Orange crayon on my da kine

Hey Everyone,

Alright so sorry about not e-mailing you yesterday. we never had any time, we were way busy trying to find stuff to do haha and so we got a ride down to another zone to go play some basketball and didn't come back to late and so we never had a chance to e mail, but now i am so its all good. Ok so yeah, i got transfered to the San Diego Zone. it's right by downtown, like we can walk there if we want and we are way close to the naval base. the place is called Barrio Logan or Logan heights. it's the Ghetto! it's pretty sick, haha. funny story so we were walking at night after an appoinment with a member and this guy on a corner street came up to us and was like "gue tal perros" and we were like hey man how's it going? and then in a gangsta tone he said "oh perros, you best be stepping, this is logan heights perros, you betta step outta here. we just were laughing this small skinny poser was trying to act tough. we probably shoulda knocked that brotha out, haha. get some stress out on him. So yeah anyways, my new companion is Elder Lawter, he is from MIssouri, cool guy. way chill, which is sick. i was like...finally. God does hear me and there are normal people here haha. But our apartment is sick, we live in an attic pretty much like in our room the roof slants, which is funny, because you know me i don't think before i do things a lot of the times so i was setting up my bed and i set up my pillow and where my head was supposed to be by the slanted side, which isn't too smart probably bang my head every morning, so i changed it haha. anyways i will send some pictures, hopefully soon.

Oh thanks for sending all that stuff! that was way nice, i am pretty sure half of it is gone already haha, everytime we come back, i snack on like 5 things and then all my roommates are like why the heck are you eating seaweed, and obviously i said kus it tastes good braddah. oh and the other two elders in the apartment are natives!! so sick they know tons of Spanish and they are hilarious too, its way fun. for some reason, someone gets a hold of a picture of cait and is like oh who's that? then that's where i start the spiel or what ever it is ... yes, that's my sister, her name is Imnotinterestedinyou Thomas and no, you can't date her she's 16, haha. it's ridiculous, haha. but yeah Cait you better turn it down on the looking good thing, alright?

So yeah, our area is the ghetto. all mexicans! oh man its so nice, very very nice! they all are like illegal and have mustaches and listen to mexican songs and cook tortillas all day and play soccer at the park and dress like cholos. everyone lives together and isn't married. oh it is heaven for a missionary, we have tons of investigators and they are nice to us and the members are sweet! it's good i am excited to be here. now i just got to get to work. it was funny because a member got deported the other day and then we heard he was back the next day, haha, because his dad was his cayote (thats what they callum) I thought it was pretty funny.

Oh quick story so we got a member referral. her name is Margarita and she has three sons. two of the son's names are mario and luigi. hahah so funny. but that luigi is a demon child man, it is so hard to teach while he is there. the first time we came and he found out my name was Thomas and so like a clever 2 year old, he made a connection with me and the choo choo train thomas haha. so he went to go get railroad tracks to show us and he started chucking them at us and then he found a bat (i don't know where) but he started whacking us with it and i was like yeah, God wants us... (whack) ow!... to return to his... (whack) ow! ...that crazy kid. and again today he had a crayon, and made a line write by that place on my pants. and it's orange. so i have a huge orange line on my pants by my da kine, (you know where). but i must say it helps with street contact. because they look at me and instead of looking away they look right at the line and so then we start talking to them. who would know ah? haha.

But yeah, so we have done more teaching here and more talking to people so it's nice. b ut man do i suck at teaching. I don't know what it is. but i was like shoot, i got to step it up and so i need to work on that too, which will be good. my spanish will get a lot better though, because my companion doesn't know a lot of spanish either. so we are like struggling the whole time, but we will get it. it will come. i figure you know what? who cares if i am not good at teaching now. if i try my hardest i will get it later on somehow, so i just got to step it up. Oh on a good note. i can read the book of mormon in spanish now and like fully understand what's going on. so i have been reading that and working on my spanish grammar and stuff and so i try to read 10 pages a day. so its pretty tough, but its coming along slowly but steadily which is what counts. somehow i just need to be patient.

Oh church this past sunday was very good. it's funny because we meet at a elementary school right across our house, which is nice, making getting to church on time easy. but it is weird because you have all these Hannah Montana pictures and posters and stuff all of over where we have sacrament meeting, but church is church and its still really good, the parts i understand, anyways. everything is really nice and i have a lot of stuff to work on but it will be alright and i will definitely be learning a lot. thanks for all the stuff you sent, it really helps and i would probably die without you guys. oh, and please tell the Harbottles thanks! a huge thanks! because that was really nice of them, i will send them a thank you card as soon as i can. but if you could thank them i would appreciate it.

I love you all and hope you are doing good with everything. I miss you and I will talk to you next week.

Love,
Elder Thomas

yeah Dad, he was like you...big in the stomach area.

Hey Again!

So it was really nice to talk to everyone on sunday! It was dee Best (that's for you mom - nacho libre). But anyways, it was good to hear all the stories and that pretty much everything is the same, haha, from when I left. oh, but thanks for sending the boxes of stuff you guys are the best I love you! k but so as for today i am not sure really what to write since i told you everything on sunday and its only been a day, haha. but i guess, oh i can let you all in on a thought in my hard glass breaking head though. So during this whole transfer plenty of people have asked me what my vision is for my mission and I'm like shoot i have no idea. I mean I know that i want to baptize people and to be able to learn the language, and other general stuff like that but then they didn't like that answer and i still dont think i have a specific vision. but i was thinking about this and then i remembered i watched this video about President Monson, it was called On the Lord's Errand. super way good movie. I gained a lot of respect for him. he's a stud. well of course we all know that because he was called of God. but the whole movie talked a lot about how throughout the whole life of President Thomas S. Monson, he always followed the Spirit of the Lord and he was always in the right places blessing people's lives. And so i think that pretty much sums up my whole vision probably for my whole life, haha. But I have always wanted to try and follow the Spirit and just do the correct thing so that God knows he can trust me and that when there needs to be something done that i can do that. and that's what i really want to do. I mean i am sure that's what everyone wants to do. but yeah so i was thinking about that yesterday.

So yeah but yesterday, was a good day, I think we had the best lesson we ever had this transfer. it was at HNO Palma's casa, he is a recent convert. it's pretty interesting because he lives with his mom and his mom talked about his conversion story and told a lot about how it happened and the background of her whole family too because her whole family are members of the church. She was baptized first though and her whole family except for Oscar (HNO Palma) was baptized after she was. so she had a strong testimony of the gospel it was really nice, but really long too like dad, haha just kidding. But so it was really nice, oh yeah i forgot to tell you about a new investigator we got. her name is Gladys. Pretty sweet ah! So that was really nice. and then another part of the day we went to go help out some English elders out in our area. nice guys, they always want to hang out with us. we are actually going to the zoo with them today. how's that one ah mom? pretty good yeah? so i'll write a letter about all the animals haha next week. but yeah so we were helping them out and we went to this brothers house and did some service and he reminded me of you dad it was hilarious. he was big in the stomach area, haha, just kidding, but he always had the dumb jokes you always do. oh you would have been laughing so hard. and then we played a little badminton. now that was a lot of fun. don't judge me haha. i guess i just like weenie sports all of a sudden, I dont know.

but yeah. what else? oh mom sent me an email that said you sent some money in the boxes, what are you thinking! haha i told you i am alright though. because i want to see if i can survive on what i have, that way for once in my life i dont have to be spoiled. plus i am trying to make my own survival story too. oh okay shoot i totally forgot to tell you about this story a couple of weeks ago my companion just reminded me. so here it is: So we were driving one day and then he starts speeding up and then cranks a hard turn and then parks the car and here i am first surprised at the sudden move of action and surprised that he is doing something exciting (remember he likes chess and video games, haha) and so he gets out of the car and grabs his bag and pretty much starts running and I am like trying to follow him and I was like where the heck are we going? i was like what did he see? a first edition Chess set made out of koa wood and handcrafted back in the 90's or something? i dont know man. then he chases down these two spanish ladies and says hola como esta and then looks at me and i looked at him, and i was oh shoot so i started talking to them about families and Jesus Christ and the Church and then i asked when we could come over and talk more about our message and then one of them said oh well my husband has a meeting with the bishop and but i think later that night we have you for dinner on the calendar. so they were members... oh i hit my companion after that one, haha, but it was pretty funny. alright, peace out my family.

Love you all! thanks for everything and good spanish on your email mom, it was funny. i'll take pictures today and send um!

Love, Elder Thomas