Soccer, Shakes, & Lightning!

I’m so proud of my boy Zack!  Too bad he is not coming to this MTC!

Nothing really legendary happened this week, just more CCM stuff.  On Wednesday I died during soccer because we play in “the cage” (a fenced in concrete patch).  I went to kick it for a goal from the corner but since it was super wet and slick, this big kid couldn’t slow down and ran straight into me.  I flew down and killed my left butt cheek on the cement and then my palm got cut on the fence.  But I scored the goal so...

Anyways, the next few days I could only sit on my right side, haha.  And then my native teacher, he likes to play games with us if we are loosing focus, so he taught us head shoulders knees and toes in Spanish.  But his version is cabeza, cara, hombres, piés (head, face, shoulders, feet) and then instead of eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, it ends with y una vuelta entera (and one complete turn or something). It was pretty fun.

Something weird, ever since I’ve been here, my shakes are going away.  They are still there if I have to focus my hand on something, like while taking the sacrament, but when I’m just sitting there and I check for them, they are almost completely gone. I’m not going to lie, I miss them.  They made me different.

The coolest experience was this Sunday our little district was chosen to give a small 20-minute sacrament for the workers in the cafeteria.  It was the first time anything like this had been done.  And since we only have 5 guys, I had to bless and give a 5-minute spiritual thought.  But it was a cool experience because only 8 people were there in the congregation.  We only used one row of water in the tray and one piece of bread, haha.

I got my Halloween care package from mom, finally!  It took years of waiting, but in it were eye patches and fangs so me and another missionary put them on and creeped on kids around the CCM.  People thought we were the biggest weirdoes but we are going to do it again on Halloween, haha.  Me and that same Elder decided to write letters and bury them in a grove of trees behind our house.  So I wrote to a friend coming in two weeks, to Hunter in 3 years, and to my future child in 30 years, haha.  It would be so funny if Hunter came here and found it somehow.  We used spoons to dig the holes and we carved symbols on the tree so they can be found.  I carved a diamond with an eye in it.

Besides that it has been a pretty mellow week here.  We got one of our fake investigators to commit to baptism but then she told us she was moving away because it was one of our teachers and she went back to the US yesterday.  Our other investigator was super close but his girlfriend wouldn’t allow it so we have started teaching her now too.

Oh and there were big lightning storms this week which was fun.  We would just play in the rain, but its gnarly because the wall around here has lightning poles and there are more around the place.  It was gnarly because lightning struck the pole and it made the hugest sound.  Luckily it was a pole at the far edge where no one was.

(In response to Dad’s question about his clothes)  My shoes are great and super comfy.  My suits and pants are good.  The pants from Costco are all right.  They are bigger and more flowy than my others so it feels like I’m wearing sweats sometimes, haha.  But the problem is, they get dirty really fast.  They pick up any dust they touch.  On my black ones I get little white marks that I usually can just rub out.  As of now, I wear my normal pants before the Costco ones but maybe they will make all the difference when I start biking because they are more stretchy.  Other than that, I like all my clothes.

I miss you guys!  In 2 weeks I’ll be stomping around texas!

Love you, Elder parks