The bathroom is pretty sweet.

Okay... first to the questions:

Q: what kind of place do you live in? I assume it's an apartment...one room?...upstairs?...bunk beds?...what are the wash facilities?...and the cooking facilities?
A: We live in a 4 elder apartment that is behind the house of the owner (not member). It has 4 rooms. Every apartment, or pench as we say, has to have: Full Bathroom, Kitchen and Sleeping area. The mission is trying to get rid of all the 4 elder penches. So we are looking for a new one currently. But for the meantime we live in this one. It is outside our area, so we are looking for one inside our area. ANYWAY. It is a one level apartment. There is one set of bunk beds that the other elders have... but they don’t use them like bunk beds. The "washing facilities" would be a bathroom. Oh, and a large sink outside if we want to hand wash out clothes... but we don’t have time, so we bring them to a cleaner. The bathroom is pretty sweet. You can basically use the toilet while showering... pretty cool if you think about it.
The coolest part is that there is an area outside the door with plants and a little grass. Over the years elders have planted a lemon tree, pomegranate tree, onions and a few other things I don’t know the names of. They don’t give us a lot of food... but it is good food.

Q: Do you eat often at members? or not at all?
A: We do eat with members. We have a set appointment every Wednesday and Thursday to eat lunch. On Tuesdays we eat dinner with someone. On Sundays our ward mission leader gives us food at church to eat at home. Every once in awhile we eat with someone outsides of these appointments. But basically this. Our branch is pretty small... Basically all the active members give us food.

Q: You walk everywhere...so how do you figure travel time between appointments and clapping houses?
A: Well, we take a bus every morning and travel to our area. Then we walk. We measured it once... we normally walk about 1-2 miles in the morning and 9-10 in the night. It sounds like a lot... but isn’t too bad. You have to remember that we talk to about 20 people for every mile. Anyway... we normally go to an appointment in the morning. After that we travel to another appointment or plan and while traveling we clap houses. Basically whenever we are walking we clap houses. It helps pass the time and progresses the work. If we are in a hurry we just speed walk and skip the clapping. Our area isn’t that big, but big enough to make things difficult.

ANYWAY... this week:

We worked hard this week, but it has just been a bad week. We kind of got thrown off with the activity we did last Tuesday. Then we had interviews the next day. Then an activity the day after. It was just like boom boom boom. We`ve been working hard... and for that reason the week seems forever long. People say that when you work harder the time seems to speed up. I’ll be honest, that is a huge lie! Well, for me at least. The "harder" I work, the more things I have in my mind... the day never seems to end and the weeks feel like months. When you talk to 500 people a day and know half their names... when you are constantly thinking about addresses and people who need help today... it all seems so long. BUT that means we get 5 times the work in. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining... I’m just telling you so you understand. It is kind of like that story in the scriptures when God gave "the good guys" a little more day light to finish the battle. Well, God slows down time so we can do what he wants (we don’t work as fast as him).

We have had the wonderful fortune of finding and teaching all sorts of people this week. We have a solid list of people we teach and lists of others. It is wonderful when we can strengthen people. When people move from the "other investigators" section to the "progressing investigators" section. We have a lot of people who are progressing and becoming THAT much closer to being baptized or coming back to church. Our baptismal dates are still going strong. The weather has not been the best, so that has slowed some things down. I swear, one little rain cloud and everyone is sick. All well... at least it passes with the bad weather. PS I love muddy roads. It makes walking a lot more interesting.

Well, sorry this is a shorter one. But things have been crazy. I’m doing wonderful though. We played soccer today and I feel great. Going out and running is fun. I’m staying active both spiritually and physically. My beloved friends here are progressing as well as the Elders around here. I’m becoming more obedient every day... all is well. I don’t know what else to say. Sorry no crazy cool stories again. Next week yeah!

Love you all,
Tommy

PS This is the last week of the transfers. It could be that next week I’ll be in a new area.
PPS SMILE!