Weathering the Nationwide Protests

[from December 15, 2017]

Sorry, it actually hasn`t been too too dangerous these last couple days, but it`s until today that I`m getting the chance to write. Some stuff happened that`s not really worth the time of explaining, but the good thing is I get to write now... Woohoo!

thanks for all your prayers, everythings been going better in these last few days. we got to leave, but our curfew is still pretty early. Elder Asturias and I got lost a whole bunch of times, our area is way big and the streets are not straight or orderly at all.

I`ve been doing pretty good ajusting down here. I think it was a little bit of a shock to the sistem to leave the office and open an area at the same time. We`re having to work really hard, but I think we`re gonna have a baptism this saturday if all goes well!!!  

I´m still learning more spanish everyday. Lots of the stuff I´m learning is honduran slang from the members and guatemalan slang from my companion. After 2 guatemalan companions I´ve spent a lot of time with chapins. In central america every country has a nickname. (chapin-guate, tico-costa rica, nica-nicaragua, guanaco-el salvador, and catracho-honduran. 

Things are calming down here a little bit. Still lots of protests, but I think people are losing a little bit of there stamina. You can only come out of your house all night for so many nights in a row... 

They do call the riots huelgas, it´s a different level here though. Lots of fireworks and gunshots... especially here in this area. We´ll be teaching lessons and hear gunshots and it won´t even stop the conversation. I hope they never announce the winner haha. People are gonna freak out. Today we had a run-in where some guys were throwing rocks at buildings and cars... we stayed away from all that craziness.

Our mission president had us buy food and water in this last week. Yeah, lots of people want to talk about the election with us. There were some drunk guys that yelled at me this week for being gringo, but other than that it`s just been same old same old. Lots of regular riots at night, we still have our curfew pretty early, but at least we can finally leave again!!!

A new thing we found is a fried chicken place that is really delicious, Also this week we found a house that`s a lot better than the one we have now... We`ll be moving on January 1st. It has air-conditioning. I was able to get the price down a ton so that we can live there. 

One of my best friends in the mission who was in the MTC with me tells me I was a weirdo in the MTC, but when he got to know me here, he realized I was pretty cool. I think that happens a lot. When we have to adjust to something new, we act kinda strange. 

I finally did find a good milkshake in carl`s jr.s. It was way freaking expensive though 100 lempiras ($5) so I can`t get it all the time, also it`s in the other mission`s half of San Pedro, so I can`t go there anymore :(. I`ll be excited to eat some chick-fil-a when I get back to the USA! 

I miss regular Christmas treats. Here during Christmas (and the christmas season) they all eat a ton of tamales and chicken sandwiches. Last year I got kinda sick of tamales. Not that I was bored of them but I didn`t feel very good after eating so many. Hopefully that doesn`t happen again this year. 

Love you guys and sorry for the late email. The good thing is that the next time I write is gonna be in a couple days!

I can wait to talk to you guys at Christmas!!!

E Stoddard