Hola - December 5th

Family,
Well Jonathan, actually dad really does write in the present tense quite often. It can be rather funny at times. But that is dad. It can be rather fun at times too.
As for your words of comfort, thanks. I have the greatest desire to be the best missionary ever, but at times I feel so weak and incapable to do what I would like to do. But, I think I have really taken the refiner´s fire to heart here in my mission, ever since mom sent me the story about the refiner of silver. I have definately had some rough times and I am sure they aren´t over, but I have really grown a lot during my time here in the mission. I am also coming to realize that even though I would like to accomplish certain things, maybe that is not what the Lord has in mind for me, but he will definately have a work for every one of us to do. As we do what he asks of us and do all that is required of us, working with all our might, he will make us an effective tool in his hands. It is when we are made humble that we are truely made strong. My greatest desire is that I can do all I can and be like dad and not have any regrets looking back at the mission. Sure I am not perfect, but I am just expected to do the best I can.
The Benitez family (family of 5), continues to progress. I have gotten to know them better and they are really a golden family prepared by the Lord. Nothing would make me happier than to see them be baptized and continue firm in the church. They were in our last church meeting and think they all like it. We had a class about temples and they had some questions about that. They still haven´t gotten married, but they are working on it. They had everything ready before but didn´t have the witnesses necessary and so they have to have a study done at the hospital again or something like that (it only has validity for 10 days or something) and then they can be married I think. I am excited for them. They have all expressed their desires to be baptized and they know the church is true and everything. Now we just have to wait.
We had a nice zone conference by the way and I am in Posadas for p day. I have a fast Internet connection! It is raining a bit though which is making it fresh and cool, but humid. So I will take this opportunity to talk a bit about my companion, Elder Gustafson. He is a great Elder and studied spanish for 7 years and so already speaks really well. Not too tall and not too short, average build. He is from North Carolina and kind of has a southernish way of talking sometimos, but usually we are talking in Spanish and there isn´t a difference. It isn´t deep southern accent anyway, but a different way of talking and stuff. He has the desires to be very obedient and to work hard but I am teaching him some stuff he didn´t learn from his trainer. He has started calling me hs second trainer now. Kind of feels good to be helpful.
Well to answer your question on pouch. I did get some letters yesterday at the conference. It seemed like I had a bit of a dry season for awhile, but I finally got them. I also got the CD you sent. I am looking forward to listening to it. I will have time too because we always have to cook lunch for ourselves and therefor have more time in the pench every afternoon. So thank you very much for finding all that for me. I may need to find some speakers today though so I can listen.
Unfortunately our search for a place to live continues. Everyone tries to keep lying to us and things keep happening. Our last option was perfect but then a nearby member informed us that their is a group of people there every night playing soccer until 300 in the morning. That means alcohol and partying all night long (the apartment was above the soccer field and the owner lied and told us it was quite by 1100 every night. I think that he has problems renting it out). I think I have been taking pictures of my pension, but I don´t know how well I did on my last one. I kept forgetting. I know I have some video there but I don´t know how much of the pension you can see. I wish I would have taken before and after pictures so you could see the difference after I cleaned, but I went into shock when I got there and had to start chucking things and cleaning right off the bat. I put a lot of effort into that place and it was a relief to go, but sad to come to another dirty pench. Not as bad as the last one, but still.
As for the piano in the church…it is just a little keyboard that is very broken and not everything works too well. I played for church this last week and just cringed at how rough it sounds. I don´t know that I will be playing it any more. Maybe just to teach classes.
Now to think of some fun things that happened this week. First I will relate my skydiving experience…okay my comp. and I got to talking about how I went skydiving before and in the night I had a dream about skydiving. We were both suspended in the air waiting for something. We were talking in spanish and it will please you to know that I had my spanish scriptures with me. The whole skydiving experience was quite enjoyable. Second, we discovered a giant moth in our pench when we were turning off the lights for bed. When I say giant, I mean giant. I have thus dubbed the creature Mothra. My comp. probably hates bugs as much as me and so he opened up his umbrella and started hitting at it as it flew around and I took my shoe and swatted at it until we managed to knock it to the floor. Then we took our finishing blows. It was quite the experience and probably quite hilarious to watch too. I have also seen some really huge spiders here, luckily not in the pench, but when I get home they will be like nothing to me there.
I also went on divisions over in Candelaria (closer to Posadas) and worked with Elder Brigham there. It was quite fun, but all our citas and plans failed and it was quite hot to be walking around all day. We have had a few scorchers here recently as we enter into summer. Amazingly, even though I am dripping with sweat these days, I find that I am quite acustomed to the heat and discomfort. It is definately a blessing from the Lord if I do say so myself. They say it will be around 45 to 50 degrees Celsius here in summer. That would be about 104 to 113 Farenheit or something. Other parts of the mission can be hotter, but here has the most humidity. It is wet here. We will have to go buy sombreros I guess. I don´t look forward to having to wear such a dorky hat.
Well, I think that covers pretty much everything. Me and my comp are pumped to get back to our area and get to work again because we just learned a lot from conference and decided we need to better quite a bit of stuff. Conference always seems to do that to you.
Love you family,
Elder Aaron McDonald
P.S. Mom and Amy need to send cookie recipes (I have an oven and want to use it. Plus I am dying for some homemade cookies). No bakes will work well too.
P.P.S. I did not find shoes last week, but I have managed to use dad´s old shoes and they are working perfectly after a few adjustments to pad the back of the shoe a bit so it doesn´t rub my heel. So maybe just in the next package you send you can send the shoes too. It will probably be easier than finding something here. I have just not seen many options, even in Posadas.