Hello from the dusty streets and jungley forests of El Salvador. Last week I said good-bye to the strange and yet familiar world of centro, with things like Walmart, American restaurants, and paved streets. Sometimes I just felt weirded out there, but
now I am back to chickens, cows, houses made of sheet metal or clay, and a pace of life just a little more relaxed. We cross a little stream in the forest to get to church, and I am somehow a little more comfortable this way.
Our neighbors often play loud music at random hours, and usually it is just super heavy base. But the other day they changed it up and were playing all the super classic songs in english like Ghostbusters, YMCA, Rock and Roll, and Stayin' Alive, so that
was kind of fun.
Here we always drink our water from bags. They come in these little blue-tinted bags that are 500 ml, just like a water bottle. This week we went through over 75 water bags between the two of us because of the heat. Thankfully we can buy 75 water bags
for $3.00. Good old El Salvador. This week I also saw the biggest pig I've ever seen. It was huge. Like a small cow. Another thing I saw was a house with a lawn! There are very very few of those. I have maybe seen two or three in the whole mission, and they
are usually pretty small. But this one was super big and green and beautiful and had a tree with a swing and lots of shade. I was insanely tempted to just go lie on it and cry tears of joy to see something that beautiful. I can't even explain it. Another thing
I did this week was help a kid with their chemistry homework. That was interesting in spanish. I was thinking about electron orbitals and configurations and things all day after that. Took me back to good old AP Chem with Mr. Cruff!
Sometimes while we are walking around there is suddenly a bunch of black, confetti-like stuff in the air that falls like black snow. It fills the whole sky and comes down pretty good. The first time I was super confused and asked about it. It turns out
that after they harvest sugar cane, they burn the fields to clean them out, and the black stuff is all sugar cane ash.
We visited one member and as we got there they had a trailer full of cement blocks they were unloading, so we helped them carry those in. They gave us directions to find some families we didn't know. The directions involved wild hand gestures and "turn
left close to where the Chinese man lives." I love directions here. We visited another guy who told me it was a great honor to have the son of Donald Trump here. I was very flattered. This week I also saw a big old Taquazín! They are possums. I was sure it
was a cat, but then it was a possum.
One funny story this week had to do with a drunk guy (as all funny stories do). We were walking along and some guy pulls over and unrolls his window. He says, "Hey, come here!" He already looks sort of shady, but we went over and shook his hand. He had
his head shaved and had some tattoos, which almost always signify that you are a gang member here. He asked me where I was from and then took off his seat belt really fast and said he could give us a ride, so our alertness jumped up really fast. But he stayed
in the car, and told us, "My girlfriend is coming from the United States this week," he said, pointing to me emphatically, "and I want you to be one of the witnesses for my wedding! It is this Thursday!" I guess he had lived in the states for a little and
was just very excited to have a gringo as his wedding witness. He was very sure that this was the correct decision and repeated it several times to us. He asked for our phone number, so we wrote it on the back of a Restoration pamphlet and gave it to him before
turning him down again for a ride in his car and continuing on our way, chuckling a little. Not two minutes later, he called us and asked me if I would be his witness. I explained that I wasn't sure if legally I could without being a citizen of El Salvador,
but told him to talk to his lawyer and that he could call us again after that. Anyway, it was a funny story. Unfortunately, we had missed the last bus and turning his ride down meant we had to walk for an hour to get to our next appointment.
It can be a little frustrating entering an area that has no investigators or baptismal dates and feeling like we have to start from scratch. Our area had one new investigator in the week before I got here, and the goal in the mission is 15. We also had
one baptismal date, and I left Jucuapa with about 12. Sigh. So I guess we have our work cut out for us. But, I get along well with Elder Padilla. He was a mechanic and once got second place in a big top-spinning competition. And he played national baseball
in Guatemala before quitting due to games on Sundays. He also talks in his sleep a lot, which sometimes startles me at night, but he's a good guy.
Man, maybe I have said it a lot already, but it is crazy to me how fast the time goes. In primary and young men's and things we spend so much time talking about the mission, and now that it is here and I am living it, it passes way to fast! I already feel
like it is going to be harder to leave El Salvador than it was to leave home. I think all of this has just helped me realize that we have such little time, so we really have to enjoy every minute of it we can. I think it is important to even enjoy the difficult
and crazy different things, and maybe especially those things. A lot of happiness depends on attitude and not circumstance. Anyways. I am just really happy. I don't even know why. I struggle a bunch when I have to speak english to people now, it is crazy hot
here, and we have a very demanding schedule. I sleep with a mosquito net and live on a dirt road. It is just kind of crazy, but living the gospel of Christ really brings a sort of resilient happiness. Life is sure amazing.
Pictured is the house with the pull-up bed and the super comfortable hammock with our millions of boxes of pamphlets in the background. I was also eating lunch one day with the member who makes it for us, when suddenly there was a kitten crawling up my
pant-leg. Also included is a little sugar-cane ash, the smallest lizard I've ever seen, and Elder Padilla and I in a neighborhood that had streets made of gravel from those airy lava rocks. It was great. Zero dust and every step sounded like Minecraft.
Elder Harris
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