5-5-13

Hola Familia,

This week the rain finally came for the rainy season. We have had a couple good thunderstorms. One knocked down a bunch of trees and torn some people's roofs off, and knocked out power lines and block streets. So it was a pretty big mess. It even hailed hail that was pretty good size even though it didn't hail a lot it did hail.

So this week I have been working with insurance companies and with the police reporting accidents and a bunch of crap. A motorcycle hit presidents car last Saturday night. So I have been looking for the guy who hit him and doing police reports and insurance reports and church reports. It has been pretty annoying and then on Wednesday this week someone hit Elder Stratford while he was driving so I had to go and check that out, but it hardly did anything but I still have to do the police report anyways so in the future when they try to find out how that happened we have the reports here. So it has been a bit of a long week having to deal with all that and they guys was angry about it al, because he thought that we were just going to hand him over the money to fix his motorcycle, and now he has to do this huge process and so it was pretty annoyed about that and I had to sit there and deal with him and explain over and over.

This week I was also doing my monthly reports on the trucks and we did the math and last month the month of April. We drove 2118 miles, and when I mean we I mean that my companion sat read or slept, and I drove 2118 miles. We were in the truck a lot this last month. I just thought that was pretty cool to know how many miles we drove.

We were also able to meet with Alejandra again. It has been a while because she was traveling and had a bunch of school but she is still progressing little by little. She really understands really well the things that we give her to read. The hardest part is trying to get her to come to church, and we still haven't been able to find a way for her to be able to come to church. So we are working on that.

Today some less actives that we are working with came to church. We have been working with this family of a returned missionary. We have been teaching them a couple of times now and the mom has started to come to church and one of her sons also has started to come to church. The others are a bit more difficult but we are trying. It is also helping to have the returned missionary to be there reminding them about church and prayers and reading. The other is a middle age guy that we have taught only once and the other times we have passed by and just talked before he had to go to school or before he had to go to work. We have passes by with a couple of members that live near him too and they have also helped him, and today he came to church and participated and everything. It was really cool to see him be there without having to remind him the morning or the night before that he just came.

Last Sunday I had a pretty embarrassing experience. We were at the house of the returned missionary's home and we were there with his mom and his girlfriend who is an active member. Before we started the lesson they gave us mangos to eat. So we sat there eating mangos for a couple of minutes. They were a little bit green so in the middle they were pretty hard. Most Dominicans eat everything until there is only the seed. I didn't really want to try to chew on it until there was just the seed. So I said, "¿ Quien quiere chupar la semilla?" Which literally means who wants to suck the seed. I was referring to the mango and who wanted to eat the rest. They stopped and asked me again what I had said so I said it again."¿ Quien quiere chupar la semilla?", and everybody burst out laughing, and my companion was saying while he was laughing,  no compa no compa you can't say that here. So they explained that here in the northern part of the DR the seed also refers to the reproductive part of a women, and the phrase that I had said was extremely bad and suggestive. Luckily they all understood me because they were members even is one was less active and explained it to me, but anyways it was really embarrassing, but really funny.

Well I hope that everything is going great with you guys. We'll have to figure out how we are going to talk on Mother's day, and how all that is going to work out. Well I love you guys a ton! Talk to you soon.

Con mucho Cariño

Elder Cannon