This might be a short letter, as I'm writing pretty late, and I've had a cold and congestion the last couple of days. My friend, Carlos Santos, offered to give me a blessing in text after church today, and I agreed. He came over, talked with Sarah and I just about anything and everything, and left me with a blessing of healing, a nice one at that. Sarah made Sopa a la Criolla for dinner tonight and we gave him and his wife a tupperware for them to take home to eat. Oh yeah, Sarah made Sopa tonight, at my request. She learned from recipes on the internet how to make it and believe me, it was really good. Pretty much Authentic Peruvian. Sarah is a really good cook, so it doesn't surprise me that she could make a dish like that. She made a lot of it; so much so that as I was putting it in our largest of plastic containers, the spaghetti plopped in and it overflowed everywhere. My bad. I had to clean in between the stove crevices to get at it.
Funny thing is that Sarah and I have set apart Wednesdays to go to the temple. Well, something must have been catching up to us. We made dinner after work at school and lay down for a nap. Next thing we know, we are waking up at around 11pm, wondering where the time went. We both needed that rest, for sure, but which also resulted in another week without being able to go to the temple. We did drive by Mesa Temple today though, but not intentionally.
That said, guess what? You know those tours that President Nelson has been going on recently, including the recent tour to that baseball field in Washington, I think? Well, our bishopric received a letter from the area seventy saying that President Russell M. Nelson and President Oaks and their wives are coming to speak at the University of Phoenix stadium, where the cardinals play, on Tony's birthday, February 10th, 2019! How lucky are we? The stadium seats about 63,400 people. The letter also said that information will be coming about tickets. How cool would it be to attend the event? We are hoping to get some tickets, but we are still unsure about the details of obtaining them. However, even if we don't get them, they will broadcast the devotional to the stake centers in surrounding areas. You know, I wish they would broadcast all the events that President Nelson attends, like his visits to the Americas, or Washington. I think, and hope, with the innovations in technologies, that maybe we will be able to watch those events, and not just a summary that Mormon Newsroom puts out. I really hope so. I do yearn to hear more of our prophet's voice, in these the latter-days. BTW, we finally got our conference ensigns after much tribulation in getting addresses corrected. I hope to read more of them as time goes on.
More news! The newest trailer for Avengers 4 and title just came out on Friday. The sequel to Avengers Infinity War is called Avengers Endgame. I will just leave you with that nugget. As, I don't really want to spoil anything for you. Not only that, the next film in the Marvel franchise just got its second trailer: Captain Marvel. It's looking to be pretty epic as well. It comes out in March, and Avengers comes out at the end of April. You're probably wondering how a sequel has two other movies (antman and cptn marvel) before it. You find out how Ant-man is connected at the end of that movie, and Captain Marvel is set in the 1990s for some reason. They're saying Captain Marvel was available the whole time, just doing her own thing that we'll find the answer to in her movie, kinda like the Guardians. It's crazy how it all connects. And then she has a major role to play in Endgame. Don't know what, but it's major. I hope I didn't spoil anything for you. I was telling Sarah that I'm sad, because you have a lot of Marvel to catch up with and I don't think I'll be around to witness the gloriousness, at least not all the movies.
We had our Branch Christmas party on Saturday. It was nice. I found out that the President was sick as well. Long story short, we cancelled ward council only to have it un-cancelled by the 2nd counselor only to have it cancelled that evening, and I didn't receive the text until that it was cancelled until I was already there. It was nice to go home and rest though.
Back to the Christmas party. They served tamales with ham and potatoes spaghetti. I like the two last things the most. I got to know the mother of the only missionary serving from our branch. His name is Diego Castaneda and his mom is Sylvia. He's serving in Texas right now. She's super nice and it was nice to get to know her. Another brother, Angel Reyna has been asking me to teach him how to play the diatonic accordian. We just have to set up a time to go dabble. We sat next to the previous Branch President and his Wife, Raul and Gloria Cruz, and her sister. They were the ones that let us stay at there house for a bit while we found our apartment. I helped President Castaneda get food for Santa and his wife. He really looks it. But they weren't in our branch. Sarah was able to play Joy to the World for the missionaries. And at the end, we danced to Hispanic versions of Christmas songs by ourselves, so much so that we were called out on it by Hermana Marquelia Camargo, the MC. They also had pinatas, too many to count.
I've been performing for Choir the last two or three weeks. The funny part is that the sister Hermana Orelia Castaneda is very pushy, and, while she likes music, she doesn't really know how to handle a choir and can be very brief with people. She enlisted our help as we have sung the song, Mary's Lullaby. Well, I mention the above because Sarah was helping lead the sisters into how they came into the song as a sister asked a question about the song. I'm not exactly sure how this happened, but she shushed one of the sisters. At that exact moment, Sarah was like, "Don't shush her, she's just asking a question and that is rude." Wow, that quieted her for a good 10 or so minutes, and it was actually much better. Even the brothers in the bishopric have told us to not let her push us around. Unfortunately, there were only a few in the choir today, which is sad because they missed out on the awesome fried Chimichangas that she made for those that showed up. Although, I was glad, because that meant more for us.
Sarah had the opportunity to translate for Aunt Kerry. I wasn't around, but from what I understand, it went well, except that Sarah was sad for the kid they were doing the IEP for. Also, she got hit by the kid I restrained a couple weeks back. So, it leads for interesting days. Fortunately she didn't get hurt. Also, we're going to a baptism this week for a girl Sarah has gotten to know named Valeria. She even went to an art exhibit with her one of the days I worked or was at meetings. That, and Sarah has worked odd jobs at the Amazon warehouse. She doesn't have a set schedule, but she tries to work when I'm gone, and the latest til 12 midnight.
Anyways, there is probably more, but it's that shut eye time. I love you, kiddo. You mean the world to me.
Love,
John
