Josie's Journey's: "What matters most is what lasts the longest." M. Russell Ballard

I know I don’t send much back by e-mail because there just isn’t enough time… but I love reading them and thank you for writing me!

A few days ago I woke up freezing, so I put on a ton of layers and went back to sleep only to wake back up at 4 burning up… so pretty much I was sick Friday and Saturday, but by Sunday I felt better and so got up and we went to church. I wasn’t feeling great and got a bloody nose that I couldn’t get stopped, so everyone at church thought I should go to the hospital, because that is what they all do for every little ailment, but we just went back home and lots of amazing members brought us food, but since I wasn’t feeling well my companion enjoyed it all! My companion doesn’t speak English and my mission presidents wife doesn’t speak Spanish so messages were going back and forth with my companion trying to use google translate which wasn’t very effective.

We found an amazing family that the dad thought we worshiped Joseph Smith so he didn’t want to listen… but we convinced him that Jesus Christ is who we really worship and we gave them a book of Mormon with a challenge to read scriptures in it.

These people are so poor it’s sad. Kids are walking all over trying to sell all kinds of stuff in carts they make from any wheels they can find or just hauling it on their backs- everything is cheap, one lady I tried to buy some small oranges from, but she wouldn’t take my money and just gave us some, so I couldn’t eat them and we found people to give them to.

My companion has a very small bladder and we are always looking for a potty, she does a lot of dancing.

I haven’t been taking as many pictures as I would like to cause everyone here either works themselves to death trying to survive or they are thief’s. The members tell us to be careful cause everything gets stolen. So I don’t dare carry anything of value with me.

So I had no idea there were so many different kinds of beans and that you could prepare them in so many different ways. I haven’t found any kinds or preparation methods that I like yet…

We were eating with a member and she asked me “don’t you like beans?” And I’m like well not really and she said I could eat cereal if I wanted with her son so that was yummy!

Our bishop has 3 very active people he wants us to get baptized, so of course we are willing to teach them! We are also teaching an almost 9 year old boy who is smart, but very active! He can’t hold still for anything, we do try to bribe him though.

We had 11 investigators at church, along with new converts which made us so happy! It is pretty tough finding people who are serious about making and keeping covenants.

There was a dead cat by the church that we watched decay day after day… no one takes care of the animals here and they are so malnourished. They just usually seem to starve to death, also the chickens are everywhere because they are cheap, but not well taken care of either. I guess I feel sorry for all of the poor animals, but a lot of the people don’t seem to be much better off.