mom!!

to be fair, i did not see the snake… but… it was a closed container on the 2nd floor of an apartment building… so my guess would be that it was a parasite.  don´t real snakes hatch from eggs, anyway? there were no eggs in the tupper when we closed it.

so… uh… what´s new? not much. i´m just, uh… still learning a lot. our investigator is still super rad, and we´ve met a bunch of really great other ones, too.

i´ve been studying a lot, teaching a lot… eating a lot of gross food…

and i´ve been learning a lot about Christlike love for my fellow man. i never thought i was all that harsh with other people, but… i mean, if i felt like somebody hated me or something, i didn´t go out of my way to be nice to them.

then my comp and i were reading in the bible, cuz the lds spanish speaking world is all SUPER enthused about the new translated complete lds bible… and we were reading in… luke (? i still am horrible with scripture references– every time i manage to find a scripture in a lesson i know it´s directly thanks to the spirit) 6… and Christ´s talking and says, ´if you love them who love you, that´s no big deal. even the sinners do that. you must love them that hate you´. (of course, it wasn´t exactly phrased like that, but that´s what you get when i am doing the translating.)

it struck me pretty hard. Christ´s ability to love is infathomable. every time a person treats me bad as a missionary who has come only to do them good, i think of Him. He suffered the sins of, and died for, the very same people who wanted to kill him.

that leaves me without room to judge or deny my kindness to anybody ever again so long as i shall live. otherwise i´m just another sinner, and i want to be better than that.

so yeah. that´s one of the things i learned this week. i urge everybody to get to know the Lord better… cuz i promise, he´s waiting. and he´s got lots of unimaginable blessings in store for all of you. it´s amazing the miracles he´s worked in my mission. how my perspective on the universe has been completely clarified.

in other news, i have run out of aveeno body wash, and would die for some more safely packed, mailable fish, in any form you can find on sale at smiths. OH and multivitamins. ellen sent me a few, a kind deed for which i shall forever be grateful, and i´ve been rationing them, taking one a week. the other day, we got home at night and i had a crashing headache… so i took a vitamin, and then i was ok. but it´d be nice to be able to take them daily. all i eat is meat and yogurt and soda and crackers and cooking oil, and sometimes tomatos. and hard boiled eggs. they eat hard boiled eggs in everything here. Dan would hate it.

so yeah. other than that, it´s hot… the church is true… and i love you a lot, mom! i love dan and teenie and marshall too. and dad. and my grandparents, and all other family members and friends.