8 Enero 2001

Dear Family,

How's everything doing? Great here. Right now I'm in the house of the familia Castillo (the husband's our future ward mission leader.) We came to use their chuka-chuka (washing machine) that they rented for us, and with 4 missionaries washing their clothing in one of these, it will take all day. So I'll take advantage right now and write to you!

Things here as far as work in this part of Maracay are a bit slow. We have 3 investigators and we're thinking about dropping 1 of them. We spend a lot of our time hanging out at the Plaza del Toro because it's pretty big and lots of families hang out there at night, so we walk around and teach them. The ward's good and as you see we'll be getting a new ward mission leader who's a fantastic guy. Hopefully this will help us out. Elder Alvey's a cool guy, the life of the party type guy. Seeing that he's going home soon, he's thinking about how he's going to live, how he's going to get his car fixed, how he's going to get married, where he's going to work - I totally understand his preoccupations but I think that sometimes it impedes him a little in working as hard as he should. We visit 2 members in particular a lot, just talking and eating. They're new converts, so they need the frequent visits and one has a husband whose platelets (in his blood) were at 13 (due to a mosquito bite) so we were helping her out, but the visits last a bit longer I think. It's giving me a chance to think out in my mind what I would do if I was comp mayor. I'm also finding out what it's like not working as hard as you can, and I must say that it's a bit lame. I'm finding myself wishing that I was comp mayor (which used to scare me to death). We have interviews with the Pres tomorrow so hopefully I'll have a chance to talk to him if he doesn't do companionship interviews again.

Guess what? I was able to see the movie finally!! The stake had lent us a TV and VCR from Christmas to New YEars to watch church movies, so I was able to watch it. How cool it was!! Thank you so much. My comps like watching it, too. There's a member here who served in the Maracaibo mission 8 years ago and one of his comps' names was Onken, too! He was from Hawaii.

Well, I can't think of much more to write so I'll stop writing and think of things to write later :P