ELDER JEFF DESPAIN

ELDER JEFF DESPAIN

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Visitors From AZ In Aruba!

Bon Tardi famia y amigunan!!!

Wow, things are going great here, and I have an awesome story about church yesterday!

First off, to answer your question, one Sacrament meeting is at 9:00 AM, and the other one doesn't start until like 11:30, so we go to the first one and Sunday School there, then we leave and drive down to the other one. You can actually see Venezuela from the second Church in San Nicolas, it's really cool! (There are two branches on the island and we asked if he and Elder LeCheminant are able to attend both or if they meet at the same time.)

Ok, so get this, yesterday there were like 20 American tourists that came to one of the branches, and one of them was a couple that lives five miles from us at home!!! Their names are Jay and Mary Massow. Jay actually does work with Uncle Mark!!!! It is so cool! They are going to call mom, well, the wife is, and they took a picture with me! That's way cool. We actually were just playing raquetball at the hotel they're staying at this morning for p-day, and they invited us to go to lunch, but we decided that we better not. Even though it's not really the members from here and it's not really eating in their house, we decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, so we didn't eat with them, but they should be giving you a call!!!! (In Jeff's mission one of the rules is that they are not supposed to eat with the members in their homes.)

Papiamento is like the native language of the ABC islands, but almost everyone also knows Spanish and English, so we've done some teaching in English even!!! We have mostly done Spanish. It's kind of hard right now because Elder LeCheminant only has one more transfer than me down here, so he is learning Papiamento too, but he does way better than I do. He bore his testimony in both churches yesterday in Papiamento. I'm coming along. There is really only like one book that some Aruban guy wrote that is for English speakers learning Papiamento, so we both bought that one and that is what we use and sometimes we study it together, and we have a dictionary. And get this, the Book of Mormon is only partly translated in Papiamento, so it looks like a regular Book of Mormon, just smaller, and it says "selections" of the Book of Mormon, so we read that too. It is kind of cool, you'll just be reading through like 1 Nephi 5 and then you'll finish the chapter and it just jumps right to chapter 16. It's really cool. They only translated a few different parts.

They actually have water that you can drink out of the faucet here and there is always water and always electricity, but I'm not sure where it comes from. (Henry wanted to know where they generate the electricity on such a small island . . . it doesn't matter really to me where it comes from, I'm just glad it's there and available all the time! :)

Hey, to answer your question about the birthday package, send the package to the MISSION OFFICE IN SANTO DOMINGO anyway. It's fine. I think that it will be fine with President to bring three down instead of just two, we can work that out. What's up is that I don't know how the package would work out getting here to the Aruban address, plus we're not at home all day. I would tell you to send it to the Branch President's house here, but we don't have his address. You can give it a shot here, but I'm pretty sure DHL will charge me at the door.

One of the pictures I sent is of President and Sister Martineau with Tenerey when they were here, one is of the beach, and another of the downtown part. (The last two are on the blog now. The one of Tenery is a picture of a picture so it is pretty blurry.) I'm sorry to be so short, but I'm out of time! I love you so much!!!

Love,
Elder DeSpain

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