Mom and the family!

Well, here I am! President gave us permission to use e-mail, so here I am. I sent you (mom) a quick e-mail to see if you were there. It feels weird using this machine! First of all, I had to get help trying to log into hotmail as if it was my first time in front of a cpu! And then on this spanish keyboard it took me like 11 minutes to find out how to do the @ sign because there are two types of "shift" keys and I didnt know. I feel like I´m back in Babilonia... in front of a cpu, they´re playing No Doubt in the background. I guess I better get used to this, huh? So how´s everything out there? Yesterday we had Stake Conference, and the seventy Elder Horacio Araya spoke. He was powerful. President Blacker and his wife also spoke (mind you, she doesn´t speak spnish hardly at all). At 8am we had a special conference for the new members and they both spoke, too, plus the stake president. We (the missionaries) were sitting in the back and there were so many people that came that we had to give up our seats and stand in the back of the room so that they could sit down. So while we were standing up, the Elder Araya was reading out of DyC that when someone recieves one of the servants of the Lord, they recieve him. He then said that they (the new converts) had recieved us - and had recieved the Lord. Then he motioned to us and then had us come up on the stand (all 20+ missionaries) and he asked us to stay up there for the entire conference. It was way cool. But what I didn´t realize until he started speaking was that I had had the chance to shake his hand like 3 times before the conference... I just thought that he was some guy from the stake! So that was neat. Then he was the last speaker in the what was already a great conference. He started his talk saying that in a minute he was going to invite two missionaries to come and bare their testimonies. I immidiately thought (just like I ALWAYS think that they´ll choose me) that I´d be choose me so I started thinking of things to say. Well, he spoke for like 7 minutes more to (in my opinion) build up the suspense and then he said,"The part you´ve all been waiting for..." and then he turned around and sought out the two missionaries he had chosen in his mind before, and then looked straight at me and pointed and said, "You, elder", and then he turned and looked for Elder Porter, our new zone leader and chose him. Elder Porter was closest so he spoke first. I remember nothing of what he said... I just remember that I couldn´t belive how scared I was to talk!! When he was done, I went over and said,¨"Every day we have the opportunity to share our testimonies with people that we don´t even know. But now here I am in front of a bunch of members and I´m scared to death!" Whatever I was planning to say while I was waiting had totally left my mind. I said what the spirit told me, and when he had nothing more to say, neither did I. It was a great experience! Afterwards, President went down the line where the missionaries were all standing and when he shook my hand he took it tight and said, " I´m proud of you. You better write your parents about that!" Way rad. The only bummer was that we didn´t have any investigators in church.

Tuesday (tomorrow) we have interviews with the president. I always love that. Elder Mauldin is doing well. Learning a lot, that´s for sure! The both of us. We´re on the look out for the 2 families that we´re going to baptize before I go home.

Well, not much else to say. I´m doing well - a lot darker than usual, and skinnier, but well. You all can e-mail me here, too. But still like usual I can only check mail on Mondays. I imagine that I´ll check the mail about this time all the time - 12:30 here, around this time. And is my old hotmail acct still active? I tried to get in but I couldnt, I don´t know if i forgot the name or the password or what.

Peace! Elder Onken