Baby possum

This is an ant!  Some people eat these in Guatemala...eewww!

Elder Black and Elder Brindis

That is the end of that little possum... :(

As I'm sure you know, I completed 5 months in the mission yesterday. And now I will answer questions. Everyone that wants to know about me, tell them it's hard, but I'm freaking awesome! It still rains quite a bit, but it's not as hot because it's almost always cloudy =) But yeah, for me, still hot. And Dad, your email said ¿Como estas?, but it's to two of us, so it should say ¿Como estan?, good attempt though =) I just realized that you guys didn't really have questions, so I'll just start another of of my "not much happened" letters again.

First of all, my house that I'm living in still doesn't have a ducha, so I still have to bathe with freezing cold water every day... It's horrible, don't try it. And other than that, it's been a pretty sad week. We noticed that the family of Juana and Ascencion wasn't in church on Sunday, we on Tuesday we went to visit them. It was then that we found out that they had started to visit an Evangelical church, and had many doubts about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We tried to resolve those doubts, but it was pretty rough. Everything we tried to say, Juana asked "Where does it say that in the Bible?" She wouldn't let us to use the Book of Mormon... (problem is, she can't read) And so we could explain, but it just wasn't as clear. Well, as the week went by, it got worse... We went again on Thursday, and we got there and waited a half hour... they finally arrived, they had just come from their church! And they still had many doubts. Then, Saturday, we went to invite them to church on Sunday... they were having a meeting in their house! A pastor was there! They invited us in and the pastor was trying to get us to argue with him, but we knew it wouldn't do any good, so we just kept our mouths shut. It was just overall really sad to see that months of progress, blessings, they had signs that all was true, and just in a matter of hours, 1 pastor can change everything. And for that I had a really sad week.

Also, our investigators, Milton and Blanca, we have really been trying to help them. We went and taught the law of chastity, and Milton treated it like a joke... "oops, looks like we're in sin, and the baby is a little sin haha"... I tried to be serious with them, I showed them in the Book of Mormon that that sin is right up there with murder... *sigh* and he still didn't quite understand. So it's been a kind of sad week, but we will make this week better.

And we had stake conference too, we now have 6 stakes in Costa Rica, two more and we can divide the mission!! Maybe it'll divide next year!

Other random things. The house looks good! Could you send me pictures of the whole house, yard, and a few different pictures, people are curious how my house was there. And Dad, I will send you a different email to answer what you wanted.

Ok, random thing of the week. We went back to our house on Saturday night, I was a little frustrated with things that had happened, so I was walking a little slower. Elder Brindis got to the house, but didn't open the door. I got there, and on the gate right in front of the door, was a baby (more or less) possum. We didn't know what to do, so we went to the nearby members to ask. They came over and he took the gate and pinned the possum in between the gate and the wall. And he told me "kill it with your umbrella." Ummm... what?! "Just smack it's head, really hard!" I had to prep myself... and... Smack! One time... still living... Smack! Smack! Smack! And it was dead... nope. It was still clinging to the gate to not fall to the ground.  So... Smack! Ok, it's dead now. We kicked it out to the road when it started to crawl away using only it's front legs. So the member took my umbrella and was stabbing it... still no! Fetch, those things are tough, so Elder Brindis had to stomp on it's head 3 or 4 times to kill it... and yes, this time it died. Pictures are on dropbox, check it out.

And that was my week, sad, weird, and yeah. Goodbye until next week!

Elder Black