One more week of training!

Well, we had a baptism this week. Fiorela was baptized and all went quite well. I wish baptisms could be a little bit more calm and spiritual for missionaries. It's so awesome that she finally made it to baptism, but we have to prepare everything and we're running around the whole day trying to get everything together. There're so many little details to take care of. But it's still a wonderful experience all the same. The only thing we've got to do now is hang on to her. Because we're having retention problems with the new converts in Huanchaco, and we've got to change that. The ward has now taken action with us to help keep them and to bring them back, so hopefully that'll be what changes it.

Spanish is still coming along well, allbeit a lot slower. I'm mostly learning how to speak normally more than learning new words and phrases. I'm still learning them, but my progress seems to be more in conversations and in teaching clearly. But I'm going out of my way to talk with people and try to keep up every day conversation, because that's one of the hardest things to do for me. But I'm getting there little by little.

As for my work the past week, our zone helped build another house. It's really amazing how simple it is to build a house when you don't have to do anything with plumbing or wires or anything. We were in the most poor part of Trujillo where people build their own houses for about $300. And some for even less. They just put the bricks together and call it a home. Still very humbling to me.

Well, I forgot to tell a funny story from when I was with the other North American missionary, Elder Flansburg last week (the one who has some troubles with Spanish). We were finishing up dinner, when Elder Flansburg wanted to let my Penchanista know that the food is good. So he told her, "Hermana, está ricasa!" Which means, "Sister [Angela], the food is really rich!" Which is all fine and dandy, but the funny thing is that he didn't address the sentance to the food. If you listened to the sentence as referring to her (because "ésta" can refer to "you" or "it"), it means, "Sister [Angela], you're really hot!"
So that turned out very, very funny. For us. Not so much for him. We still can't stop laughing. Oh, the dangers of learning a new language...

I only have one more week of training left! Weird thought. It'll be 5 months soon...
Hope all is going well back home! Let me know what's going on.
Elder Seth