Sorry everyone, this posting is a day late. Elder Astle told me that he and Elder Ramirez decided to do the emails at 4:00 instead of 9-10:00 am, and I had a little Eloise's second birthday at my house last night so yes, things got a little busy! So here you go:  (the letter is split up into pieces as I was online and kept asking him questions while he was trying to type):

 

 I got your package! I guess it came in on the 1st of november. its the one with all the candy and peanut butter and nuts and jerky thank you yummmm

 

 

Please tell Eloise happy birthday and i love her and i can't wait to see her and that i hope she has fun. also tell her to tell her mommy and daddy that she loves them and to say thank you and smile. She has such a cute smile in those pumpkin patch pictures you sent in the package.

 

Also everyone read Matthew 13: 53-56 it's SOOOO interesting!

 

 

Aye mum,

So yet again, in the ways of my father, i'm at the brink of tears before i really begin. I just miss you all so much and love you all so much, it's pretty tough. So i'll start by answering your questions and then writing about my week and stuff like that. I dont have much time though :( I have not played ping pong yet, que triste. We havent had a chance to visit with that little family and the sister, we went by but they were busy and i guess the people that they share a little area with dont want to be bothered by us coming over so we invited them to meet us at the chapel some time. So we met with Jose Luis twice this past week. He's pretty old and i guess he has a hard time hearing us knocking because his hearing isnt too great but he just installed a door bell so we can come by more often. We also taught a woman named Graciella, she is middle age and lives with her daughter in this little tiny house with one room and a bathroom. She is so amazing though, she wants to feel relief and be happy from her mistakes so much, it makes me so happy to have the Gospel in my life and be able to share it with her. Oh and guess what i invited her to baptism and she said yes and i invited her to be baptized december 7th and she said yes! AND that's her birthday!!! whoooo!!! I'm so excited to be a missionary! I asked the mission president about others sending emails to me but i wont find out until next week. I have not gotten any letters yet, but i did get the dear elders you sent a while back! Those were really good thank you for those. There are probably at least 100 people in our ward, and probably 200 people who are inactive i would guess, that's our main missionary effort right now, reactivation! Happy Birthday Eloise!!!!

 

 

So some interesting things about my week!

It will kind of be like a list because i have been jotting down the things i want to write home about.

I found out that Niel A. Maxwell was an astrophysicist!!! That is so totally cool!!!

The other night i was kneeling praying before i got into bed... I fell asleep in under a minute, it's a real tiring work!

Oh mom could you order me 5 pairs of walk socks? they're amazing but i only have a few pairs.

We had some changes in the missionary work in our mission: no tocar puertas y no contactar - basically we dont tract or talk to people on the street or anything anymore, we really need to rely on the members and to do reactivation work.

So food time: Last monday we had american hamburgers... SO GOOD! we have lunch every monday with la familia Balbuena who are an amazing family, and today we had spaghetti and tacos haha lots of people try to make spaghetti here but its so not nearly what yours is mom, i miss yours so much. Last week we had a chili soup with two great big meatballs... the meatballs had boiled eggs inside! yay! ... it was pretty strange, but i guess it could be and will be a lot worse in the future. I had molé! it was pretty good but it wasn't AMAZING. There is this one rich family in our ward and one of the sons takes us out to any restaurant we want twice a month, we went to a pizza and pasta restaurant which was pretty good and REALLY fancy, the crazy thing was that the real "expensive" pasta they had would only be 4 american dollars.

 

 

Mom could you send me the words to songs like "if you could hie to Kolob" "Come thou fount" and things like that in a dear elder or in a package? thank you i love you, it's hard without an english hymn book here.

 

Well i gotta go we are going to go prep for Family Home Evening tonight because we are teaching! and guess what we are teaching the whole ward!!!! I'm kind of freaking out a lot.

I love you all so much, thank you for all your prayers, love, and support.

Elder Branden Carl Astle

 

 We went to watch a young single adult performance of the life of the savior and the young adults were supposed to bring their non member friends and things like that and we would meet the ones from our area there and get a first little get to know the missionaries thing after the show.