I can officially say I have swung through the jungle on a vine now

Crab catchin' in the streets

Well, the supposed storm that was going to hit didn't turn out to be much more than a little rain and wind. However, it somehow still managed to knock out the power in part of Mayaguez. It didn't affect us at all though. Matter of fact, we had an awesome week.

To start off, I think I figured out why our power always seems to go out. So after Hurricane Maria, a lot of the power lines got totally damaged. The problem is that it seems like nobody out here knows how to fix any of them. We walked out of our apartment the other day and we saw them "working on the lines." I kid you not, they were just hitting the power line with a hammer and some sort of chisel thing. Then they just left the cut in half power line laying down onto the sidewalk. As to what they fixed, I have absolutely no idea.

We did, however, have some pretty sick lessons. We even got to teach one of our members' mom over skpye. He's the one that goes out with us all the time. He started telling his mom about the church, but she lives in the states. The missionaries over there started to visit her, and he wanted us to be able to have a lesson with her, so we all got around his phone and did a video call to teach her a lesson.

One of our investigators also sent us a text saying he know the Book of Mormon is true. He sent in in really really broken english though, so we'll have to see if that's what he meant to say. He's the one that is from Peru and currently trying to get his masters degree. He's always way to busy to meet with, but he's finally going to present his thesis this Wednesday so he should be pretty free after that. I think it's so funny when people try to talk to us in English, but they have absolutely know idea how to really speak English. Believe it or not, it's always the drunk dudes out in the streets that know the English. For some reason, they're always the ones to know it perfectly.

We also got to check out the campo out here. One of our members was driving us to an appointment, but he ended up going the complete opposite way. We ended up driving for like an hour and a half through the middle of the jungle. Then we had a zone activity out in San Sebastian on P-day and we got hike to some waterfalls which was super dope. I can officially say I have swung through the jungle on a vine now.

"Dope" waterfall

Beautiful waterfall area

View from the waterfall

Vine swinging in the jungle

Balled out with some kids on a homemade basketball hoop

Balling up on a homemade hoop

Well if you were looking for an interesting week, you got one. We did like so many different things that I'm probably only going to be able to remember like a quarter of what actually went on. Matter of fact I'll probably just list my highlights of each day. 

Monday: As a missionary, this is our preparation day, or "P-day." There is no such thing as a bad P-day. It's like a missionary's weekend. We get to do all those cool things like shopping and emailing. After all that, we get to basically do whatever we want. My favorite part of this P-day, however, was our dinner with one of the members of the stake presidency. They made some super bomb food, and we got to listen to all the coci while we ate and talked.

Tuesday: We got invited inside the biggest mansion ever. It was massive.

Wednesday: 4th of July. Well not really. Even though Puerto Rico is technically part of the United States, they don't really celebrate it here. Matter of fact, we asked some kids about the 4th of July, and they had absolutely know idea what it was. Their parents ended up having to explain to them that it's an American holiday. It's all good though cause we bought a bunch of hot-dogs, watermelon, and Malta to celebrate it on our own. This also happened to be the day that I found out I was a maltaholic. They sell this drink out here called Malta. It's like Puerto Rican's rootbeer, and happens to be the best tasting drink ever. I can't get enough of it. Then we got invited over to eat some shrimp and pasta with one of our investigators that we just set a baptismal date with.

Thursday: I have been in Puerto Rico for a couple months now. This is the first day that we've been able to do more than just carrying in groceries for service. It was awesome. One of the members invited us to come out and help work in someone's backyard. We cut a bunch of plants and super tall grass with some machetes right next to this creek. I almost fell in like five times. I also got little cut's all over me from the plants, and to this day I'm still itchy. Totally worth it though. Hopefully we get invited to some more service projects. 

Service with Joey

Friday: We had a lesson with one of the Peruvian students on campus. He's trying to get his doctorate degree and is currently working on his thesis which is about 90 pages. Consequently, this dude literally has like no time. We were finally able to meet with him in the evening, and he told us he hadn't even had time to eat at all that day because he was so busy. We had a super awesome lesson with him though, and we were even able to get two members to come out with us to the lesson. 

Saturday: We balled out with some kids on a homemade basketball hoop. They were using a red milk-carton crate with the bottom taken out as the hoop. It was actually super genius and worked way well. It even had a little bit of spring cause they hung it up with these flexible cords. We totally destroyed. Afterwards we had a bunch of little kids asking to take photos with us. It wasn't even just the kids that were around the hoop; there was a little kid that came running out from his house down the street so he could get a photo with us. We left that area with all of the kids thinking we were famous, and my companion and I weren't about to tell them we weren't. I mean why else would there be two dressed up gringos walking down the street wanting to play a little ball.

Sunday: This is normally a day of rest. I have to say I don't get to much rest on Sundays though. We were asked to give talks during sacrament meeting, and we were given like no time to prepare. We actually ended up going over our time allotment of ten minutes though, and left the last speaker with like 2 minutes. I was also asked to confirm an 11 year old boy that was just recently baptized. That was a super awesome experience. Then we had to do some other work and didn't even get time to go to the classes. 

Today: Supposedly there's some sort of hurricane or tropical storm that's supposed to be coming today. We're not really sure how big it is or if it's even going to hit us though. Hopefully it doesn't knock our power out for too long.