Last week with President Villalba

The little brick oven where the Rios family cooked the chicken and potatoes Eric told us about

Thirty dollars worth of coins in the bag

Hey family!!! Hey, firstly I'll let you know that on my way to the ciber, we passed by the post office and I received the letter you had sent with the camera card in it!! It looks great, thanks for sending it. I still haven't received the padded envelope yet. If it was sent to the mission home, I will be receiving it this coming Pday, because the zone leaders go to the mission home this Wednesday.

I am sending you some pictures of things I told you I would, the brick oven and I am sending a picture of a 30 dollar order we paid with all 25 cent coins and lower, which in this country is a good thing. The man very happily accepted our big wad of coins with an "expactacular!!!" And yes, that's in Spanish, or Castellano.

Today for Pday we played soccer again, and it is a lot of fun to be able to play soccer again. It was a really good game, and we won 9-7. After that we just came straight back here to Villa and to do ciber, and due to all the traveling, it's already 4 o'clock so Pday is almost over already. After ciber we'll go and pick up our clothes, so we'll finally have clean clothes after wearing the same dirty clothes for so long. This is due to the weather, because you can't wash anything here when it's rainy. The best part is, I will have my jacket again, since I had turned it in to be washed on Thursday, and we've had some very cold weather lately. It gets super cold here because of all the humidity.

Our pench has two big holes above the windows where cold air comes in always, which would be nice to fix, but I assume it'll just stay the way it is. Despite the lack of insulation and big holes, though, our pench still only gets down to about 55 or 60 degrees at night so far (but that's with both portable heaters going full blast all night.) That may seem cold, but many missionary penches get down much colder and many don't have heaters.

I'm glad you got to enjoy really hot weather on your trip. And yes, I remember Tuacahn theater and really liked it.

Also, yes, people still take siestas here, and even if they don't sleep, they still get off work for those hours. EVERYTHING is still closed during the siesta, even though it's cold now.

To answer your question, the kids wear uniforms in school, in grade school they have something called guardapolvo, which are like little white lab coats, so elementary school kids look like a bunch of little scientists. The teachers also wear dresses. In the kindergarten, they have something similar, but it's more colorful. When you get to high school, it just depends on your school. A few require uniforms, but most don't.

The Rios family is doing good but didn't go to church last week or the week before, because they say they have to work on their house. Although they could have worked after church. But that attitude is something we see a lot here. People start going to church, keeping the commandments, and quickly they get blessings. And often the first thing they do when they get blessings is forget God. For example, the Rios's were blessed and got a lot of money from a random job, and a lot of other random things, so they decided to buy stuff to build their house and forget going to church. It's sad, but it happens. They're still great people though, and I wouldn't by any means consider them inactive. We will keep working with them.

That attitude is kind of how people drop out of school here. Many adults can't read and their kids are teaching them, or they are trying to go back to school. But a lot of kids still drop out of school. They don't really mean to drop out. They just sort of stop going for a while, and then suddenly it has been years.

This week they told us to make sure that all packages sent to the mission home have a green sticker on them, which declares to customs the contents. They say that by doing it that way, they will get here quicker and also they go directly to the mission home, instead of to the post office. Apparently they won't go to the post office anymore to get packages, so that's why they have to be sent that way.

Well, this is the last week with President Villalba. We'll have a new mission president already by next week, so it'll be interesting to see any changes. We'll also have transfers next week, of course, so a lot is about to change. I'll be sure and let you know.

I love you all very much!!

Eric

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