Well Hi!

Sorry this is pretty late and you might be freaking out! We went on this big hike today so we´re pretty late using the internet. There´s this mountain nearby with a long steep trail going up. Along the way are three big crosses (like a crucifixion cross) with amazing overlooks of the city and things like that. The third cross at the top is huge and you can see it from pretty much all of San Jose. It was kind of a rough experience, but I guess it was cool as long as we never do it again, haha. There were lots of very LOSTy moments on the trail that I loved.

Oh, I want to say to everyone that I´ll generally only be getting mail every six weeks at changes meeting, so don´t think that I´ve abandoned you if it takes awhile to respond to letters. There aren´t really any exact rules about if I can email friends. I´m just not supposed to do anything on the internet that´s going to become a distraction from the work. I think that having all my friends email me would just create a buildup of long replies I´d have to try to rush through in a short time every week. So I´m thinking it´ll probably be better to stick to snail mail for friends, but I´ll let you know if I change my mind.

I went on divisions (splits, exchanges or whatever) with one of the zone leaders last week. They´re in San Jose Central. I didn´t even realize that part of the city existed! I thought I´d seen the cityish areas, which are kind of Downtown Provo-y. But San Jose Central is like a wannabe New York City, which was really cool to see. Tons of American things there. Even a Carl´s Jr.! I want to go there sometime. However, fast food and junk food are really expensive here, and fruits and veggies are really cheap. Kind of opposite of some stores in the states.

Halloween was fun! They don´t really celebrate it here, but it´s a day that´s pretty much an excuse for all the youngsters to cause trouble in the streets. I don´t know if it was for our mission, or probably a whole bunch, but a Seventy apparently ordered that all missionaries be in their houses by 5:00 on Halloween. We didn´t even really realize it was Halloween till we got that phone call. They didn´t even know what it was for, just that we had to be home by then. We started theorizing that it had been revelation because there was going to be a huge earthquake, or the second coming or something. Unfortunately, it seems it was just to keep us off the streets. We had four extra hours to kill, so Elder Baca and I played some serious Monopoly Deal, took the bishop up on his offer to provide us dinner on nights where we have no food (because we really didn´t), and just kind of partied and watched some material movies about temples and stuff. We may have also watched God´s Army 2 on his iPod. Don´t really know what our mission rules are on movies. It uplifted me though, and it takes place in the mission field, so I guess we´ll call it good. Excellent, if not untraditional, messages of repentance.

We had 11 investigators at church on Sunday! 6 of them were a family we´ve never met that showed up on their own... but it still felt awesome to be able to write down that number! We´re really starting to find a lot of people to teach. The one closest to baptism is named W---. He was a homeless bounty hunter who kept missing his baptismal interviews because he was finally finding some new clients. He still hasn´t been paid by those clients though, so he was still homeless till yesterday. He basically came to us with his problem of not having anywhere to sleep on Saturday night. We wanted to let him stay with us, being a little (un)inspired by God´s Army 2, haha. But obviously we didn´t do that, don´t worry.

We were just desperately praying that this situation could be solved, partly because we love him, and partly because we were tired of him putting awkward pressure on us to find him somewhere to stay. We set up for him to stay Saturday night with some super crazy generous recent converts. On Sunday, we casually stopped by one of our investigators who lives in a house apartment thing, and asked if a room was open, and she said he can live there for free until he gets paid by his clients! Prayer answered. Awkward situation destroyed. Now we just have to get him interviewed this week and we should be able to baptize him on Saturday!

I can´t remember if I mentioned last week, but I´m the ward pianist. I´m so glad to help. There are about 100 people in our ward, but almost every single one of them sing like a confused robot. Hopefully the piano carrying the song along will help them learn how to actually move their voice to different notes, then we can work from there. I´m also teaching a recent convert how to play the piano, but it´s not going too fast because all I have to teach him is pen, paper, and my pocket-sized hymn book, and he knows next to nothing about reading music. We´ll see how long that goes on for, haha. It´s really hard to teach without materials. It´s not a super official thing anyway though. They asked me yesterday to play the piano for the primary program next month, so I´ll be doing that as well. Should be a blast.

To answer some questions: Cleaning our apartment went pretty well, but it got dirty again super fast. I´m slowly getting used to that. Haven´t had turtle eggs yet! I think the guy forgot that he told us he´d buy them. We walk SO much. I get sore on the days we do a ton. The pizza here isn´t bad! There are some delicious hamburger places. I´m doing just fine with what I have. Can´t think of anything I need for Christmas! Don´t even worry about it. People set up their Christmas trees a few days before Halloween here. Crazy. I haven´t seen the president since I first got here! He´s great though. I probably don´t have time to read all the forwarded emails every week. But if you´re reading all of them beforehand, maybe you can pick one each week that´s particularly powerful? I have absolutely no idea about the time change! Our area is very suburby, I´m discovering. Love it.

I pretty much have to go. I can´t figure out how to send pictures on this computer, but next week we´ll probably go to a different place where it´s easier! Love you! Till next week.

--Elder Hampton