July 20th

Mitchell is now a member of the Church! The baptism went great! It was the hottest baptism though, the church didn't have A/C and it was in Huntington Park, which is a hot area anyway. I was slighlty hoping I'd fall in the font when uncovering it so I could cool down. Boy it was hot! Plus all the Elders have to wear suits so that made it double hot. (Don't count this as a first baptism mom, I only taught him 2 or 3 lessons)

We had a battle this week, but we came prepared. Prepared with the power of Lysol! I had never seen so many ants in my life, it took a good our to handle it. Then we fought the Boss, a Cockroach! Our weapon of choice... Elder Amundsen's flip flop. He had to chance next to that fantastic rubber!

Ok, baptism and bugs.. check. Now Deborah, oh Deborah. We took her to church like I said last week, then we tried to set up another time we could meet her. She cancelled that time because she had some family unexpectedly come in to town, oh yeah then she decided to leave to Detroit with them for a couple weeks! So pray that we can continue to teach her when she gets back.

Now we have Rosy, we went to her house on friday to have dinner, but when we got there we only found her "friend" Sanchez there cleaning the house. It turns out, when I had called Rosy the night before to confirm la cita, she was in the hospital. However, apparently she was to sick to even realize that herself and said she would be feeding us. She had gone in because there had been a lot of stress build up cause of things going on in her family. We saw her at church on sunday so she's out, better, and feeding us again tonight!

We have been really lucky this week with trackting, the past two days we've only trackted about an hour, and taught about 4 people in that hour. We'd be lucky to do that in two hours let alone one. Most of the people here are gospel bible worshipers who love their pastor and don't want to look into making him mad. Or they believe all churches are true and just are too lazy to read the B.O.M. It's sad. Hopefully though we'll get some good contacts out of those. One of them is a 17 year old and we had to teach him how to tie a tie one time we visited. He couldn't stop saying how much he liked Elder Amundsen's tie.

Boy have I eaten a lot of food this week. Thursday we had a lunch cita (appointment) at 2:30-3:30 a meeting at 4 and dinner at 5. I felt like I was to explode! I would say I didn't want desert but the next thing I know I'm given Ice Cream.
The food is Awesome though! We had some from Mexico (tamales), El Salvador (I don't remember the name) and Peruvian (not Spanky don't worry). I love this city and all it's diversity! We run into people from all over the place. Someday I'll write you and tell you I'll be able to tell the accents in spanish, but now I'm just trying to tell the Spanish!

We had a great P-Day today, we went to the Hollywood Bowl, and then to Hollywood Blvd. My companion had never been to the Blvd. before so he just soaked it all up and loved it. I loved seeing things and remembering when I was either with Rena or my Choir. You wouldn't believe the memorial on Michal Jacksons star! I got pictures of it. The Hollywood Bowl was pretty cool, Huge! They also had a little museum that taught about sound and the history of the bowl, that was pretty cool.

The weather here has been so-o hot! It doesn't help that most of the people we visist don't have A/C, only a small breeze from a window. I'm just glad we have A/C above my bed or else I wouldn't be able to sleep! Oh well, nothing I can't handle.

I'm glad to hear your busy with another show, and one that's going to be great by the sounds of it! I hope the weather can cooperate. Good luck with everything, I love you all!

Love,
Elder Groves

P.S. Next week's e-mail won't be til wednesday because we have temple P-day that week. We go to the temple once every other transfer.