BOOM!?!

Hola mis seres queridos,

Last night at about 11:15 we received our changes. All week Elder Blankenfeld and Elder Evans had been worrying about changes. They kept guessing who would be leaving and why. They also were guessing who would replace who, so on and so forth. The most likely change was that Elder Blankenfeld would leave the sector after being there for 6 months and Elder Boyce would leave too. But no, Elder Boyce, Elder Evans, and Elder Blankenfeld all stayed and I was changed. I was actually really excited to change, but was upset for two things; I had to pack everything that night AND that we had about 4 people who wanted to be baptized next change. It´s all good though. I´m just happy they´re getting baptized.

We went to the change meeting this morning and President gave an extremely inspirational and powerful talk to us about giving everything we've got. We also did a group prayer for the families of the 2 Elders who were found dead in Romania. Supposedly the gas was left on all night in their house and killed them in their sleep. It was so scary to hear about and now all elders sleep with the gas completely turned off at night.

After all that I received my new companion... Elder Tello. Such a cool Elder. He is from Lima Peru. He speaks perfect spanish (obviously) and speaks a little bit of English. I had been hoping for a Latin companion that could help me perfectionize the spanish language and now I've got him. The coolest thing about him though is that he is 20 years old and already graduated from college as a chef. Yes, a CHEF! He made me some ridiculously good pasta dish with vegetable sauce and chicken. He's awesome and I'm excited to work with him. We also live with 2 other gringo elders. One of them arrived in the mission just one change before I did and the other has been here for over a year. The one that carries over a year is from Gilbert, AZ. He went to Mesquite High school. Crazy huh? Anyways, we live in a much nicer pension then my last, but we are far from every store and internet place. We are actually in a GIANT sector now in one of the poorer parts of the mission. My companion tells me that there are over a million inactive members in our sector. Looks like we've got some work to do.

Earlier in the week something crazy happened. Our recent convert Juan had a huge accident and was all over the news. I´ll tell the story really quickly. Juan goes into the bathroom and sprays some AXE deodorant on his arm pits then sets the can on the sink. He then goes and sits on the toilet just a few feet away from the sink and BOOM!?! The can of AXE explodes. The explosion is so powerful that it blows out the roof above his head, breaks the window behind him, singes the hair on his head, burns his face a little bit, and burns off all the hair on his arms. What saved him was that since nobody else was home, he left the bathroom door wide open and most of the impact went out the door. He went to the hospital and then was released home. He's not allowed in the sun for 2 weeks, but looks just slightly sun burnt now. It's crazy. The can burst open completely and destroyed everything. The police and AXE are investigating what happened. They wanted to blame him, but there's no evidence that he did anything at all and they can't explain why the can blew up the way it did. I have pictures of it all, but these computers don't have anywhere to plug into. The best part of it all is that Juan and his mom recognize that Juan was protected. They see it as a miracle of God that Juan is perfectly fine and that he has no permanent damage done to him. Crazy experience though.

Yeah, that's my week though. Wish me luck with my new companion and please keep praying for my investigators. I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Mooney