SPIDERS ARE NOW OUR FRIENDS

You know how sometimes our greatest enemies can become friends sort of.  Well, the mosquito bites are a real problem.  We are sweating all over us most of the time (sorry, a little gross) and for some reason causes the mosquito bites to hurt even more.  Well, we were talking to a sister missionary about this, and, she said since they stopped killing the spiders the amount of mosquitos has reduced significantly.  So, pain trumps fear, and, we have stopped killing spiders, except for the big ones.

We have been working hard.  Every three months the mission president interviews every one of the 333 missionaries.  Kathy interviews Latino missionaries (we probably have said this before: the church wants every Latino missionary to return home speaking passable English,  they take a test and get a certificate.  Many do not want to take the trouble.   This is where Kathy comes in, as many of you know, she can be "a junkyard dog" when she wants to get someone to do something)  Kathy has got these Latinos working on English.   Gary interviews trainers.  Again, we probably said this before, but, the time in the MTC has been reduce from 9 to 6 weeks because of the many new missionaries coming in.  The 12 week program that Gary is in charge of, compensates for these missing weeks.  So, last week and the next two are interview weeks.  We travel All over the mission, some areas are 3 hours away.  Kathy also goes with the presidents wife to inspect missionary apartments.  Wow, the sister are always perfect but the elder can be really bad.  They get them to clean up and the presidents wife also inspects the ties.  She confiscates those that are not conservative.  We said that the mission is a "no coke cola" mission.  But, Kathy and the wife found a couple of cans in one of the elders apartments!  They handled that.  We continue to embarrass ourselves trying to speak Spanish, but, we are determined to learn the language.

As a final note, we remain extremely impressed with the quality of the missionaries and how much they love the work.  No one complains.  (Which is a lesson we have learned)  And, they live in pretty scary places, get rained on every day, walk around in the most humid place on earth, and, baptize about 200 souls a month!! 

Kathy had a good Mother's Day.  She got lots of flowers from the missionaries here!