Elder Paxman in Indiana: El Pecoso and some photos

Dear Family,

(Ben recently sent home another SD card full of photos and video. I had told him some of the photos are blurry and has he checked the auto focus etc.) Yeah, I have noticed that some of my pictures on my camera are blurry too and I do not know how to fix it so that is kind of a pain... I am just going to keep working at it...

Well Things here are going great. Celeste is still doing well and is interested. We stopped by one morning at 9 a.m. on our way to a meeting and shared something real quick and we gave her a Book of Mormon. She said we could come back after the meeting, so we did, and by the time we got back around 1:00 p.m., she had already read the intro and the testimonies!! I have never had an investigator progress in less than 24 hours not to mention about 3 and a half hours.

My health is still doing pretty good, although I found an addiction out here. It is called Tampico. It is a really cheap juice that tastes good. I get the red one and it isn’t that unhealthy too which is nice. We also got Ivonne and Jesus to church for the first time this last week. It was good, but they could only stayed for the first hour.

My Spanish is getting much better and I think it is because both my companion and I have to try harder to communicate with people, in fact sometimes I catch myself talking Spanish when I am supposed to talk in English, but only a few words that sound common. Well Yazmine the girl that was my first baptism is doing really well, she is planning on getting a car so she can come out to lessons with us. Her mother Adela is an investigator who knows it is true, she is just stuck in her old traditions so it is going to be interesting with her. Adela can never remember our names, (as it is with most of the Hispanics I have met so far) Most the time they just call us Elder, or sometimes a descriptive word, for me it is El Pecoso, or just Pecoso, which means freckly one or freckle face. I like it and it is pretty catchy haha.

I was able to get the backpack and it works wonders so far, although they just announced that in about 6 months they want us using side packs.... Which is hard while biking, even that taska bag... Side bags are just not meant for biking. The mission gets cars in September, so we won’t get one till then, and I will have 6 months on my mission by that time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What da freak, where did it all go!?! (I’m assuming he is referring to the time) So after some time I might have you look around there for a good side pack, like one we use for the camera, like a cross-over thingy.

(He has asked me to contact a few friends via Facebook and get their current addresses) Yes if you could do that with some of the people I mentioned, that would be great, because I have a letters for them, but I don’t know what they are doing with college and stuff, so I don’t know where to send it. I will also be sending letters to Annie, Matthew Hair, Lara, Daniel Sorenson, and people like that to the house and I need you to once they arrive tell the respective persons you have a letter from me for them and that they need to come get it. Or if you can get the letters to them. This will save on postage which I am running low on, and will let me get mail to those people that I don’t have contact info to.

Biking is still hard, my Bike is just a beast, me and my companion compare our bikes to like his is a nice Lambo or something and mine is an ancient Ford that dies every 5 miles but it makes me in shape and it gets me from point a to point b so no complaints here. The Hi-Chews were very appreciated by all, although many have been disappearing very quickly, the little thief’s haha. Yea I tried not crying during the videos but it wasn’t happening. (He is referring to a video message he sent for his sister who is getting married in a few weeks) I finally got a full one after like 5 tries goodness. But there is one that I really liked in there and I hope you use that one. You will have to include tons of pictures for me because I need a lot more. Also the new temple movie sounds cool; I wanted to ask what they changed but decided that probably isn’t the best idea. Well our fridge currently has 5 gallons of Tampico in it because we got so much!! It was on sale for 3 for 4 bucks so that was awesome. Oh also we are going bowling today so if you could put some money in my debit card to use that would be fantastic thanks.

(In one of the videos he sent he is being challenged to eat a whole pepper of some kind)The people I am eating the pepper with is Freddie a member, Yazmine, and her mom Adela. I have had to ride my bike in the rain and it is way fun except the part where all my planner and stuff in my pockets got soaking wet. But my back is drenched here anyway with sweat most of the time, the humidity makes me sweat a ton and it is a pain in the butt. Your weather sounds way hot, but I think I would trade you types of heat any day haha.

Well I love you all so much and I hope everything goes great for the wedding and everything preparing for it. You need to send pictures and take tons of video. Tell dad the deck is looking good and let him read this too. Well Love you all so much and I will hear from you next week.

Love, your son Elder Paxman (Pecoso)