January 23, 2023 THE HOPEFULLY NOT SO BORING ADVENTURES OF ELDER WILLIAMSON CHAPTER XIV

suppppp.. ok, so first of all, we went to a couple of stores in san cristóbal (the big city we're by) and my favorite stores here are called "chinese stores".. annnd they're called that, because they're literally always just random unmarked buildings filled with random chinese.. ummm.. toys? objects? items? tOtally real name brands and everything... but they're my favorite stores, because you can find the most rAndom things, with some wEird names too (because it's all either knockoffs, or just realllly wEll mAde fAkes).. and the best part, is it's all always super cheap... some of the names i've seen so far, are.. "carformers: cool deformation".. "beauty: unique style, do you want to have them".. "family wisk".. and of course, everyones' childhood favorite toy.. "you are the mam durag"... but anyways we found a super big chinese store, and we were looking all around, and there were some pretty cool things in there.. a lot of really funny things.. annnd maYbe a couple things that would make you question the good of all humanity, and will not be described in this email... but i found a spiderman watch (it's for like a 5 year old, buttt it still fits me, sooo take thAt 5 year old kids).. but i am expanding my collection of verrry cool, absolute useless, super good use of money, spiderman items.. so far i have a shirt, a backpack, a hat (that one is aLso for a 5 year old, annnd sadly doesn't fit me), a watch, annnd a waterbottle... some might say i have an addiction (the other elders in my house) but i promise, i can stop annny time i want... wednesday was crazy.. we had a lot of lessons planned, but like half of them fell thru.. sooo we spent a lot of time doing finding, annnd we ended up teaching 7 lessons (as well as a lOt of contacts).. nowww idk how much you other missionaries are doing (based off of what i've heard it's prObably more) but for our area, and for where we are at, that's a tOn.. when i first got here, we would have maybe 2 or 3 lessons in a day.. sooo it's really cool to be here while while the area is starting to take off... we also ended up getting rid of the line in between our area and the other elders', because they were having a little trouble trying to find people to teach, especially those who are actually interested... sooo that means that we have their area for finding now too.. sooo we've got lots of stuff to do now!... we did more exchanges this week, and i stayed in my area, and elder macdonald came with me.. it's actually so much fun to lead the area.. my spanish still isn't all the way there ofc, and i definitely didn't know where a couple of the people that my comp scheduled for that day live (because of the way he does things, he literally just memorizes where everyone lives and stuff, sooo i just have no idea where a couple things are) so we ended up skipping a few people... bUttt we found like 4 new people (which when i first got here our wEekly goal was to find 3 people, so our area is definitely starting to take off a lot more).. we had some fire lessons, annnd it was just really fun.. our goal this week was to find 7 new people, which my comp wasn't super sure about, buttt.. we found 11.. sooo i think 7 will a good weekly goal going forward... i'm slowly (and by slowly i mean at a frighteningly rapid speed) becoming more and more dominican with the food i'm eating.. i don't really like it that much to be honest, buttt it's easier to just eat the food they make here sooo.. i eat a large chunk of salami each day.. if you've never had salami, just imagine a really big log of.. ummm.. "meAt"?!? (you already knOw they just chopped up some rabid dog, or a diabetic horse, or someones' uncle brito, who drank a little too much malta morena (which by the way is a soda that they drink here, that has the flavor of unwashed dentures and the smell of a multiple times used band aid) and rolled them into one of those playdough snakes (you know what i'm talking about) and decided to name it "salami".. and it's kinda like pepperoni with less taste.. what taste is taken from the taste of pepperoni, is replaced with the taste of plastic.. annnd since it's the DR, there's rice cooked into it (literally every single person here eats rice for at least one meal a day)... when i first got here, i wasn't the biggest fan of the food.. it wasn't bad, it just wasn't the best ever either (mostly because it's just the same thing every time, so it gets pretty boring pretty fast)... and the salami, i thought didn't really taste super good.. buttt now i'm eating salami every day.. one of the days i had a sandwich with just bread, peanut butter, and cold salami.. annnd it's still not good.. but i've just given up at this point ig, and salami is the main source of my protein intake now... okkk so this is kinda interesting, but this week i thiNk i found the reason to stay out here.. i mean i had reasons before, but it's been super hard to see any progress with the people we are teaching, we hadn't been having really any rEal success (that was visible to us at least, obviously we are still affecting a lot of people and we're making a difference, but it's been hard to see that).. but this week something was different.. we set a big goal, and then worked really hard to get there, and we went a little past too.. it's interesting to me, that when we're working harder, and visiting more people, and trying to talk with everyone, and doing a lot of finding, you really do "get lost in the work" this week flEw by, but it's also been a lot longer than a week since last Pday (obviously not, but that's what it feels like).. i'm kinda rambling at this point, buttt this iS basically my journal, you guys just also happen to be reading it... buttt i think that's all i got this week, have a great week, love you guys! 2 nephi 31:20 Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life annnd i made a link for my google photos of the entire mission, and i'm just gonna add them every week, so if anyone wants to see those, here's that.. https://photos.app.goo.gl/eBG3LdEZPyA1oQN96 (hopefully that works) buttt i'll still put a couple in the emails too...