Week 11: Completely forgetting about the Calgary Stampede

July 11, 2011
Hola.
I'm going to start by answering a few of those questions. the only thing that i really need is sharpie FINE TIP markers. they don't have those anywhere here, and they're really nice for writing really small on little tabs inn my scriptures. and Grandma Hopkins was wondering about the references that we have. We've gotten the number down to 40 from 87. but we still have a lot of them to do. It's hard though cuz we would have to travel to little towns that are still in our area just to contact references, and we have a lot of people to teach, because this area used to have 4 missionaries in it, now only two, so we have a lot to do.

This week at a little paca, aka a little store that sells clothing, new and used. i saw a white mesh tank top that says Noah's Ark on it. it reminded me of Jesse Kearl and his mesh tank top. i think i might go back and see if they still have it and buy it. I don't know when I'd wear it, but you can't just not get something like that.

Also we have security guards at the little community we live in with guns and all that, its pretty normal here. but one started talking to me in English and it turns out he used to live in Calgary, and he plans to go back in a few months. pretty crazy. and then this morning as I was walking out he asked me if i wanted to go to the stampede it was pretty funny. i completely forgot about the stampede.
it's cool that everyone is hanging out with brendon again. Seems like i haven't seen him in two years already. Miss that boy, and all my bois back home. i look forward to those letters! That sucks about Bishop Steele. it seems like he's always getting hurt ha. Hopefully he gets better soon. I hope Elder Pearson is right about the mustaches, I plan to grow a nice one when i get back. oh about the phones, we just have one phone that is in our apartment, the only people with cell phones are the people who work in the office, Assistants, and Zone Leaders.

The conditions aren't too bad to get used to. Yesterday we went to teach some new guy we found, and we went into a little mud and garbage filled lot and kinda sat on these little rocks on the ground for the lesson. but don't worry, it's not bad. and don't worry, i haven't shed one tear. oh and about the food. we have someone that cooks us lunch a lot of the time, we make our own breakfast. and sometimes, the more well off people give us food to eat, but pretty rarely. They usually just give us fake coffee to drink Morcaf it's called, which is okay here i guess, all the members drink it and the mission president says it's okay to drink it. and we don't really have dinner here in this mission. I don't know why, i think its a rule to just eat when you get back home for the night. we grab a little snack during the day quite often and get something to eat when we get home. when we go to buy stuff it's funny cuz sometimes things seem so expensive when they're like 10 quetz, which is really like 1.25 dollars. For example, a can of super cola, a pop that tastes like coke but has no caffeine,so they're okay, costs about 30 cents in Canadian dollars. Things are pretty cheap here. I can get a bunch of breads at all the little bread stores here for like 12 cents. and no i haven't been sick yet. i just gotta be smart about what i eat.

Oh, the pictures I sent you. the one with the lake in the background isn't in my area, but in my zone, I went on a split this week. the city to the top right part of the picture if you can see it is where my area is. actually I'm going to a split today with the zone leader again. the other picture is just an area in my area. we had to find a place to pee and this just happened to be the place, so we decided to take a picture while we were at it.

well i love you all so much, more than i ever thought. hope you have great weeks, and I'll type to you again in a week. love Tanner

On splits

Here's a good spot ... for a picture.