New Area, Santa Barbara

Pictures: New Living place
Hey, Fam,
It feels like I haven't talked to you in a long time because quite a few things have happened since I emailed you last time. I mentioned that at the start
of the the "second exchange" we were told we would be staying in our area and that we would be getting  a new comp though. The day before the change we went over to the office to work out the details of getting new furniture with Elder Kirk who is the co-ordinator and he told us he didn't know how long Elder Mendez would be with us and that he was having some problems or something. He didn't know if it would be a week or the entire exchange he would be staying. So Elder Mendez shows up on Tuesday and I learned so much spanish from him for the time that I was there with him.
He was amazing at teaching and Elder Fuller and I were both newbies compared to Elder Mendez. We learned a ton from Elder Mendez.

On Tuesday the 28th of Jan at about 9:30am we got a knock on the door and guess what? it was the AP's and they had come over to do divisions with us. We got ready and went on divisions that day. About 10 minutes after we left to go on divisions we got a call from the mission president. At first he talked with Elder Fuller for about 5 minutes and then Elder Mendez for about 5 minutes. At the end of the day when the divisions were over . Elder Mendez left with the AP's to go and fly home. I gave him my Reeses pieces as a parting gift. We were sad to see him leave to go home

The next day we had a meeting with our new Zone Leader, our previous Zone leader had finished his mission and had gone home. After the meeting we went down and ate some really good food at a members house. At about 4pm that day we got a call from the AP's again and the first thing they said is Elder Frandsen pack your bags your leaving tomorrow morning. They explained a little that I was going south somewhere in  bajo verapas and that my new comp is Elder Gutieras and there is like zero members were your going and that it is a very new area. Yep they said to pack up and the president would be picking me up tomorrow morning bright and early.

The next day I had a nice half hour chat with the President as we drove down to a little town called Santa Barbara. I met my new comp he was a former ZL in Petin and he had only been in the area for a week. I saw the house and soon to be church.  After looking at the place we notice the president had gotten a flat tire. We had a little joke about how many missionaries does it take to change a flat tire. Apparently it takes 4 missionaries and 1 President.

The area of Santa Barbara is pretty "chile" (cool) I really like it, it's really Mountainous. Looking at the mountains really reminds me of Montana. Like it has the same types of trees.  One of the first things I should say about Santa Barbara is the house. So we walk in and it is huge it was meant for three families. There is four rooms the size of 15x20 and the kitchen is like the size of a  commercial kind of kitchen. I was so excited to live there however that changed when my companion explained we have snakes living in the attic and get this we have a bunch of holes going from the attic to our ceiling and the snakes like to drop down from a couple of those. It just so happens the biggest hole they like to drop down through is in the bathroom right up above the toilet. Thank goodness we are in the process of looking for a new place to live and we might have found one.  Luckily so far I haven't actually seen a snake drop down through but I've only been here a couple of days, so I'm hoping we move out of the house before we have any surprises.

So the people here are really open, (except for the preachers) the people are all really nice and like when we walk up to a doorway and say our greetings they all come out and talk with us.  So yeah they are all very nice except for the preachers and actually they (the preachers) want to harm us. So we are required to come home early because once it gets dark it gets really dangerous. So we have to come back a little early so we are not out in the dark.

We went to teach a lesson my first day and the husband wasn't there he being the main investigator, so we helped sort beans for a half an hour.  Another time we went to a house and did our greeting and an old man came out. He was not really interested in hearing our message, because he was out back chopping wood. So we said oh we can come and help you. We walked back and helped chop wood for about a half an hour.  The way they chop wood here is actually pretty hard, not like the standard, up and down split straight through with a wedge on the end. You lay the log down on its side because you don't have nice chainsaws to make the ends flat.
After that on Saturday we went to an investigators house and chopped wood there as well until we got blisters on our hands. Afterwards they fed us really good Guatemalan food but ya know I don't really quite know what it was. It was like mush and some kind of vegetable.

The next day on Sunday we spent half the day going to church. It was cool because we actually rented an entire bus to take our investigators to church. The bus ride to church is about an hour away and we actually got the entire bus filled with our investigators. We were pretty happy about that, this is in contrast to my last area were hardly any of our investigators would come to church.  After church we ate at two members homes which was pretty nice. So yeah many changes this last week and having a latino companion is really helping me with my Spanish.
So yep, Audios