Monday, December 27, 2010

Dec 27, 2010

Alright so here's what's happened this week.... well I just talked to ya'll on
the phone. I told you all I wanted to really talk about,the loco chiva goat & the river rash going away. Though in few days a surprisingly a lot of stuff
happened to happen:). One thing I'm not sure if I should tell you but,
I'm gonna tell you anyway :) Actually I don't think it's that bad at all.


We were hiking back down from Parra (the place that's 3 miles away and
straight up hill) this was the second time in the day and it was 7 pm
at this point and pitch black. We both forgot our flash lights and it's
super steep downhill but, my comp had a small light on his phone. We were
on our way down at, like, a snail's pace already 10 mins late to our next
appointment and still at least 20-30 mins away from him. So this
truck comes down the hill, my comps have gotten rides from them before
several times, and we get rides from other people all the time on the
way up the hill. Because they just stop on there way up and everyone
hops in the back of the truck till they drop you off in town. So this
guys stops an we hop in the back of the truck and we were thinking we were
going to cross one river but, the driver he turns a diff way. We thought he was
going down the river for a little to a more shallow spot to cross the
second river. But he just kept going so we hit to the top of their
truck to stop him but, guess he didn't hear, so he just kept going. Eventually
he heard but, we were out in the boonies. So we start heading towards
the lights of the city and it turned out we were by a swap. Boom, next
thing I know I'm like half way up to my legs in this nasty swap water.
Plus we cant see a thing anywhere so we were just running around trying to
find a dry land spot. haha pretty funny actually. Eventually,
we find one and yea long story short, we eventually made it to the second
river but our shoes and half of our pants soaked. hhaha Guess that's what
you get when you hitchhike eh;) hah But it was worth it we ended up
running into our investigator to set up an other appointment.

Today we had pizza! This was different kind of pizza have no clue
what kind it was it looked normal but when you taste it you're like
hmm, what kind of sauce is this. hahah Yea it grows on ya.
Eventually it was like hmm pizza... haven't had pizza in forever.

oh ok and so instead of sending the SD card back home I think I'm gonna
just put all my photos on cds and send the cds home then once you get
em, I'll delete em on my card because cds are cheap here.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Dec 20, 2010

oh by the way the other missionaries love the tree. last year they said they didn't have one so they're pretty happy about this one.. oh and i know i said i prob wouldn't withdraw from home account but i with drew 1000 pesos to make sure i had enough this month should only be like 20 ' 30 dollars. But they shorted us 2000 pesos this month because we started it late even though itwas only 7 days or so late in the month 2000 pesos goes a long way. we get about 7000 a month this month about 5000.
oh so we were visiting our star investigator yesterday. This is the one that lives in the other side of heaven area and on the way back we seriously saw a spider that was bigger then my whole hand. I didn't get too close but soon some people were like mata lo!! mata lo! apparently it's poisonous and bites... so i quickly backed off and try chucking a huge boulder at it. But it just kinda hit it and the spider was dazed for half a second then kept running,. It was haha interesting. but man that spider was HUGE!! no joke I'm not even exaggerating bigger then my hand including the fingers. wow! oh so we think i may be allergic to something out here. I get this rash on my legs here and there. Sometimes it covers my hole legs and sometimes it burns like someones holding a match to it. But its gone away for now. We think maybe something in the water of the river we cross but no clue yet.
oh and so apparently i look a ton like Harry potter every single dominican here says i do hahah. Don't know why but then when one says it they all look at me and are like haha yup

ohhh!!! the best news of all!!! guess where I'm going on christmas day!! my first bauptismo de my companionship!! yup thats right! haha I'm so pumped to see it. we dont know who she wants to do it yet and still have to do the interview but so far so good. Then a week after that we got miglena scheduled! and emmerson! both amazing people. super pumped for all of them!
church here though is crazy! Me and my comp go up to parra for church and wow, its not even called a branch its an area of strength the best I've seen is 34_ members and last week we had 15 people there. Its crazy small though the main branch is decent size i think. Haven't been there yet I'll be there next week. but wow its kind of a mini apostasy going . Have to fix that! Ñ= ok but thats all about thats happened this week now I'm trying and send pics some how and don't judge my spelling i know you are Ñ= Spanish is making it worse then it already was.

so yea pics don't work here,,, kind iof stinks because i had some good ones,, but these computers are a bit messed up i guess.. one picture was of baseball, we played baseball this week for pday! so much fun got the whole zone together. I was center field did a pretty decent job. I think an other was of us crossing the river and an other of one of the giant hills we climb. oh well though next week ill try and send those and of what the apartment looks like we have six elders living in it. we just rearranged it today and much more room in there now and we rearranged the main sleepin room. you walk in the front door and there is two beds to your left and two desks by the wall on your right then two more bed s directly ahead of you. Then its the kitchen and then down he hall is a bed room with two more beds. And then down a bit further on each side of you is a room with two desks each. Out back we have the washers, those our fun and a bit different. You put some clothes in the washer fill it with water from the hose then add some soap and turn it to 15 mins and some times you have to rub 'em your self, but if you just do 15 min a couple times they get clean, then the dryer you put part of your clothes in there hook the hose up to it for a minute for it to rinse the soap out. Then you take the hose off and let it spin for 5mins then you hang dry em.


Ive grown girly, I forgot how cold water gets with out a heater, the lights were out for a while so the heater was off and yea it was a little cold. Our theme song, not a church song - dumn dun dun is mulan's I'll make a man out of you... specially when we cross the river and hike up to parra. My comp though is super use to this stuff and like sprints up the mountain then I'm right behind him like dying hahah. Oneday i hope to be just like him ñ= wink face.. haha but yea he's good at what he does thats for sure.

Love you all! hope you have a great time doing what you're doing and enjoying snow! I hope. haha you may have snow. I have b-e-a-utiful mountains on all sides of me! what now haha

oh and you know how great that is, 1000 pesos to 26 dollars, a box of mac is 25 pesos and a box of milk is 33 and well ,butters kind of expensive, plus i don't need it, and this is the off brand but still pretty cheap i think bags of cereal though are 56pesos, hair cuts 100 pesos, large empanada 30 a tiny jar of peanut butter 126! or so so saddly i have to stay away from that or save up once i get a hang of budgeting with thousands of pesos or just not wolf it down like i do at home. I may just see how much money i have at the end of each month then buy some peanut butter and enjoy, be like once a month party ;º speakin of which i think we have to leave soon for shoppping but idk my comp likes to spend a lot of time here. about an two hours... so if a box of mac here is 25 pesos and in states is 1 dollor that means I'm getting a great deal! haha Though man working this hard ever day I breath food, we have rice every day like a HUGE plate of it for lunch hmm soo good. though im not sure how balanced my diet is.... i ve got to work on that...
haha I plan on buy a nice variety of cereals for a breakfast and dinner and going to town on them next week :º Pasta is pretty cheap here so if you could send some pasta reciepes of super simple stuff that'd be nice. Though i think i got the gist of it or at least the butter and garlic ones, cheese on it ones , alfredo on top I'm sure a jar of that could last me a while. Nevermind I think i got pasta down... today I'm going to see how expensive meat is and how legitit looks or if its too iffy. well find out later yea ? haha so many things dont translate over to spanish like more or less, more of the less though, and got they dont have a word for got. I think thats the one. haha but yea i love spanish especially trying to get it down. My comp's letting me lead off lessons now, pretty simple just if its a first cita say "hey how are you oh cool well we talked ... and so you remember were missionaries from... my name is .. his is... and to do you mind if we start with a prayer to invite.... and right after the pray it can lead into the point about pray, cuando nosotros orar con quien hablamos? ;º oh i thinkwere leaving! alright have and amazing week talk to you in 5days! wow christmas is in 5 days!!! didnt even realize it was that close! haha wow.. when i call you elina will be bauptizado woot she was a toughy too. alright love you all a TON good luck and goodbye till SATURDAY!!!! love yall.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Monday Dec 13 2010


this is the view from the a point on the border of parra, that tower in the left is where we live the red and white one, great view though eh_



my new comp, i look weird in this pic don't judge


these are most the guys i hung out with the most, elder scroggins in my district, me elder sweeney my comp, pinkston, lowe old comp, Schaffer in my district. cool group specially elder pinkston, scroggins and sweeney



this is the trio It's been since the beginning elder perez hma ghersi and me



yea we get to call what ever time of the day we want, i think at least if not ill prob call in the morning and i think i'm 3 hours a head of you now so yea.be prepared hah yea wow sounds like a huge ordeal with brielle bit, yea and all huh- - will mean a question mark i cant figure out where the question mark is. oh the have msn on the comp pretty tempting to just get on see whos on. or to get on face book. oh and yes your package got here i guess that means you didn't get my letter that said it got here. it was an amazing package thanks a TON my comp loves the tree especially because he didn't have one last year. I also especially loved all the ornaments those were sweet! like getting 50 mini letters loved it. na you dont have to write more letters my pday in the mtc was thrusday and here its monday so when i left it just barly over lapped to where i had to go a little while with out going on the comp. feels like forever since ive been on .
so my first assignment..... OCOA the missionaries call this place paradise this place is legit! One of the places i wanted to go most out of all the places was in the mountains... I got my wish! they are soooo b-e-a-utiful haha wow ill send you pictures some time. speaking of which did you send the SD card in that package because it was broken into so i dont know if everything was there or not. but yea now that i got my wish i kind of regret it a TINY bit because wow!!! hahah who knew mountains were so hilly haha I know kinda of blantenly obvious but yea. oh and so the branch we are assigned to is in the parra bario and its is the miles away up a completly diffent mountain peak holy moly its a hike! i have a pic of it amazing view like practically unreal! and the tower we leave by is this tiny little thing. oh so when we first got sent out there to where we were to meet our trainer and be told where we are going my trainer was late because he was way out in the campo and yea so they stuck us on this one really nice bus the missionaries dropped us off in bani and then we had to go to ocao and because we had luggage they all were charging ridiculous amounts so eventually we found this one guy that likes missionaries and well you knew you were in the DR buy the time the bus was a full the bus was a quite a bit smaller then the porter huge van and there was 19 people stuffed in there not even kidding. guys hangin out the door and all. so 40 min ride goin like that.
oh and in order to get to the branch that were assigned to go to on sunday you have to wade through two mini rivers the highest its been so far is a little above knee deep. haha wow every day here is like a whole new adventure.
the first day i was here. we had to go to the boca de parra its on the mountain that parra is on and we had to cross the river at night and hike through all kinds of stuff i just remember like holy moly what have i got my self into 19 people in a tiny bus crossin rivers at night, climbing up this huge steep place that we have to climb every day ish there was plenty more to make me go like wow place the crazy drivers but first day was all a blur, now its all kind of like what ever haha we go up to parra every other day now. I love this places its soo crazy but same time super gorgeous and just a plane adventure!
oh so a few people have sent me CDs please tell everyone to NOT send me any more CDs our mission president doesn't allow music here, they´ve had some probs in the past with missionaries and it i guess i really appreciate everyone that has sent but please dont waste there money sending em or buying em becasue theyll just be going to storage for two years. plus i dont own a cd player so i dk why i had so many to begin with ñ´ thats a smilly face hah
oh and so we got this legit investigator that we contacted this first day, she is AMAZING haha super into, unfortunatly she is not the most gifted person when it comes to intelligence, because shes a su`per amazing lady dont get me wrong super nice but when we try and explain stuff and teach it she loves it and all but were not sure how well shes recieving it because when we ask if she understands and ask her to explain it back shes has a hard time but were making progress with her shes SUPER excited to go to church. i cant wait i hope she goes. she lives in this area thats looks like is straight out of other side of heaven or something or like the area beautiful lived in but worse off and more 3rd worldly i think. but shes awesome.
our biggest problem here is actually marriage people here dont really get the point of marriage. plus its expensive so most people just live with each other and not worry about marriage.and motors there and other problem and SUPER loud so its hard to teach or contact because those our everywhere and all the colmados there like little corner stores on every single corner that sell what ever you need, just have there music blasting SOO SUPER loud that its also hard to contact or teach a lesson its a bit annoying. but its cool were finding ways around it.
the culture here is really different we go to contact and the first thing thy do is oh hi come sit down take my chair and they may just give you the chair and go to do something else in there house but they all love company and talking about christ and god everyone here bleives in god but just try and convert you or say oh its ok were christans or evangelic and if you keep going they just insist were christian s thank you bye. but all super nice for the most part. of course there are th random few who will start yellin nonsense at you or yell about the importance of food storage or the end of the world or random ness. haha h yea...
oh and they combine lunch and dinner here just one HUGE meal at lunch time and we usualy jus tget an empanada atnight and call it good though we love our food hahah.
OH that picture of joise hahahahah oh man that made my day!!!! hahahah a ohhh man ... truely the best picture ive ever seen. what else what else..... oh my new companion his name is elder smith... hes alright, im his first ¨kid¨ hes alright.
oh so elder smith may le tme borrow his camera so i can send over some pictures but did my camera come with a usb cable thing- i think it did but i didnt pack that... could you send that over and just pay for that with the money from my account- then i can send you pictures. casue i dont trust sending my sd card in this mail too iffy almost every letter ive had has been torn into. so yea but its always good to hide it in like a yellow box or something to send an sd card.
oh an other diffuculty we´ve had is that a lot dont know how to read... like with megilina thats one of our big problems but weve found someone that can read to here, her daughter acctually we jsut met her a few citas ago and now she once to learn more to ! soo pumped for that. yea i may write more later because i think were here for a while till then LOVE you all a TON haha yup and talk to you later !

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Letter Recieved Dec 2, 2010

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Jeremy Zelasko wrote:

Oh no its dying! (in responce to an e-mail that told him the really big fish, who's name I can't spell, has a huge sore on it.) dun dun dun, well thats no good, but its a fighter too I bet itll last it out for a while. That's pretty legit that dads taking care of all the plants :) Tell Him THANKS a load or muchismo gracias, that should be right if i remebered that lesson right. if not what ever yall get the idea eh?:) Repotted all of them? included the Aloe and the one in the water vase?

Thanks Giving sounds like it was a lot of fun, that would've been great to see scott try and debone a turkey. We had some pretty turkey here pretty great. So Apperentyl Utah beat BYU by one point and ev ery one was going crazy for like a week to try and find out who won. and when they all finally found out it was pretty crazy turns out only a few were routing for Utah.
So You really know you've been in the CCM (MTC) to long when you start dreaming about Tie trading, and get excited in the dream when you get a sweet tie. hahah then again i've gotten some sweet ties in a few trades. I'm exceptionally stoked to be in the field. next time i get to email you I'll be in the field!!! isnt that crazy??and its december!! soo crazy! and also I'm in the field in about 4 days... wow I really hope my spanish catches up with me quick. because its gonna be crazy out there, I cant wait to find out where I'm being stationed, for a lack of a better word:) So turns out theres a mountain in Polo where the magnectic pole or somethings reversed so if youre cars off at the bottom itll start going up to the top on its own or like anything metal i hear. thats pretty legit, and its in Oeste so Yea i cant wait to try and get the chance to see that or track there.
Oh i Got a package from Oma and Opa, Send my greatest thanks eh? really appricaiate it, now i can listen to this confrence and find out what that big contreversy is about Elder Packers talk. cant wait, i think were going to listen to it tonight or so.
Yea notyhing else really interesting has really happened here just the same old same old, studying hard trying to figure out this language and better ways to teach. but other then that... same old same old, not much exciting happens here. seriously. though we all have gotten pretty legit at knockout. lots of swooshes in a row, and i Dont like to brag or nopthing but yea its kind of the most popular game out there now during Gym and I was one of the first three to start its, so you could say I'm a trend setter, and well ... you'd be right;) but yea LOVE you all and hope the best for yall and yall. haha :) LOVE yea and thanks for the support.

OH did scott get his call yet? its been SIX weeks sice provo hes had to have got it by now if he put in his papers! he still wants to go right? how was there move? Where is he going?? I gotta know. is he gonna be my greenie? huh huh ? hahah I really really want to know!:)

ELder ZElasko