Monday, July 27, 2015

Iguana Hunting in Santa Maria

Happy cabin week! Someone eat a calzone for me at Mr.Pibbs :)

I absolutely love it here in Santa María, Huatulco! It is so fun. I kind have gotten used to sweating all the time. Well actually last night it rained for about 20 minutes so it felt super nice with a little bit of cool air. I'm comfortable at night with my hammock, I would die sleeping in a bed here because it would just get too hot in the middle of the night. What I love most about the área is the small community of members. A lot of the members hang out every night where one member sells esquite and elote. (Corn with mayo, lime, queso, and chile seasoning) By the way esquite is one of my favorite things to eat here in Oaxaca, it sounds gross but its AMAZING. So yeah every night we stop by and talk with a bunch of members at the hangout spot.

Here, there's a House of Prayer (Casa de Oración) that we meet at for our church services. I took some pictures of the house of prayer. I think there were about 40 members who attended church yesterday, and they filled up the chapel area. The missionaries, the branch president as well as our mission leader pretty much keep the branch from collapsing. The branch is filled with members who are all recent converts so as missionaries we work with the members a lot.

Our members may be few here, but our proselyting area is HUGE. We have little villages going all the way down to the beach that are part of our area. We haven´t started exploring those yet because we have been focusing our work here in Santa María in order to get to know the members. Also, the little villages are dangerous to be roaming around when it gets dark, so we have to be near our house after 7 o'clock for safety reasons.

There´s a lot of cool wildlife here. Beautiful butterflies with vibrant colors, Iguanas and tropical birds.
I took some fun pictures with my parrot friend Lorenzo. :) Haha and the Iguanas that roam free here are huge! The ones I took pictures of are the medium sized ones. I have a funny story to tell about an Iguana. We were at a recent convert´s house helping them shuck corn when we saw a dog sprinting until he stopped suddenly at the giant tree. We figured out it was an Iguana that he was chasing, and in seconds the iguana was 30 feet up this tree.
The father of the family, (who isn't a member yet) asked us if we were hungry for some Iguana. I haven´t tried iguana yet so I was excited to eat some roasted Iguana that day. Agustín took his slingshot and started firing rocks at the Iguana, which was all the way at the top of the tree at this point. (I took pictures). After about 20 minutes of no success, one of the kids started to climb the tree with a 10 foot pole in hand to knock the Iguana down. He knocked the Iguana down and it fell about 40 feet and hit the ground running into the jungle. We didn't eat Iguana that day :( hahaha it sure was funny though.

We were going to visit the beach today but it took us forever to wash our clothes as well as clean the house, because it was kind dirty. Also, we had to clear out a bunch of tall grass in front of our house. Bugs and flies were living in the grass and we don´t want our house to become infested. Next week hopefully. Or maybe we´ll go to one of the villages in our area that is right next to the beach this week.

I'm scared to carry my camera around because of the chance of getting jumped..but I like taking pictures of the cool things I see. I hope you all have a great week in Paradise!
Love you all!

Con Amor,
Elder Smith

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