March 31, 2009 (Email)

Buenos dias!
Guess what I ate last week?! You're going to love this. I have a new addition to my list of things I normally wouldn't eat. This list includes various abominations including octopus, cow tongue, pig skin, purple carrot juice, etc. This one tops it off- tripe. Or, in other words, cow intestines. David and Dixie fed us cow intestine tacos! Surprisingly it wasn't as bad as the cow tongue or the pig skin. The pig skin was pretty much pure fat. And the cow tongue just disturbed me.
Anyway, David and Dixie decided for their own personal reasons to push their marriage back to June. :( Well, at least they still maintain a strong desire to be baptized and sealed someday. They're still actively engaged in the church and they still have us come over every week and they still feed us all sorts of stuff.
Rosie's gaining weight eh? Well, prepare fort this week's Elder Lewis Freakout- since September of '08 I HAVE GAINED 28 POUNDS!!! Ugh. That's 10 in the MTC and 18 in Buena Park. My metabolism is not strong enough for the ridiculous amount of food we are fed. What am I going to do about it? Not sure. I don't believe in skim milk and diet begins with the word die and I don't want to do that. I have cut down on candy and I have cut down a ton on soda. I only drink soda when it's given to me at dinner appointments and stuff. Other than that I drink water, lemonade, milk and fruit beverages. And outside of meal appointments I don't eat very much. Snap. That sounds a lot like a diet. I guess I've decided to diet. And when I feel conscious enough in the mornings I exercise.
Suli Crank is going to be baptized April 9th at 6:00 p.m. and that's final! We've reserved the font and everything so it's mas o menos set in stone. She was interviewed by Elder Thompson yesterday so she's all set. Suli's middle name is way Tongan. I've completely forgotten it. It starts with an apostrophe and it has like 5 or 6 syllables.
Ralph seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. We'll keep looking for him though. Bro. Stelly is recording an album and his family chose not to attend church this Sunday again. I wonder if the whole smoking thing is why they don't come to church sometimes. We brought it up in ward council and the ward's going to do all they can to support that family and show them their love. And we're continuing to visit them twice a week.
We met a guy on the street trying to sell his DVD player on the corner of Knott Ave. He looked pretty homeless at first but I guess he lives in a complex near David and Dixie. We approached him and he started talking to us. He got really excited about us serving the Lord and he started prophesying about places we should visit and then he asked us to pray with him. He had us get into a prayer circle with him right there in the middle of the sidewalk and he asked me to give a "power prayer." I did the best I could and he muttered some amens and then afterward he said he felt all tingly and he sat down on the grass. We gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, gave him our phone number, invited him to learn more and concluded from his breath that he was a little intoxicated. We passed him again later and he said "Read me something from King David!" I flipped open my Bible and read a random passage from Samuel that was pretty over his head but he seemed to like it. And then we moved on. We have his phone number now so hopefully we'll meet him again.
Sabrina Sanchez's husband came back from Iraq a little while ago. He came to church this Sunday and asked us to start teaching him. That was a blessing. We were struggling on Saturday trying to find new investigators. We knocked for three hours and nobody received us. Then the Lord blessed us according to His own time the next day. Remember, the Lord is able to do His own work.
So all's good. I don't think I need any pictures from my SD card, but if you'd like to send me some pictures of you guys and stuff you've been doing I'd love that. I'm going to try to get some pants adjusted today. My black and blue ones absolutely don't fit me anymore.
Still snowing eh? That's a shame. This has been the longest summer of my life. Good day. Sunshine.
I love you!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis