I'm staying in La Vega for round 2

Hey guys what is going on? I’m staying in La Vega for a round 2 with Elder Reyes again, and we are going to do work this transfer if everything goes as planned. I am excited to have another transfer with him, and we will work hard. The partying finally ended Sunday with their day of Independence. This week we only had Sacrament Meeting in the morning because this week was supposed to be crazy and they had a parade passing right in front of the chapel for a couple of hours. But finally we don’t have to worry about carnaval anymore and we can work as normal on the weekends. Had a close call on Sunday on the way home from church there was a man covered in black paint and he would give u a hug if you didn’t give him 5 pesos, and I almost got covered in paint but I was glad I had a 5 peso coin in my pocket.

This week we had a funny story with an investigator, we were sitting down in his house and he didn’t want to listen to us, so he told us he had to go do something next door and left us waiting in his house for 45 minutes with no one there. So we got ditched in the dude’s house. We lost some people this week unfortunately, but we have found some amazing people this week. We have some young families and adults that are way intelligent and it is fun to teach them. This transfer for baptisms we have 4 planned right now, a man that is 91 years old, and a family that has one kid that is 9 years old so there is 3 there. We have another 2 that hopefully we can start passing by more often and speed things up a bit. So hopefully I should have my first baptisms this transfer. In the mission I have never learned so much about other people and the different religions of the world and it is fun to learn about them.

I live in a 4 man house now the other missionaries got jipped of their house because the owner wanted it back so they just put them in are house, which will be difficult. It is just a little too small for 4 people. But now I have an American which means exchanges to Burger King like we did for lunch, which was freakin amazing. A bacon cheeseburger has never tasted so good.

But that is it for me. Hope y’all are doing great and continue working. And Jacob the Dominican zone leader thinks it is cute that you write me a dear elder every week. Continue doing it! Take care y’all!

Love, Elder Smith

 Matthew and Elder Placentia burning a tie for being out 6 months.

This was new to Dale and I but Brittney seemed to know about the tradition.

 Some of the Carnaval setup

 Elder Reyes and Matthew outside the chapel with the parade passing by

The La Vega Zone