What Mockler REALLY means...

HELLO!

Well, we had quite the exciting week this week! Hopefully this weeks email will make up for a few of the terrible boring ones I've sent before, haha. But don't get your hopes up too high. The weekly weather report is that it is HOT again. Real hot. But that's ok....it just makes missionary work more fun! Also, another 6 weeks have come and gone and this week is the start of a new transfer. And what's the big news this time? Well.....nothing. Elder Rodríguez and I are going to stay here 1 more together! This will be my first time staying 3 transfers with one companion. We're excited! Unless anything really crazy happens we'll be together until the beginning on October and I'll be here until the middle of November. Cool. Elder Berrett is also coming to our district which will be awesome...I'm excited to see him again!

On Friday we ate Kebab (In Amigo Kebab....amigooooo) to celebrate the start of our 3rd transfer and while a man from Pakistan was fixing our food, Elder Rodríguez said, "Hey, Mockler, do you want everything on yours?" The guy working stopped and said, "Wait, your name is Mockler? That is a word in my language. It means...big...hole. Or big gap." Hahaha! Elder Rodriguez always tells me my name is weird and now he has even more ammo, haha. The guy working wrote "Mockler" in his language for me and wrote the name of his language, too, but I left the paper in the piso. Big hole it is, I guess.

I had my first interesting food adventure in quite a while this week! We ate with some recent converts (we hardly ever eat with members here) and they served us fish and rice with peanut sauce. It was awesome! When they served the fish, they served it whole, with the head and all, which is pretty normal here. At the end I asked if I should eat any part of the head and they said I could if I want but that it is kinda hard with the bones. And then they said that the eye is really great. I don't know what has happened to me, but as soon as they said that I went right for it thinking "well, I've never eaten fish eyes..." It ended up being pretty good! The texture is a bit like the yolk of a hardboiled egg. Weird. Anyway, we can cross that one off the list now.

This week we saw an awesome miracle. As a mission, we have the goal to have 70+ baptisms this month of August. Elder Rodríguez and I had a few investigators that we thought would maybe be ready this month, but most of them have gone on vacation or kind of fallen off track. So we have prayed that we could find someone who would be ready to be baptized. On Thursday we contacted a man named Pedro who is from Cuba. He was a reference from the missionaries in Madrid and when we met with him he told us he has already heard all the missionary lessons, he has been to church many times and visited the temple there in Madrid, and that he has read half of the Book of Mormon. We invited him to be baptized on the 31st and he said, "I was hoping I would be able to be baptized this month, so that day is perfect for me!" We are super excited for him!! So it looks like next week we'll be having a baptism..super awesome! God answers prayers, helps us with our goals, and will do whatever it takes to bless all of His children. When we ask according to His will, He will always bless us!

Love you so much!!

Elder Big Hole Mockler