First Letter from the Field

Thanks for the birthday wishes and the package! I am in the Linda Vista 3rd branch, which covers the whole San Diego North Stake because it is the only Spanish unit in the stake.  Our area therefore includes Linda Vista, La Jolla (where the temple is), Pacific Beach, and Clairemont. Feel free to look on google maps.  There were a grand total of 0 progressing investigators in the branch and not even any who had come to church in about 2 months.  The work was going slow enough in the area that they took out the other Spanish companionship in our zone.  We are not allowed to tract because the mission president wants people to have a different idea of who missionaries are, so we are only allowed to contact referrals and people in the street/on their porch, etc.  I guess that since missions are supposed to be hard that the Lord figured I didn't need to ease into it.  We have had 2 people keep appointments since I arrived, and I would be inclined to believe that they only reason that they kept them was because they had a wife and a sister, respectively, that was forcing them to keep it.  We will have to see.  Almost everybody is super paisa but there are two Peruvians, a Bolivian, an Ecuadorian, and a Colombian in our branch.  One owns a Peruvian restaurant and invited us to eat there on Thursday, and the others are....characters.  Two of the other four are under church discipline, and then one teaches the gospel principles class a la Mitchell family, except that person might even have them beat in the false doctrine category.  The remaining one of the four is one of five people in the branch who actually attempts to help with the missionary work. It looks like I'm in for a fun time.
Thanks again for the birthday presents and wishes!  Also let me know how Barca is doing!

Elder Keaton

PS The alarm clock you bought me caught fire.  I put the battery in it that you bought for me to put in and then it caught fire about 30 seconds later.  Could you maybe send another clock? It was nice having one clock in the room and another in the living room.