It's too stinking cold!

Well, it was a pretty interesting week. I started driving the big old mission van on Sunday. That has been an experience to say the least! For one, we drive on the left side of the road and secondly I didn't know how to drive a stick-shift! That was definately a learning curve. I only stalled it twice and now I drive it like I've been doing it forever. We had one really close call last night though. We were flying along about 75 KMH and a guy pulled out in front of us. Luckily it was a 3 lane road! There was a car in the turning lane though so I ended up swerving to the farthest right lane (the on-coming traffic lane) to avoid the wreck. No one was coming so no harm done and we went on our way. People here are terrible drivers.

Things are going okay here in Trinidad. Other than being bad drivers, the majority of the people are pretty humble and seem willing to make the necessary changes to get baptized. The trick is just finding the ones that are willing to do that.

The only problem that I had in getting here to Trinidad was a 70 dollar visa waiver. I didn't have that much on me so I was very relieved when another Elder came walking into the customs room with some extra money on him!

My new companion is named Elder Romney. He is a little shorter than I am but that doesn't mean that he is any less sarcastic than I am. We get along really well which is a good thing because we will most likely be together for at least 3 months. He's a lot like me to be honest. (I know... that's a scary thought).

I live in a place called San Juan, the actual town is called El Socorro (in Northwest Trinidad). We have a nice apartment that has 2 bedrooms, a large bathroom, a large kitchen and a magical device known as a dryer. I did a load of laundry this morning before studies and my shirt was ready to wear when we were done! It was also soft. I can't wait to do my darks tonight!!!

The air conditioning in our apartment is killer. We sleep with it on 23 degrees (which is about 74 to you guys) and it's too stinking cold! It's fun to be with the assistants though. It's nice to see that someone has worse hours than we do!

The only new food is called doubles. I haven't actually tried them yet but I don't know a single Elder that doesn't like them. I'll let you know how they are soon (hopefully). The 2 members that have fed us so far are both Guyanese so that food has been the same.

I am in the Curepe Ward (said cure-ep) which is really weird. We aren't allowed to do anything because everything has to depend on the members. I love it. It's a freedom that I had totally forgotten about!

Working in the office hasn't been too bad. We mostly just type up baptism reports and do projects for President Robison. We basically do anything that the Assistants don't want to do! I had to work with a guy in Salt Lake the other day to help set up a video conference between President Robison and Elder Bednar. I was pretty stressed when it wasn't working about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start! In the end, all went well and President loves having me here. We went over to the mission home today to change cars (because we had to help move a washing machine) and we hadn't been inside for 10 seconds before he said that he had something for me to look at. Apparently his mouse wasn't working and he wanted me to fix it. I managed to do that and he was very pleased.

That's pretty much all that is new. The scripture of the week is Alma 32:21&27.

P.S. Today I received the letter that you sent on the 13th. That amazed me! I've also received one from G&G Olson.