26 Feb. 2001

Dear Family,

Hi! How's everyone doing? Great here. I admit, I must apologize. I didn't write last week! But before you fly out here and kill. me, let me tell you that I would have but we lost lots of time with a baptism that we had to go to at the end of P-Day, and as I was writing to . . .someone else . . .[wink] I lost track of time and all of a sudden it was time to go. I'm sure Doug will vouch for me :) But worry not - lately I've been keeping track of the different experiences we've had, so here we go.

First, let me respond to the letters I got this last week at interviews with the President (last Wednesday) dated January 28 and February 6.

I got all the packages - Valentines Day, the mouth, and hump day. By the way, thanks for all the candy but it all tasted like champu [shampoo]! The champu bottle broke and got all the candy, but thank you so much for the intent!

As for being comp mayor, I'm feeling great. We're working really hard and feeling excellent. It's kind of like a huge boulder - it's a big load and tough to get it started, but the harder you push with obedience, hard work, prayer, and faith, it gets moving and starts gaining momentum, so now it's much easier to plan and work more efficiently.

Out of the moms of Elders and Sisters here, I know Elder Hullinger and Elder Brandt, who was in my first zone in Guacara and comps with Elder Petersen who I lived with in Puerto Cabello.

Greatest challenge? Hmmmm . . . to not think about music from Babylon is hard :P I'd say that another thing is to pray with real sincerity and faith. I've seen the blessings that we receive upon praying with real intent as if God was right there, but to do it all the time is definitely a challenge. Another tough challenge is finding the chosen ones to teach. They seem to hide - or be hidden - more like it.

I see President Blacker at least once a month. In this past week I've seen him twice, and we have Zone Conference coming up this Wednesday. Getting transferred bites for a few reasons - a huge reason is the packing part. There are blenders in every apt; here in Venezuela even the poorest of poor have blenders to make milk, soup, lots of fruit juices, sauces, shakes, desserts, etc. Being mango season now I've acquired a few mangoes of different types and I've made myself a few mango smoothies. My favorite mango is called manga, which is a huge mango (prolly the size of one of Skyler's shoes) that has a taste of mango/pineapple.

Here in Maracay we seem to get mail every 3 weeks or so. Valencia's only about 1-1/2 hours away but a big pain and a big chunk out of P-Day to go every Monday. I don't blame him (the zone leader)!

Right now in South America is what is called "carnaval" - no one knows its origin neither it's purpose but basically it's 2 days of water fights. The main tradition is to dress up in a costume (at night usually) but for these 2 days everybody throws water at everybody. We started seeing water about a week ago (as usual, we're told) but apparently today and tomorrow are the 2 "official" days of Carnaval, where the activities will increase. But not only do the activities and beer drinking increase, but the mischeviousness of the people. Some elders have had salt water sprayed at them; dirty water thrown at them; frozen water balloons launched at them; balloons filled with oil, pee, paint, etc; and some have been dragged into pits of mud. Yesterday my comp and I were walking up a street and we started to hear, like, tribal drumming and people yelling their heads off . . . we turn the corner and around the bend we see about 50 people in their bathing suits soaking wet, with a huge tub filled with water balloons. Immediately fear comes over us - turn back and ditch our appointment, or walk on the far side of the narrow one-way street hoping that they don't see us (2 gringos in Sunday dress with white skin, plaques, and backpacks)? Personally, my mind wanted to turn back but something went wrong and my legs wouldn't stop walking forward. Earlier in the month, I had told my comp that this would be our "Samuel the Lamanite" month - if we testify without fear and with power, no one would be able to hit us with their liquids - and this was the ultimate test. Needless to say we walked really quickly. (I was trying to walk with my comp in between them and me :P) with our heads ducked, trying to escape the half naked screaming raving lunatics with water balloons . . . but they saw us! With sounds of splattering water balloons landing all around us, we were soon out of range, out of breath, wide eyed, and dry! Lucky for us we escaped unharmed and unsoiled but I hear that in Brazil it's rather evil. Carnaval is known for being used as an excuse to let the carnal man take over - wear skimpy (if any) bathing suits, scream for a week straight, get other people dirty, drink massive amounts of beer and go to parties for 2 days straight - but in Brazil, one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency said that people will do anything they want, up to "do it" in the streets with complete strangers. The Mission President has warned us that if anything gets out of hand to come back to the apartment. But he also told us not to pansies :P

Well, I hope this long letter makes up for the lack of a letter last week. Forgive my writing - atrocious- and my spelling. It's like I"m living in a a totally different language down here or something . . . :P I love you all!

Chao Elder Onken P.S. Due to the raise in postage, we can only send one envelope for free through pouch, thus increasing my need for US postage stamps. P.P.S. Sky - tell Laura that I'm proud of her, and tell her that I was always afraid of wrestling her because I thought that she'd beat me :P (he he).