LOVING IT IN BOISE!!

Hey Mom!
Soooo I got here on Wednesday and the mission president picked us up at the airport. We then went to mission office and met our companions and everything. I have 2 companions right now, my trainer, Elder Padgett who's from Winter Haven, Florida, and then Elder Olivera from Peru. The first thing we did was go and eat at Mongolian BBQ, and then went straight to work. They're both really good elders and have taught me a lot. We live in the basement of a smaller house, with 2 English elders. One of the English elders is from Alberta Canada and he hunts moose. He said that he would be my hunter host in Canada if I ever need one! (Dad will know what that means)
The Spanish elders all get cars, because we only teach Spanish people, so our areas are really big. I live in Meridian, which is right next to Boise, and we're over their Spanish branch. My area is called Meridian Spanish. Our area is really big, and covers 7 regular English stakes. We find and teach almost all of our investigators in trailer parks around here, and most of them are Mexicans which helps me to learn because all of the Spanish countries have such different accents. The people here are really nice, but I can hardly understand everything. THEY TALK SO FREAKING FAST! They probably think I'm a dope because I talk like such a gringo, and when they ask me a question usually one of my companions has to translate it for me. We haven't taught very many lessons yet, so I haven't really had a good opportunity to try teaching in Spanish but we're going to be tracting in a new area tomorrow and supposedly they're going to make me contact some people all by myself! It'll be good for me to learn though.
The members of our branch are so awesome. We have a dinner appointment
every night with a family. They feed us so much, I'm gonna start getting fat if I'm not careful. On Friday, it was the day of Rosca de Reyes, which is a big holiday in Mexico. This is the day when kids get presents, and they're celebrating the 3 kings that visited Jesus. One of the families in our branch had like 20 of the missionaries over and they fed all of us a huge dinner. They fed us a soup called posole, and then it's tradition to eat this bread called rosca after. The bread has dolls in it, and whoever gets one of them has to make tamales for everybody. Speaking of tamales, one of the people we were teaching gave us a whole bunch of home made tamales to eat one night. Another night at a dinner appointment, we were with a guy that married a girl from Argentina, and they gave us this drink called mata. It's kind of a like a tea, and it was honestly one of the worst things I've ever tasted in my life. You pass the mata around the dinner table and everybody talks while you drink it. Well my turn came and I took a big swig of it, and it was everything I could do to not puke. The lady from Argentina was watching me and I told her that it was okay, so then I had to pretend to take another drink of it. Luckily that drink is more of a South American thing, and so I won't have to deal with it in Mexico. I've eaten lots of Mexican food the last couple of days, and most of it has been really good. Today for P day we went to this cool indoor astro turf arena to play soccer with a bunch of other missionaries. The manager is a member so they let us in for free. We went to Wal-Mart today and did our grocery shopping, and then went to the Nike outlet for a little bit. I bought a sweet Boise State shirt too. Tonight we're going to Outback, because Elder Padgett has a gift card. On Saturday after our zone meeting, there were like 12 of us
that went to eat at Olive Garden after, and as we were getting ready to
pay, the waitress came over and said that somebody had paid our whole bill of like $144, but the people that did it wouldn't let her tell us until they left, so we couldn't even say thanks. They say the Boise Mission is like a country club, because we're so well taken care of.
The weather here isn't really that cold, and I'll be fine with the clothes that I have. There are so many freaking geese here, honestly everywhere I look I see flocks flying, and we'll just be driving by somewhere and I'll see a bunch just sitting off the road.
That's way cool that Connor finally got a job; tell him I'm proud of him! The best place to send anything is to the mission office, and I think they forward it to us. The address is:

1111 South Cole Road
Boise, Idaho
83709

I still haven’t heard anything about my Visa, but I really like it here so I'm not too worried about it. My P days will always be Mondays here. Thanks so much for everything! I really do love what I'm doing. I hope that everything's going well for everybody!
I love you!