August 4th, 2009 (Email)

Hello!
Sister Chun came home a few days ago with 81 pounds of peaches. She went peach picking somewhere up north. Needless to say Elder Rada and I are adjusting to a new diet.
Raquel Piceno passed her baptismal interview yesterday. So she's going to be baptized this Saturday! She wants me to baptize her and Elder Rada to confirm her. She's pretty excited. And her mom said she's going to come to the baptism so we have high hopes that she'll come to the confirmation at church too.
Hyemi Choi's progressing well. We've already invited her to be baptized twice but she still doesn't want to commit to a date yet. She wants to find out everything about the church before she becomes a member- which is pretty much what her brother did before he met with the missionaries.
I accidentally said something funny in Spanish the other day. Sometimes my mouth still has a hard time pronouncing things when I try to speak too fast. So the other day we were knocking in Norwalk and we came across a Spanish speaking fellow to whom I said "Estamos compartiendo un mensage sobre El Libro de Mono, un otro testamento de Jesucristo" ("We are sharing a message about the Book of Monkey, another testament of Jesus Christ.") I noticed the grin on the man's face as well as my companion. I asked Elder Rada "What did I say?" and he said "I'll tell you in a minute." Yeah that was a little embarrassing but not too bad.
We've started visiting a less-active Samoan family named the Moemais. We visited them Saturday night and they were having a barbeque. Bro. Moemai saw us and said "Elders! Eat!" so of course we had blenty of ribs and rice. Then we were given dessert: two strawberry shortcakes each. Then Bro. Moemai decided that each strawberry shortcake needed a nice big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. That's okay - the whole family came to church the following morning.
Happy to hear Hannah had a fun birthday. Lagoon sounded like it was an adventure for everybody. Yeah Mom kids are crazy these days. Especially in California. Startin' 'em young. I'm observing that our society is regressing. From the length of the shorts to the capacity of the brain cells it's all going in the wrong direction.
Whoah Grandma's surgery sounds intense! Glad to hear she did fine. Elder Rada needs to have knee surgery when he goes home in a few months. Apparently he's the only missionary in the world with a broken ACL in the field.
Tyler Smedley's already home?! TWO OR THREE HOURS OF INTERVIEW?! Okey dokey I guess. I thought I'd just get a pat on the back and a pamphlet about dating or something.
Answers to some questions: Haven't been able to see Elder Kemp yet. He's somewhere by Huntington Beach so he's a few zones away. Regarding the birthday package I'll be happy with what you got me :) And I haven't found that eye medicine. I haven't really looked for it either (my bad!) But if it's coming with the package I'll be all right. It's not bad or anything my eyes just feel dry every now and then.
Muchisimas gracias! Have fun in Yellowstone next week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis