Rafael Castillo- Week #10

Hey Family and Friends,

Well week two is behind me, and I realized that I have been in a foreign country 14 days...also that is only going to happen 43 more times before my mission is over. I guess I will start with the questions you sent.

The food is awesome! We eat a lot of pasta and meat...and that is about it...but all of it is really good. We eat every single day with a member. There is a huge calendar in the chapel and all the sisters like fight over who gets to feed us on what day. We always eat lunch with the members because that is the big meal here, and they seriously feed us sooooooo much. Like, it sustains me for 24 hours. I rarely eat breakfast or dinner in the apartment, and if I do it is just cereal or I make an egg sandwich or something. We occaisionally cook a meal like on P-days and stuff, but we all just cook it together. If there isn´t another priesthood holder in the house at lunch the sisters just give it to us in a tupper and we eat in the apartment.

I am swimming in money. We get 450 pesos a month, and I spend 20 pesos on food a week...and we dont pay rent or anything out of our monthly allowance. Elder Marchello gets extra in his allowance to pay for all of that. So basically I can spend the extra money on internet and cleaning supplies and laundry and stuff like that. Everybody buys their own food and other stuff. I always just buy milk and eggs and bread and cereal...oh and oreos because every thursday is oreo night. We all dip our oreos in our milk at the same time, also last week I started singing the USA national anthem when I did it and the other Elders were rolling on the floor laughing at me.

Buying things isn´t bad though because you only have to talk at the register, and even then you don´t really have to. I am nervous about getting a haircut...what am i supposed to say?!? Oh well, I´ll cross that bridge when I come to it. We take laundry to a lady who does it for like 5 pesos or something. It was kind of cold when I got here but nothing to bad, I use my sleeping bag, but only because it is easy to make my bed in the morning if I use it.

The apartment is supposedly one of the worst in the mission...but it isn´t that bad. The hot water is only a trickle so if you want pressure in your shower it is cold, but I don´t mind that much. There is a kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms and a big living room thing, but we dont use the bedrooms, all four beds are in the big room because it is easier to heat, and then one bedroom is used for the dressers and closets and stuff, we also have a rooftop patio and stuff which is kind of cool.

Yes i speak english with the american elders. We had interviews with President Benton last week, and he told me to only speak english in the apartment so Elder Torres can start learning...even though he goes home in a month. Elder Marchello and Elder Fox are the other elders from Kansas and Utah respectively, and E. Marchello has been on his mission 9 months and Elder Fox for 6. They are pretty normal, it is not like God´s Army at all, Elder Marchello is kind of a goof but we dont play jokes or anything.

Ok, we teach a lot but it is hard to keep people interested. Like, people let you in to teach because they are nice, but they really don´t care at all about what you are saying. I have not taught a person once that actually kept the committment to pray about the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, yet we keep teaching them. Elder Torres is great, but it is kind of frustrating because we have been given the goal to baptize 3 people, and we have a few prospects, but he wants to go teach the people that are clearly not even interested. I don´t know why, but we visit the people that actually read and pray like once a week, and others who aren´t like 4 times a week. He is completely obedient to the rules, which is a blessing, but sometimes I just want to say, COME ON! WORK! It is just little things, like we will be walking in the street and he will say, I´m bored...WHY! We have places we could go right now. I mean i know I just got here two weeks ago, but i want to baptize three people this transfer. We wouldn´t have the goal if it couldn´t be done. The hard part is, the rule of the mission is the investigator has to come to chruch 4 times before being baptized, and there are only 4 sundays left this transfer, and we have a few that have come 2 or 3 times, but they still haven´t received an answer to prayer.

Anyways, he is a great elder and usually works hard, but it is just sometimes that I think in my head, "Why didn´t you do that? I would have if I knew how to in Spanish, but I don´t so you have to do it until I learn." Anyway, that was a little vent, but I only feel that way 2 percent of the time, the other 98 percent I feel good about the work we do. Anyway, I am going to try the picture thing one more time, so hopefully it works.

Hope everything is going well at home in the States. Love ya!

Love, Sean


(Sean tried to send pictures home this week too, but still no luck)