Elder Parker Reber: The two Amerikanos...and Herman

"Hi there!" -quote from richard reber

Wow gotta say two Amerikanos in this area has been a sweet adventure! Haha Elder Petersen and I have had a blast together. We work pretty similar and have seen lots of cool things happen. We went in this little alley of one of our investigators and met all the kids and each of them introduced us to their parents. Some parents were nice and others wanted to kill their kids haha. We got lots of new investigators this week and have lots of return appointments for this upcomin week. It has been super fun!

I gave a baptism interview to a 16 year old named Judy Ann. It was such a neat interview for me. She was super ready and energetic it's the best seeing someone on fire with the gospel even though they're just 16. She was kicked out of her home by her parents and a member couple (both RM's) took her in I guess. It was a cool story and uplifting for me to hear her testimony throughout the interview questions.

We saw some super great things happen with the area this week. We went back to Charlon Altez and his fam, who i had met on exchanges the week before getting sick. After we taught the whole restoration they were just blown away. It clicked really well with them which is always a good feeling. Brother Charlon looked at us and hardly knew what to do so he just yelled "soft drinks!!" Haha we had some nice mtn dew after the lesson literally they were just trying to do anything to "repay" us. With the culture here they don't like feeling in debt and as a result we often get crackers or something after lessons :) All of those kids of the part member fam are doing great too. They all have book of mormons now and little calendars where they check off if they've read and prayed as they prep for their baptism. They're so awesome lots of them went to play basketball with the ward too on thursday. Jordan has been at the hospital 24/7 watching over his step dad. He feels like he can't leave and literally hardly sleeps so he can be there for him. We teach him in the hospital in a little waiting area where nobody really goes. It's been fun visiting his step dad and watching him improve. One day we walked in and he gave us a huge thumbs up. I went up to where his eye could see and asked if we could give him a blessing of comfort. He nodded his head and started to cry haha. He hadn't been able to sleep but after the blessing he was out cold. I hadn't seen anything like that in my life it was really amazing. His less active rm mom came to church yesterday which made us super happy! Sadly jordan was still watching over giovanni at the hosp so his baptism will be moved a bit. All is well though it's been great learning from them!

Ohhh man something crazy went down this week. So we went to the funeral of a sister of our ward who passed away to give messages. Luckily they ended up only needing one so I got outta it ;) But anyways heading home from that i needed to hit the restroom super bad! I ran inside the house and bam a handsome 8 inch worm named herman came outta my bod. I flipped out let's just say haha. It was moving around and everything! Soo yeah i texted sister turner our nurse and found out what type of worm it was and stuff. I guess it comes from pork not cooked properly and has probably been living in my stomach for weeks. That along with the amoeba is why i've lost so much weight! But yeah there's more to the story. I guess if the worm gets that big it lays eggs and has some nice babies. It can range as to how many but it gets up usually to around 20. Sooo yeah in my stomach I've got about 20 worms straight chilling living the high life. The assistants brought me some crazy meds that basically bomb em down there.

It's weird now too when i eat because i know all the food i'm eating just gets eaten up by these worms. The more I eat the more they eat and the bigger they get. The assistants told me sister turner showed them a cartoon of one worm moving around then on the next slide there were 20 slithering around the screen haha. They all think it's pretty funny. I'm trying to feed my "children" some good food tho! Mcdons was my first meal when i learned of all of this haha. But actually the pills are awesome and I ate my first full meal on saturday in about 15 days at the one and only Mang Inasal.

But yeah that's about all! We found this AWESOME new fam, the Kastillo fam. One of the most spiritual first lessons i've ever been in about God's love, families, and the temple. We both showed them pictures of our families which they they were excited to see. They promised us they'd go to church and said they one day want to enter the temple. I also have been the ward pianist for the past 3 wks. It's fun to sit down and that I can still remember stuff decently even though I don't ever practice out here. We had 8 investigators at church yesterday which was exciting for us. We might start up an english class? And i might do piano lessons again. We just need to organize some of these ideas. I'm excited for these next months in the mission! I know that God is always there to help me and to help you. Look for His hand in your life!

Love you all. Watch what you eat.

Elder Reber