February 9

Hola,

Well, it's a small world.  We had the transfers/changes/whatever this week, and while my companion and I stayed together, one of the elders in our district left, and Elder Bramble took his place.  We ate together on wednesday and we started talking about where we are from.  He asked me first, and I said the Salt Lake Valley because if there is one thing I've learned during my time here in Mexico is that pretty much nobody knows where West Valley is.  Then I asked him, and he said he was from West Valley.  I started asking where and pretty soon we figured out that we are from the same stake.  I was actually going to say something about it in my letter this week, but I guess you beat me to it.  So to answer your question, we have in fact met.  

Other than that things are going more or less the same here.  We had a zone conference today that was entirely about numbers.  Seriously, the first thing the zone leaders did was write the number of lessons and things like that from this last week, and from a month ago on the white board.  They then proceded to talk to us for two hours and the only thing they really said was that they were better than a month ago, but that they need to be even better.  Basically, the zone leaders here love numbers.  Now, I know that the numbers are an important tool for us.  They help us see what we're doing well, and what we can improve on.  My problem was that we spent two hours talking about them, and basically acomplished nothing doing so.  Still, it could be worse.  My first zone conference in the mission lasted almost four hours.

I think that's about it for me this week.  As far as money goes, we have a seperate account that the mission uses to deposite money for food and things like that.  We get about 120 dollars per month, and we have a debit card that we use to withdraw it.  Basically, pretty much all the money that I've spent from my account is because 120 dollars don't go a long way in a month, especially when you have an area where you have to travel a lot, like my last area.  Still, like you said I still have money left in my account, I just don't want to use it up too fast.  And when I do use it I pretty much always use it in an ATM because of the nasty foreign fees that come everytime I think too hard about using it.

Oh, and you said something about my spelling being so good.  That's because I have to think about what I'm doing, or Spanish starts coming out.  Seriously, last week I started writing your letter, and I wasn't paying too much attention.  When I looked up, I had written a couple of lines in Spanish.  I guess that comes with the mission.  I think I will have forgotten English completely by the time I am done here.

OK, I love you and I'll talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long