Funerals

Dear America,

Thanks for all the advice and support from last week. Lynette's mission call (Guatemala) is super neat! Tell her that fufu is better than Mexican food, hands down. Whatever fufu I ate in the US before I came wasn't nearly as good as the stuff here. I'm going to have to make some when I get back and see if I can get it right.

Actually, now that I think about it, Mexican food is the only food that comes close to fufu.

Well to start the week off, I made some hot fudge cake on Monday night. In case you don't know, hot fudge cake is like a mix of brownies and chocolate pudding in one. It's hard to make cake without an oven, so I'm pretty proud of myself. It was good, but I learned that I'm losing my natural American sweet tooth pretty quickly. On Monday, I also got a step-down converter so that my hair clippers would work better. Up until this point, I would use my clippers for a minute or two until they overheated, let it cool down for half an hour, then start again. Which made haircuts take pretty much my entire P day. So I was really happy when the converter was a success.

On Wednesday, as we thought we were about to close a lesson, this little exchange occurred:
"So if God answers your prayers and you come to know that what we've taught you about baptism is true, will you be baptized on the 28th of February?"
"Yes, I will--"
"Great! I know tha--"
"--ask my pastor to baptize me on that day."
This is the first baptismal date I've extended for a different church. Haha smooth.

One investigator was totally convinced that you are paid to be a child growing up in the US. You just get money from the government. She was really surprised to hear that our family grew a garden and that I worked as an electrician. She thought that machines did everything in the US. A lot of people, including members, have funny ideas like that. America is a magical land, that's for sure. But we still have to work and pay for food. I just tell people that I can show them how to get to heaven, not to America. But they tell me that they'd rather go to America. I'm trying to help people think a little more sensibly and feel comfortable being my friend.

We just got back from attending a funeral. It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Funerals are a huge deal here. And there are several repetitions of the same person's funeral. When I die, my funeral won't be huge like this. The one this morning was actually a one-week celebration to announce to everyone when the actual funeral is going to be. Hundreds of people came. They advertise someone's death with big posters, posted all across the city. And then pretty much everyone who ever associated with that person shows up to the funeral(s). Everyone wears black and red clothing, some of which is traditional robes. The clothes are really neat.

Well that's all for this week.

Elder Nelson