¡Pura Vida!: A week of everything crazy!

So this week was long, hard, sweaty, funny, exciting, scary, and just about any other typical description you can think of. Due to the fact that everyday was crazy and very out of order, this email probably will be too.

So one crazy thing that happened was that I got kissed by a smelly drunk lady. Ok so I'm here in Central America and anyone who has visited/lived here knows that the cultural custom is to kiss someone on the cheek when you say hello or goodbye. Well as missionaries we obviously have to come up with many ways to avoid this. I have luckily gone my entire 10 months so far without being kissed and I am very proud of that fact. Well the other night this crazy lady of like 35-40 years old ran up to us in the street and started babbling to us about who knows what. We told her sorry but we needed to go, mainly just because we couldn't stand the smell of alcohol on her breath and her spit-spray all over our faces any more. When we said this she grabbed me by the hand, yanked me in close and slapped a big wet one on my cheek. My comp turned running before she had a change to grab him too. Así es la misión.

So we've started teaching English classes in the church every week. Well, I'VE started teaching classes, because my comp doesn't speak any English and the other Gringa in our district only has 6 weeks in the mission haha. It's really fun and we actually have a huge turn out every week. I'm honestly just teaching by the gift of tongues every Saturday because I have absolutely NO idea how to teach a language.

Yesterday, Sunday, was pretty special for my comp and I because we finally had our first investigator come to church with us. We've been here for about a month and opening this area is going by pretty slow. His name is German and it was a really special day for us.

We have this investigator, Jonathan, who we found the other day and is SO willing to accept our message and change his life. He has had just about the hardest past I have ever seen, filled with drug addiction, the deaths of his parents, his wife leaving him for another woman, I mean you name it, he's experienced it. Well he wants to change so bad and the other day when we visited him he asked us what he needs to do in order to have this change. Well every time we visit it's pretty uncomfortable because all of the walls in his house are just covered with pages and pictures from playboy magazines. So we told him "let's start with this". Absolutely willing, he helped us tear down every single picture and poster and we went out front of his house and burned them all. It was such a special moment to see this change that he is having. I want to help Jonathan so much. Little by little we can do it.

Well that was my week. I hope you all had a great one and will have a great one to come.

Keep On Keepin' On...

-Elder Willis