RAIN RAIN GO AWAY:)

Hola mi amada familia!!This was such a crazy and weird week!! I dont know if you knew but there was a Hurricane in mexico and we have been experiencing the affects of it all week long. Normally it is dry during the morning and starts raining about 2pm and pretty much for the rest of the night... this week 24x7!!! All my shoes are wet and let me just give some advice! GO FOR THE EXPENSIVE RAINBOOTS!! My boots have holes all over and are sopping wet right now. They are better than my other shoes obviously but I am going to look into acquiring new boots... either buying some or other sister missionaries have offered to give me theirs because they will go home before they need them again. Right now is usually the time the rain stops but from the looks of it now... it is no where near stopping!! We had a pool in our bathroom and there is a patio type area that was basically a lake this past week. I have pictures but it is hard to tell. Speaking of pics... not sure I will be able to send any this week. My computer wont recognize my SD card for some reason. It is always luck of the draw when it comes to the computers in our lovely internet cafe. So the first day we had tons of rain we weren't allowed to leave in the morning. If you look up Guatemala newspapers I am sure you can find pictures of the MANY houses that flooded. A MOUNTAIN!!! basically collapsed and killed a bunch of people. It was really sad so see how many houses and areas got destroyed from OBNOXIOUS amounts of rain and it is still raining! The city of Xela is in the shape of a bowl so all the water goes to the center. Thankfully we live close to the mountain and really didn't have any problems. The next day (still raining) Pres Bautista wanted all the missionaries to go to Pais (a grocery store owned by walmart... we aren't allowed to go there normally because it is expensive) to buy a weeks worth of food... we had no idea if we'd have power so we bought food we could eat without cooking. We also weren't allowed to eat with members this week so right now I feel like I have been eating junk food for far too long. The problem with the water here is that they use human waste for fertilizer on the crops (hence needing to clean all food with bleach) and when they get a lot of rain... the water from the crops comes down and goes into the tanks of the tap water. So this entire week we had to strain water with a t-shirt and bleach it to make sure there aren't any bugs in it that can make us sick... the members are actually pretty good about cleanliness when it comes to their cooking, but to be safe we weren't allowed to eat with them. Thankfully that rule has been lifted and we can eat with Hna Mary again this week. We had an amazing family home evening with Hna Luki and Carlos (our most positive investigators right now) They came to a members house (Cayash family... I LOVE THEM! The husband reminds me so much of dad and we have so much fun talking to him) we watched the shortened version of the Joseph Smith movie and it was really good. Today we bought them a book of mormon that has the D&C and Pearl of Great Price so they can also read that. If we can get Carlos to read the Book of Mormon, I think the whole family will join. Carlos came to church yesterday and for the first time so far in my mission we had investigators at church!! I was so excited! THREE investigators! So we will see what happens! I played my violin in church the past two weeks. I don't remember if I shared but the first week I played the violin while the other Hnas sang the hymn. It was a fast sunday so I was thinking we wouldn't do the musical number but the bishop had a youth pass us a note during the sacrament that we would play and sing after the sacrament finished. It was completely unplanned, but fun:) We sang Nearer my god to thee... not a single member here hears that song without thinking of Titanic unfortunately... The second time I played Joseph Smiths Prayer while a family sang with me. It was really special and I am so grateful for the opportunity to touch these peoples lives with my music and testimony. They are SO appreciative and I am more grateful now than ever for my talent on the viola... thank heavens for all those hours of practicing:)Other VERY exciting news of the week! I GET TO WORK IN THE OPEN HOUSE!!! So far it was nope, sorry you only get to go the days your ward is going IF you have 10 investigators... turns out the hnas will be working basically every single day taking the references and answering peoples questions about the temple. I am SO SO excited to be there and to talk to people about how amazing the temple is. The El Salvador temple which was dedicated while I was in the CCM recieved something like 80,000 references!!! Crazy huh? We are hoping for the same thing! Well we wont have nearly as many people come because the open house here is only 2 weeks and in El Salvador it was 3 weeks and there is another temple here in Guatemala so they aren't anticipating nearly as many. But I am SO excited... it will be such a neat experience and a once in a life time experience. It will be really fun for people to feel the spirit of the temple.This past Saturday we had a ward activity to raise money for the open house. Our ward alone needs to raise somewhere around 25,000 quetzals... I dont know what that is in dollars but it is A LOT! We are trying to help in every way we can, but since we couldnt eat with members this past week we couldn't eat the food. Hna Ramos and I ended up buying some anyway and giving the food to other members. I don't know how much they raised but hopefully they will be able to continue raising money! Fun fact of the week... in case you were wondering type writers are still very much in use here... I was shocked to see a girl using one in her house the other day... it was pretty funny! Who would have thought! Everyone has computers too, but nobody owns a printer... hence the type writer.Other than that, that was our week... kind of boring but still another week:) We found two families that have children who aren't members and we are hoping to have some success with them!! We will see! We are much closer this month to our two baptisms than the previous month. So that is great! November 1st (my bday) is the day of the dead here... I always thought it was just mexico that celebrates this day but apparently no! There is a type of food called fiambre that everyone keeps telling me I need to try it and to be honest sounds disgusting... has a mountain of meat and all sorts of other gross things but I will try it none the less:) I am so excited for halloween and my birthday. We are going to try and find a pumpkin to carve and an oven to borrow to cook the seeds so I am super excited for that! Mom what do you usually put on them?Anyway I think I got some pics to send on Hna Ramos's computer... one of them is me after I found the snickers Hna Ramos hid... we were (really I) was eating them too fast so I asked her to hide them... I found them within a day both times:) It was really funny!! The first time they were under my bed and the second in one of her suit cases:) The other picture is me eating cereal with a measuring cup... when we wash our dishes with bleach we have to wait 30 minutes and I didn't feel like waiting. Another is a picture of Hna Benton, Lopez and Ramos in the water... I couldn't because my boots don't stop the water:) It is really fun!OH!! I almost forgot the funniest story of the week!!! So when we had to go buy groceries for a week the water came up to my knees and there were some areas that we had to cross through the water to get to where we were going. So the first area we came to that we were going to have to walk through I just dove right in and started walking accross. I had lifted my skirt up a little (or so I thought) so that it didn't get wet. When I looked down I realized half of my garments were showing and then looked up MORTIFIED to see there were some teenagers taking pictures of us!!! I prayed very hard that day that God would forgive me and somehow erase the pictures if they could see my plaque and garments... We were all dying of laughter afterwards when we realized what happened... Hna Ramos thinks that they were taking a picture of her because in the same moment she was getting on Hna Benton's back so she didn't have to walk through the water... I can only hope!! That wont be happening ever again...Anyway, CONGRATS jordy on going through the temple! So proud of you and loved the pictures:) Everyone have a great week! Talk to you next week!I LOVE YOU ALL!!Love, Hna Nelson