September 2, 2013 Email

Dear Mom and Dad,

Everything is still going great and is getting a little better. My companion is great and we are getting along really well. Sorry about not emailing yesterday but our Mission President moved p-day to today so we could work on the holiday, since people were more likely to be home. I'll tell you more about that later.

This past week has been fun and hard at the same time. We got fed ribs twice this week. The first time was over at an investigators home. They really enjoy our company and wanted us to feel right at home since we are so far from our home. So they fed us about 4 rack of ribs, and they were unbelievable! I have never seen so much food go away that fast! There where 7 of us at the table so..... Also, last night we got fed ribs again but this time it was at a members home. The member played the guitar and was happy to show me some of the music he plays. He has a Martin D-38, it's a newer guitar, and it sounded incredible! Probably because that was the first guitar I have heard live in about a month. He offered to let me play, but I had to refuse due to mission rules. It killed me a little, but I'll get over it. 

However this whole week has not been all good. Our teaching pool has gotten real shallow lately and making appointments has been getting more difficult. We had to do a lot of track ting but so far no good has come from it. We figured no one would want to talk to us on Labor Day, because they were either out of town or they had family over. But, we decided being discouraged about it, was not going to help, so we showed a little faith and made a goal of knocking on 100 doors. When we first started, I said that I would talk to the first person I see sitting out on there lawn, people do do that out here. So I did, and we taught them a lesson! The lady said after all we said she already figured the book to be true, and we got 2 new investigators before we knocked a single door! In total we only knocked 13 doors, but found about 3-4 new potential investigators.

 In other news I have seen a fire fly so, I now know, that they are real, and I have also seen a couple of slugs. In other bad news NC has a lot of spiders that are very big and very scary. 

To wrap it all up, mom you would like this, coleslaw is big down here, and it is really good. They put that stuff on everything. Glad to here all is good and I hope you got the letter I wrote. Tell Jonathan I said good luck with football season.

Love,

Elder Matthew Pena