August 10 update

We were excited to hear that Elder Kenison's new companion, as of last Tuesday, is Elder Mejia, who is from Honduras! We know very little about him other than that; we'll have to ask more questions next week. In addition to Elder Mejia, there's a new housemate from Chile — Elder Romero, who is companion to Elder Rawlins (from Texas). Matt has now been in Cartagena longer than anyone else in the apartment!

it's been pretty crazy learning so much spanish. haha it's been crazy. i found out that elder romero loves Brownies (we make them from scratch haha) and he's amazing at cooking Pan (bread) there is a really popular bread that we cooked the other day haha it was awesome

Matt mentioned he was going to send photos of some of the things (like his bread), but we never got any photos from himis week. Either he ran out of time, or there was a problem in sending. Or he forgot. :(

The weather continues to cause challenges for their proselyting efforts. Matt commented,

it's really hot well warm for about 4 hours, usually about 12-4 then it gets FREEZING!!! haha mostly just windy.

And then this summary of the work:

it's been crazy. no one has really been home. Olga and Natalia are still gone. but we found 3 more investigators and taught lots of inactives. we got them to say that they'd come to church. but we actually had a stake conference in San Antonio. and some didn't want to make the financial sacrifice. well actually alot of them didn't. but we'll get them to come this week haha WOOT!

Meanwhile, back home in Utah, Matt's sister Sarah was married on Friday August 7 to Brian Wright (who served his mission in Honduras, where Matt's current companion is from).

I think it was probably a little poignant for both of them; they have become very close over the years. So I arranged for Matt to be there "in spirit" — and in a life-sized photographic likeness! It was a lot of fun to have him with us, symbolically. He wrote a personal note to Sarah which I read to her when I "unveiled" the cutout at the wedding luncheon; that was a highlight. Everyone enjoyed having Matt around. He was especially popular at the restaurant where we had the wedding luncheon, Los Hermanos, because Matt used to work there before his mission!