Maybe that name sounds familiar to some of you.

HOLA!!!

This week has been amazing!

I met the coolest person. Betty Coleman. Maybe that name sounds familiar to some of you. It should because she is one of the first members to have been baptized in New Hampshire. She currently lives about 75 feet from my apartment. Maybe 100 feet. She told me that she remembers the Campbells, Gunns, Guilds, Nana and Grandpa Stephenson and some others. She told me all about her story and that of her daughter Ethel. Ethel and her husband live with her, or her with them, however you like it. She told me all about how she was a member of the big white congregational church in Plymouth and how she was baptized in the font at the Joseph Smith Memorial in the middle of a blizzard. It was just amazing to meet her. It was on a day that I really needed a little connection with home, and we ate dinner at their house. Thank goodness for God's tender mercies.

Yes, I'm still doing awesome. I had a rough day last week, but I talked with my companions and it got much better and brought us closer together. I wrote about it in my journal, so you'll get to read it as soon as I am done.

We are allowed to go to the temple for one session once a transfer and we did that last week.

I would love it if you could send me the vitamin D if it isn't too much of a hassle.

The diet has been interesting. [doctor prescribed] I am eating a lot of rice and beans, eggs, and sausage. I am quickly learning to like rice. Of course, brown rice!!! :D I have rice milk with my corn squares cereal, rice with my baked beans and sausage, and fried rice, sometimes in a tortilla as a breakfast burrito type thingy. I don't bother to tell our dinners [dinner appointments] about it, because I figure that one meal a day with a couple things on that list won't kill me. But I do feel a bit better on this diet. Still adjusting though, so we'll see. :)

Our schedule is usually:
6 30 wake up and exercise (usually running, stretching, or biking)
7-8 showers and breakfast
8-9 personal study
9-10 companion study (that can get pretty fun :) )
10-11 language study
11-12 lunch
and then from 12 to 4 we go around teaching, talking to everyone, and trying to contact referrals. I haven't done any "tracting" yet. :)
4-5 is dinner
and 5-9 is more of the same stuff like 12-4
9 -9 30ish is planning
9 30-10 30 is personal time. you know, journal and stuff

that is what it is supposed to be anyway. our schedule is "adjusted" more often than you would guess.

Thank you Mom and Dad. Your support means the world to me. And I can't believe how fast the time is going either. I have been on my mission for three months! Ahhh!!! Too fast. It needs to slow down, but I know it is only going to get faster.

AMOR, AMOR, AMOR
Ella [Spanish for “she”, sounds like "Aya" which is Andrea’s nickname in the family]

I ate temple grapefruit!

FELIZ CUMPLEANOS MI HERMANO!!! Te amo. I love you little brother! I hope you have tons of fun on Friday. And remember me when you give Mom a birthday hug. love love love love love!!!!

So, I just can't wait for you to know this, even though I will write about it in my SD card letter. I ate temple grapefruit! Yeah, I know! They have grapefruit, lemon, orange, and all sorts of other fruit trees growing everywhere. They are almost as common as the palm trees! And they have a bunch on the temple grounds, so we picked one just so I could say that I literally consumed the fruits of the temple! :) There are some pictures coming with that. Also, we got to go through the temple today. It is beautiful! It is one of the really old temples so it has a lot of the intricate details like the Salt Lake temple. Not nearly as much as SL, but beautiful, and much lighter than SL. There are some beautiful murals as well.

Here is an interesting tidbit. We were biking by a park the other day and I became very confused because there was a ton of large puddles in it. I was like "did it rain and I missed it?" Actually to water their lawns, they flood them. Almost all the lawns with grass are lower than street level, little depressions in the ground. And their stepping stones are raised up so they can get to their front doors without soaking their feet. Weird, huh?

Also, our chapel is pink inside. Just a light shade in the front of the chapel and a darker one inside the trim. Where ours is black inside, theirs is a deep fuschia. It made me laugh.

Oh! And yes we had a baptismal service on Saturday. We had five of our investigators get baptized. Four are a family. So, exciting. And we have a friend who is a less-active and has a drinking problem that we are helping with the addiction recovery program. He is doing to well. We just love him to death.

Ella