WEEK 2, With more photos!

Que pasa familia?
Thanks for the emails and the advice!  Things have gotten a lot better this past week.  We had a devotional on Tuesday that was a video of a talk given by Elder Nelson and in it he said that there are ancestors of the people we are going to teach who are praying for us to make the right decisions and prepare well enough to be able to bring this Gospel to the lives of their family members.  I thought that that was so cool.  It hit me hard and made me realize that there are a lot of people who are counting on me to invite their family members unto Christ.  I cannot let them down!  The Spirit was so strong in that devotional for me, and it was just another reminder of why I am here.  It is very easy to forget that during some days, haha they get very long!  But I really am so grateful for this opportunity.
J-dawg!  Happy Birthday my man!  I hope it was a great day and I'm so bummed that I missed it!  I would've taken you out driving or something haha.  You look pretty good in my clothes. ;)  How is my bed?  and phone?  Did you get your permit yet?  I got all of your guys' letters finally!  They take about two weeks to get here so you will probably get mine in a couple weeks.  Haha you were about right on about the rice and beans for every meal!  About 90% of the time there are rice, beans, and tortillas to eat.  The will give you a main plate with usually chicken or beef which is pretty good!  Then you load your plate with rice and beans and like 6 tortillas, pile everything on a tortilla and enjoy. :)  Breakfast is the worst by far.  They have cereal which is a good thing, but the main dish is usually something crazy. Yesterday was cut up hot dogs, potato ball things with spaghetti sauce.  Like, what the ??  They had tres leches once last week though and it was INCREDIBLE.  I really enjoyed that!  Our native elders who were in our apartment left for the field on Monday.  It was hard saying good bye to them cause they were awesome!  But they will do great.  Elder Rowberry and I still have Elder Hawkes and Elder Christensen tho, and we have some great times!  Every night we laugh so hard, and it is usually about Elder Christensen trying to speak spanish to the natives haha.  He's not so great with the pronunciations.  We had our firsts TRC last night and it was probably the most frustrating thing I have gone through yet.  TRC is when we talk and teach to a volunteer, but we didn't have any volunteers yet so it was just one of the teachers.  We had Hermana Mckay who is a returned missionary and one of our teachers.  We were supposed to know her and help her with her struggles in life.  I felt so inadequate to do that, because she was supposed to be teaching us!  First off, I can hardly understand and communicate in spanish and Elder Rowberry and I could not come up with anything to ask or say. We had a lot of awkward silences and I just felt so frustrated and devastated.  I later realized that we are capable of helping anyone and everyone, we just need to rely on the Spirit.  It's hard!  But your right dad, it will be so worth it!
Yes, Mom, I have everything I need! and THANK YOU SO MUCH for putting my name on everything.  It has made laundry so much easier!!  I saw one kid get a package here, but we were all told that you can't receive any here?  So I don't know what the deal is with that.  But I love the letters so keep them coming!!  It has rained a lot this past week, like every night, very hard!  It's pretty cool when it rains.  But you get wet pretty quick!  I'll send a picture of that. :)
Well, I love you all very much !  Can't wait to hear back from you.

Love,
Elder Thorpe

BEAUTIFUL!

You can take the boy out of football and baseball, but you can't take football and baseball out of the boy!

Happy Birthday, Jantsen!