At least this time he has pictures...

Dear Family,

This last week was crazy.

I´m just saying. So, As I said last week, I´m now financial secretary and District leader. What little extra time I once had to do personal study and such has disappeared. Here in Cape Verde instead of taking one hour for lunch and one hour for dinner, we take 2 for lunch and no dinner. Here in the office, that 2 hours often becomes one as we chop time out of our lunch to finish things in the office so that we can do our proselyting in the afternoon. Needless to say, I´m a lot more tired now than before.

Also, my language study block got the chop as well. Normally missionaries will have 8.00 personal study, 9.00 companionship study, and 10.00 is language study. We have to be at the office at 10.00. So.... yea. I really need to focus so that I don´t start losing my Portuguese, especially because my companion is American. Also, working with numbers and money and computer screens is nice sometimes, but sometimes it feels like i´m in school again, and I start to get a headache. It´s a different life here in the office. We stil proselyte in the afternoon, but often times I don´t even feel like a missionary. I´m trying to stay on top of things, and I know that whom the Lord calls He qualifies, so I will trust that He knows what He´s doing and just keep working.

As for the interesting things that I have observed...

The other day I saw the movie Anastasia playing on someone´s tv in Portuguese. It was pretty funny, It also made me think of Megan and how she would always watch that movie. Good times...

Every so often, we´ll see ladies going down the streets sweeping up trash. Little sanitation crews I guess. Hey, if it gives someone work, and it really does need it...

It´s also kind of sad how often I´ll see someone with a physical deformity be it a hump back, missing a limb, a defective limb, or something else. I rarely saw this in America, whether it´s because of the medical care or what I´m not sure, but it´s a daily thing to see someone walking down the street with crutches because he is missing a leg, or some such thing.

Also, although the missionaries here all of indoor plumbing, many people here have to fill up water jugs every day so they can have water. It´s a different world out here.

But they do have a grocery store chain out here called Calú e Ángela which is basically the walmart out here. It´s primarily a grocery store, but you can find most anything else out here you need. And it´s cheap. that´s something really nice about Praia. When I leave here Í will miss that. but it´s still funny sometimes to eat off brand Ramen noodles. that´s right, off brand ramen noodles. think about that one.

Sometimes when we are walking down the street we´ll hear someone yell `Elder!´ We´ll turn and look, but they are talking to someone else. Apparently, parents here have started naming their children ´elder´. It causes some confusion for us, but it´s also kind of funny.

What´s also kind of funny is how well drunk people here speak english. We´ll often be walking in our area and be approached by a drunk man and he´ll start talking to us in good english. We generally don´t talk long, but it seems that drunk people here speak better english than sober people. Crazy!

Well, my time is about up. Hope this was a good update for ya´lls. Keep it reals and keep writing.

Elder Peterson