Hermana Tess Crawford: 17 Down... I to go!

Hey! How are things going in Utah, Fiji, AZ, and wherever else you guys are?

I'm super jealous of how awesome 4th year camp sounded like it was- bugs, games, repelling, stories, and all the rest of the fun experiences you got to have. To answer your question I'm pretty sure one of our babysitters taught us pshht- Nikki if I remember correctly. I'm sure the girls loved it and loved you guys. I'm glad Chloes's still having a blast in Fiji and that you guys made it safely to Utah and are partying with the Winters!

My week down here was cray as usual. It started out with my last ever Zone Meeting and then with the semifinal game and holiday on Wednesday. We had the activity from 11 to like 3 and it was pretty fun! It started out a little slow- they were just drinking mate, but then they had this traditional dance-off thing (don't worry I have videos of all this) and played hopscotch, marbles, trivia, and a 1 on 1 game with brooms and a big bouncy ball that you have to hit between two chairs called Pato. It was definitely entertaining even though we couldn't participate in most of it. Renzo came and so did Damian! Damian actually danced in the dance off and it was pretty funny, he enjoyed it. We then ate pasteles (fried empanadas) and drank soda. Afterwards we had to go back to the pench and we didn't leave because of the futbol game, but we definitely knew who had won once we heard the cheering along with the ambulance siren and gunshots. It was a fun day.

Then on Thursday we saw Pres. Goates again and he told us some cool stories about his mission and the experiences he had. On Friday we found a new family to teach in the morning who are nice, but nothing else too eventful happened. On Saturday we had lunch with Julian, who's a recent convert guy that is a baker and is a little.. strange.. and kind of has an extreme, borderline-creepy obsession with sister missionaries but is sweet and makes us really elaborate 3 course lunches once a month and invites 2 other members because he lives alone. It was fun just because the members he chose are funny and it was entertaining and only slightly awkward. We ate tacos at my request though, so that was good!

Sunday was probably the most eventful day of the week. Our church attendance was a record high of about 50, including Damian. My comp and I sang "Brillan Rayos de Clemencia" otherwise known as "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy" acapella in sacrament meeting- the first 2 verses in Castellano and the last one in English, and it went pretty well, the members loved it and all wanted to give us lunches this week afterwards (; We had a lesson with Damian during sunday school because we hadn't been able to see him in a while and he has a baptismal date for the 19th of July. We weren't sure if he wanted to still or would be willing to learn/keep the commandments, so we had a chat and surprisingly he told us he still wants to on the 19th and is willing to meet every day with us for 30 minutes and do whatever's necessary. That's NEVER happened to me on the mish as you well know so we're a little shocked and had to scramble after church yesterday to try to plan out how we're going to teach him lessons 2-5 (we have to teach lesson 5 now before baptism according to the new Pres.) in five days and help him be 100% prepared......... We know he can do it but we're going to make sure that he's ready of course and if we need to we'll push it back another week. It's going to be crazy. We're a little nervous. It should be awesome though! The final game wasn't that eventful- we were in the pench all day again (sleeping and eating tacos) and so all we heard were a few "NOOO!"s and then gunshots and stuff of course. So yeah, we lost, but people don't look to devastated today, I think they saw it coming..

Anyways, I can't believe I have less than a month left! It's a good thing we have all this work to do here to distract me (: I can't wait to see you locos.

I hope this next week is less stressful for you guys than it is for me and that you enjoy your vacations like you have been doing so well. Les quiero!

<3,

Hna Crawford