March 2 letters

I work in the poorest areas in Africa where people certainly starve and other things like that happen. Is it sad at times? yes. Do you need to feel sad about it? no. The best thing you can do is just pray for them; that the lord will put the gospel in their paths and help them have better success. Many times they have money they are just terrible at using it. They spend it all on beer or just right away on random stuff. 

This week we had some good progress with our families and we are almost completely ready with one of the families that we have to be baptized and married, also a couple others are really close too. Belmiro and Isabel are just waiting on some documents from another city. Rosita and Goncolvez are ready and we have another one that is waiting. The power went out a bunch this week like usual but it's just part of living in Africa I guess. 

We continue to prepare more and more for the stake. We helped the young womens presidency in our branch along with the teachers have a meeting and get things organized we also taught a seminar on how to give a lesson so that was pretty good. 

 Colin asked Daniel about hygiene and if it felt like he'd already been out for 8 months.  Here are his responses:

It really depends how you look at it with the fast or slow thing. I feel like I've been here forever but at the same time 8 months is a long time and I've already been through a substantial chunk. Plus the days go by really fast because I'm constantly working super hard. The times without as much success or work to do are the ones that drag on. Right now things are going great though and time is flying by.

We can't eat with members because of sanitary stuff, unless they are rich and have filtered water. There is a filter in every house and we have to only drink that and use it for ice, cooking etc. We have to wear shower sandals always which kinda sucks and I'm excited for home so I can shower bare foot. We have a foot scrubber for the shower every day, a special hand sanitizer and it is a rule to take 2 showers every day. We have to take our malaria pills every day. Yeah, that's it that I can think of. 

I have never gotten sick enough to be throwing up. I stayed in once while I was in Magoanine because I was feeling bad but that's it. It's been all good so far with that for me.