talked to on the street told us to come by. So we got there and the same 4 little kids were outside playing with some tractor equipment and so we told them to go get there mom. A little girl runs in, and tells her mom that the mormons are here, and then I SEE the woman stick her head out to see, and then quickly go back in. She sends out her other kids to tell us that she isn´t there. I say, could you go ask her where she went? and another little kid runs back ( haha I love doing that) and tells us, she went to Cordón. The first little girl puts on a really serious face and shakes her head no, like to say, ´´its a lie!´´ Oh my goodness I lost it. We both just started laughing so hard. It seriously could have been in a movie. Anyway we left a pamphlet with one of the kids and said we would try another day haha.

Well. I am way excited for Christmas. We don´t have a buffer holiday like Thanksgiving so I am just ready for Christmas instead haha. Plus my comp is not american so we probably won´t celebrate it. I might celebrate by making some rice or buying a Coke. Its really good here. But meat is so expensive! Unless you buy the weird stuff like mondongo or ubre... so... pass. I hope you all know how thankful I am to be here, to have a call to the work, and to have my awesome siblings and parents. My friends are some of the best in the world too. Love you all and hope all is well. Eat too much on my behalf!

Elder Daybell