The missing letter!!! Week 1 in the field!

Hola everybody,

First of all, I´m trying to send some pictures but it´s looking like the computer is really slow so I´m going to write as much as I can while I´m waiting. My first week has been interesting. It is a bit of a culture shock but I´m glad I had the CCM to help ease that a bit. So, what´s it like here? Well, it is a very humble place. It´s not as structured as the states and is definitely not as structured as Utah. The roads don´t make any sense except for the fact that they fallow the mountains sometimes. It sounds like a bunch of garbage trucks are driving all over the place but it looks like garbage trucks are distributing the garbage everywhere. If all you did was drive through this place and never got to know the people you could very easily misjudge these people. I´ve been told that I was "born in the states" which means that I am starting my mission in a very nice place and a nice home. We have hot running water and the place we live in is practically the nicest. My "Dad" is elder Allison and is fairly new as well. He has 8 months in the mission now. There is so much I am learning right now, including all those names that I can´t remember to save my life. I thought I was bad at remembering English names... we have two investigators that have baptismal dates for the 1st. One is Pablo who is the novio of one of the members in the ward. He has had a problem with smoking but he´s almost gotten past it. He had a baptismal date for this last week but he fell again. We taught him and he seems extremely sincere. He really wants to break the habit. They are going to be married on the 8th I believe. It´s exciting for them. The other investigator is a novia of a member whose name is... yo creo Gustado.. and her family is Catholic. She is afraid to ask her parents to be baptized so we asked her to set a date and we are going to teach her a number of lessons that should help her come closer to Christ and to gain a testimony and love for Christ. I´m hoping in doing this that she can have the courage to ask her parents to be baptized as her testimony grows. I asked my compañero if he thought that would work and he seems to just go with the flow. Whenever I shoot out an idea, he´s just says OK. The members are great. They are so nice and they are so close as families. There's a lot more I could say but we´re about done. We haven´t figured out how to send mail here yet so I don´t think I´ll be able to send a written letter this week but I will send one with more detail as soon as I can. The bishop´s father in law is one of the very first members in this area and is an awesome grandpa, very humble and just great with his family. He reminds me of Grandpa Chisholm. Everyone here IS really short, and almost everyone who isn´t a member is Evangelico. Knocking on doors doesn´t work. I hate doing it and the only time we do it is in commute to other places and appointments. It´s a rule here not to schedule time to go out contacting and I can see why. It just doesn´t work. My Spanish is coming along as far as understanding but when it comes to talking I just struggle for every single word. I´m talking as much as I can but usually in a conversation, it goes too fast for me to think of something to say before it´s too late. I can´t wait to be able to just talk in Spanish. Everyone has advice on what to do but when it comes down to it, it just takes time. So I´m doing my best to be patient.