12 February 2018

Well, this week people started keeping their return appointments! Yay! That's the worst part about Spanish work, almost no one keeps their appointments. But we actually started having people who are progressing. It only took us four weeks of work to get someone to start working, but we have a few solid people now. Two of them have families, and so that's even better. We missed one of the appointments one day as we saw him driving away to work. He waved, and he is still responding to our texts so we think that it'll be fine with him, we set another appointment for Tuesday. Funny story with him: we invited him to church and then realized that we forgot to tell him the address. So we texted him the address and reinvited him. He then texted us back a while later telling us that sorry, he wouldn't be able to come because it was too far to drive. At least without a license. Yup, Spanish work is interesting. So we told him that it's not a problem because we can just get him a ride. But the too far part is understandable, he lives about 45 minutes from the building. More of the joy of a stateside Spanish mission. And yesterday I found out something interesting about my Spanish skills. Although I'm doing pretty well (everyone is shocked to find out I've only been speaking it for 6 months, and I'm told I'm doing a lot better than the people I came out with.) I found out that I can't translate for the life of me. In our branch, we do an over-the-pulpit translation. I'm fine with that, that is easy. But if they pull out the headsets, I can't do anything. Just absolutely cripples me. I can't speak a word. So it got passed off to my companion. Who, though he says my Spanish is way better than his, can pull it off. He says he just kind of makes up his own talk about the same subject as the speaker. I can't do that either, so he is the official headset translator. I can do over the pulpit, but not headsets. It's just too much to do at once.

This morning we mostly hung out with our branch president. We used his home gym which is pretty nice, and played a lot of horseshoes. And his wife made some awesome smoothies. Their blender is incredible. The smoothest smoothies you've ever had. Fantastic. 

Anyways, this has been a pretty boring week. We were out in that one trailer park again and the same dog found us again. It's really great to have him around because he's super nice, but a lot of the other dogs aren't. They'll growl and bark and all that, but "our" dog will run at them and defend us. It's pretty great. We have our own personal bodyguard every time we go there. 
​Sorry the picture is so blurry he got excited. But yes, he's our guardian dog.