Wow, what a week!

Hola Everybody,

Thank you all so much for the emails, and i am sorry if i did not get to yours or if it was a really short reply... my time is limited.

This week has been an awesome week! We have started to have some more success here. We have some dates set for baptism, which is awesome! We also had 4 investigators attend church with us this week. It is awesome to see People come unto Christ, and change there lives!

One of our goals has been to try and meet with as many members as we can, and that has helped us so much with references and with food. The members here are Awesome! I have learned that when you love Everybody, it brings so much happiness.
 One thing we have been telling all members is imagine that we (members) are on the Arc of salvation... like the Arc of noah. Think of all of those people (animals in the story) Who are not on that arc of salvation. Don't you want to save them... if you saw someone in the water you wouldn't hesitate to save them... what is the difference? My challenge for all of you who are currently on the arc is to take two minutes to write as many people you can who are not on the Arc, and who you want to save. Then Pray to Heavenly father, and ask who is there in the water... who is ready to be saved. Then pick a couple of them and Just simply share something.  What do we have to lose.

Today we played alot of soccer, and I've got some work to do to keep up with these latinos. It is still very fun! But man i would love to have a football or a frisbee! Today i also had my first asada... that is when they cook a bunch of meat on a grill... The food here is so good by the way!

The spanish is coming along, I can understand a lot more now than i could that first day. The hard part is talking... I am sure i am absolutely butchering the language everytime i talk, but it works for now.

They have kioskos everywhere here, kioskos are like little stores with snacks and drinks. Which is Awesome, because a coke tastes so good in this hot weather. We do a lot of walking all day, because we do not have bikes... i have many blisters.

I have also been washing my clothes in a bucket... which isn't the best, but its kinda nice! i just put the clothes in a soapy bucket, and then the next day i scrub it a little and leave it to dry.

They also don't have any cookies here! all of there cookies are in packages and hard! that is like the saddest thing. someone needs to open a cookie shop down here because they don't know what they are missing.

 oh and there is pretty much no such thing as a public bathroom here as well... another reason to get into peoples homes. There is also about a million dogs here... pretty much every house has at least one dog, and they all sleep on the sidewalks all day... and bark non stop.

All is going well here, I am loving it.  It is definitely not easy and can be very hard at times but it is rewarding. I am growing to love it. and growing to love this country.

Thank you all for your emails and prayers. 

I love you all,

Elder Banks​​​​​​​​​​​​​​