Hello,
It's been a pretty crazy week! Encinitas is so different than the Valley! It's been good so far though. The first few days were crazy because we didn't have a working working sim card, which meant no calls and no wifi. That made things difficult.
There's also not nearly as much Spanish speaking people here. We are much further north, in a pretty rich area. On my first full day here, we helped a family in the branch move out. They lived in this hugeee house. One of the pictures I'll send is the view from their 3rd story window.
We didn't have much food this week. Last tuesday when we got here, we didn't really have any money, so we could only buy rice and beans. We forgot salt and pepper, so we ate rice and beans seasoned with hot sauce, and pepperoni that Elder Jones brought with him from his last area. We all decided that it wasn't good, but also, "It ain't gross". That's our new standard now for food haha.
My two new comps are Elder Cook and Elder Jones! Elder Cook is 2 years older than me. He's jacked! He spent 2 years in a coast guard academy playing football. We both came out at the same time. It's so funny to hear him talk in Spanish. He's just this huge guy, super friendly, saying stuff like "Amigooo, como esta??" In a super deep voice. Elder Jones has been out in the mission for about a year, but he's basically been in English work his whole mission.
We went to English class with the sisters here who have been popping off in the branch (like 3 baptisms in the last month or something), and there were a record 10 people there! We broke off into groups at one point to help them learn some stuff, and I went with two guys named Arturo and Albert. I had a conversation there with them for about 30 minutes, all in Spanish! And then after the class, while Arturo was waiting to have his baptismal interview (he's one of the 3 the sisters have helped towards baptism, Albert is one of the others), I talked with him for another 20 minutes or so, all by myself! My companions now think my Spanish is really good haha, so I've been promoted to "honorary senior companion for Spanish" by Elder Jones.
General Conference this past weekend was great! We listened to 2 of the 5 sessions in Spanish with some of the people the sisters are teaching, along with Albert and Arturo. I didn't get as much out of those two sessions haha.
We've been trying to build a teaching pool from scratch, since we are "opening the area". I want to start things off right here and get things popping! So, we have just been searching all the parks, beachs, Mexican markets and restaurants for Spanish speaking people! As a result, I've taken a few pictures of the sunsets from the beach haha.
Let me know if there's anything exciting going on in the world or in your lives!
Have a good week!
Elder Pettit
