its a small world

Hey family and everyone else that still reads my emails!

Cool story/small world experience! Before the mission at Jon
Diederichs farewell I talked with his cousin Katie Nydegger. She said
that she knew someone that was in the same MTC that I was going to!
She opened up one of his emails and showed me. It was cool to read
about what the MTC was going to be like and I remember that he wrote
something about getting one of his best haircuts in the MTC. Last
transfer we got a new zone leader (Elder Anderson) and he came up to
me and asked if I knew Katie. Turns out he was her home teacher while
he was at BYU and I told him I read his email before I left. He remembered
writing about his really good haircut and its so weird how I came
across his email before the mission and now he is my zone leader! He
is coming up this week to do splits with us!

The branch is progressing! Our new branch president is awesome. He has
been interviewing a lot of our members to get a recommendation to the
dedication of the Temple in Trujillo. We are going to take a bunch of
members to Arequipa this Sunday to go see it. We have rescued a lot of
less actives and we are giving them callings. As of now our branch has
a President, mission leader, Relief society president and one
counselor, and  young women’s president. We decided to broaden the calling
instead of only having one full presidency. I have been assigned to be
the new elder’s quorum president. I have learned a lot about how the
church leadership works and all of the responsibilities.

My comp is great! We haven’t had any problems or anything. The only
bad thing is that I talked in church yesterday and I started talking
in English without realizing it haha! I think that is a pro and a con
about having a comp from the states. We haven’t had problems because
there isn’t any miscommunication and con is that my Spanish is going
to get worse!

My health is back to normal. Its amazing how fast my mom can message me the name of a prescription that I desperately needed. The village doctors gave me a pain relief and a Claritin pill. They tried. I needed an anti-biotic so I found it in the city the next day when I traveled down to a zone conference.  It gets really cold here every night but
we bought more clothes to wear so we stay warm!

Thanks for all the love and support! A goal we have put for our branch
is to get them to the temple. I challenge all of you to make an effort
to go (in Utah its a lot easier so you don’t have any excuses)! Have a
great week, love you all!