Just yesterday I passed up my hundred day mark. Kind of crazy. I have only eaten 82 pupusas, though, so I will have to eat more if I want to pass 1000 by the time I'm done.
The other day I saw someone with a BYU hat, so that was pretty great. We also took a taxi and the guy's gear shift was a ninja sword hilt. Pretty sweet. Also, the people here love Crocs. Everybody is always wearing them for whatever occasion. There is
also just crazy fruit here. Sometimes I look up and see what looks like big green balloons in the trees, but it's just fruit. Other times crazy spiky or hairy fruits. Our house has very poor phone signal because we live super close to the prison, where they
somehow block phone signal. Good times. They always have the prisoners in the white shorts and shirts (and white crocs) outside painting things or stuff like that, though.
I am here living the high life with my scripture markers that I got from Aunt Lisa clear back when I was baptized and my fancy cologne from Uncle Dave.
The other day I met my first El Salvadoreño that does not believe in God. That was weird, I think I took for granted before that pretty much everyone here already believes in God and Christ and prayer. It made me think that living without that hope is
sure just a sad sad way to waste away your days. No hope, not thinking that anything matters.
This week started the founder's day celebration of Jucuapa. It started off with the loud fireworks that don't have the fancy lights but are just loud explosions at about 4 in the morning, so that was great, haha. Random fireworks go off about every half
an hour or so and the park is full of carnival things and food stands and the streets are full of people and music blasting crazy loud. The party sort of travels around and is scheduled to be right outside our house tomorrow, and they go late, so that will
be exciting.
Here is the spiritual part. A while back Elder Peck and I were just having a harder time than normal. We were trying to be obedient and working hard, but a lot of appointments were falling through and the numbers just weren't very good. We read a talk
about faith that talked about steps to success. We have to have faith, commit, pray, and work, and then wait for first trials of faith and then to see the hand of God. It was a very good talk that I can't summarize real well. Anyways, Elder Peck and I set a
goal, not just on paper, but one written in our hearts for what we wanted to achieve and what we were going to do. We then fasted (even though that made two fast Sundays in a row, haha) and prayed super hard. And we went to work. For a while, things just seemed
worse. More appointments fell through, things just didn't immediately start working out. However, lately, I think we are entering the "See God's Hand" help you stage. We were able to get 5 baptisms scheduled in November this week with some super great investigators.
I am very excited and have grown to care about them a lot. One is named Ronald, a super serious, solid guy that is very reliable. He watched General Conference with us and always has questions and sincerely wants to know, but accepts our answers very readily.
We also met a great family in an outskirt area called El Nispero and they came to church with us after we met them! They are super good. Hermana Isabel and her son Elvis, as well as twins Debra and Michelle. We found another good family in San Buenaventura
that we are excited to work with, Dora, with her sons Alberto and Henry. The last guy we have a baptism scheduled with is named Asael. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and that it was written by ancient prophets on this continente. We told him that Christ
came to the Americas and he was just blown away. He read our reading assignment in the Book of Mormon and when we went to follow up, he started explaining to US why it was important to be baptised and starting asking what else we had that he could read about
Christ. Anyways, not everyone is prepared, but God is really preparing people to hear the message of the Gospel. Hopefully these baptisms will work out. Faith and prayer really make anything possible. I am blown away to see how much of our success just depends
on how much we rely on the Lord.
I will see you all later.
Pictured is a bat that has been hanging out (haha, no pun intended) with us in our house lately. It likes the smoke detector a lot.
Elder Harris
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