Blessed in both body and spirit

This week has felt like a week of blessings, in more ways than one. One the temporal side of things, last Monday we discovered the first and ONLY Jamba Juice in the country, which happens to be found in my lovely area of San Ramon. The zone leaders changed our district meeting location to San Ramon for just that reason. =P We had a "district Jamba fest" and the zone leaders went crazy. Everything is about half the price it is in the states since it´s so easy to find fruit here. The look on the Hermana Ho´s face (she´s from Guatemala) as she took a drink was hilarious. A look of pure shock and bliss. =D
It´s felt like we´ve been working a "reconstruction" of the area this last week. Since February the missionaries have been focusing in one neighborhood, and things are starting to slow down there. We´ve started to work one other area, where Eduardo and Jeannette live, teaching other family members of their´s. To tell the truth last week was just hectic. We´ve run into some legal document issues on top of that with 3 of our investigators, all of which need to be married. I´m praying the Lord will show us the way in how we can fix all of that, but I also have to accept His will if I´m suppose to be here when they get baptized or not.

Friday was work as usual, but we did celebrate the best we could. The fair was in town, so we treated ourselves to some churros and, of course, some Jamba Juice. It was raining all day, but I´ve gotten use to the daily downpours of Costa Rica. Friday morning our wash lady, the Hermana Mildrid, and her two kids called around 6:30 a.m. and sung me Happy Birthday. Later in the day we stopped by quickly, which was my mistake, because they all egged me 5 minutes before our next appointment. =P Friday night I made banana cream pie and Elder Hoyt made the crust. I´ve definately gotten better at that, it turned out great and we ended up sharing it with the Hermana Mildrid and her family, and they too loved it. =D
Saturday the Hermana Mildrid invited us to a "2-in-1" birthday party. Since the 3rd was my birthday, and today (the 6th) is her daugther, Tatiana´s birthday, the Hermana made a chocolate cake for both of us. It was pretty good. I´m not much of a cake person, but I did enjoy celebrating my birthday with good friends.

As I said this last week has been hectic. There´s so much to do and so little time to do it. Too much for just one companionship to tell the truth. San Ramon really needs four missionaries here. The work is progressing and last week we just couldn´t do EVERYTHING we wanted and plan to. It was simply impossible. We ended up teaching 30 lessons last week, and there were some other 10 lessons we ended up missing due to lack of time. Despite running around like a crazy man the Lord kept us going and we didn´t feel exhausted until lasy night (Sunday). It all hit me at once then. Elder Hoyt has been great though, I´ve been truly blessed to have him as my companion at mission´s end. He´s here to work and he knows what he´s doing. He only has 4 months in the mission, but he´s far from being a "greenie". Plus our common interests are off the wall, it´s been so much fun. I haven´t had a companionship like this since I was with my trainer, Elder DePriest.

The work keeps going and life keeps coming. Today we went to Volcan Arenal and took some pictures there. We all wanted to kill the zone leaders for making us go in ropa misional, knowing we´d be hiking around the volcano. One of the hermanas in San Carlos, the Hermana Turnbaugh, and I were plotting what we´d do to the zone leaders IF we could catch up with them. =P

I love you all and I hope you have a great week! It´s so weird that school has already started. Time really is flying. Cuídese mucho a todos. ¡Ciao!

Tu Hijo,
Elder Nunie