Did you know that if you place your finger on the table, and smash a sideways can of vegetables on your finger, the can will deform and not your finger?

Make sure you do it super hard though, otherwise it hurts a bit.  It's a really cool object lesson for Helaman 5:12!

This week has been pretty good as usual!  We've been biking hard (I'm a bit more used to it now)  and it's weird: I can actually "steer" the bike!  I'm still no expert, but I can get around without dying most of the time.  It's also interesting on a bike, because you can talk to a LOT more people this way. In the car you just kinda sit there bored out of your skull until you finally park and talk to someone.  They would be super wierded-out if we pulled the car over to jump out and started walking over to them.  People confuse us with law-enforcement often enough as it is.

We've had a rather busy week as well.  Rojelia is doing well, although she got sick and we had to give her a blessing.  Elder Lewis got to perform it, which was great because it's the first he'd ever done.  It worked, because a couple hours later her son Ricky was inspired to go check her medicine, and discovered that she'd been out of one of them for four days!  She didn't understand that if she stops taking even one of her pills, bad stuff goes down.  So she's doing a lot better now, although she didn't make it to church.  

We also finally got the records in our area books all sorted out, which is going to help a LOT.  We actually have people to go see now, yay!  This week has been a lot of "they don't live here anymore" "we're not interested" and empty doors, but as we worked through it we saw miracles. We dropped by to visit a less active lady named Claudia, and when we did, she had a friend named Saul there.  He was pretty cool to talk to, and although he looked a tiny bit rough, we started talking about the gospel.  I've NEVER taught anyone like Saul; he's truly a unique mexican.  The cool thing about him, is that he knows almost literally nothing about religion.  About the only thing he knew about Jesus Christ is the name, and that he's important.  That's it!  That seems like it'd be a bad thing, but in reality it was perfect, because he has no bias whatsoever, so the restoration made perfect sense to him.  When I asked him what he thought about God; on pure intuition, he said "well, I think He's a Man.  Only, perfect you know?"  It was cool to hear him speak eternal truths, just based on feeling, and not on what others had told him.  He's excited to learn more, and we left him with a Book of Mormon to read.  Next time we're going to teach who Jesus Christ was in great detail, and I'm excited to do that, because we'll be doing it straight out of the Book of Mormon.  It'll be a really solid way for him to gain a testimony of the restoration!  He recognized a difference in the way we try to help him understand things and the way others have just thrown pamphlets and things at him.

Elder Lewis is doing super good.  If he's homesick, he doesn't focus too much on it; he's one of the most focused missionaries I've ever seen, he's probably better at it than I am!  He's definately the most focused NEW missionary ever.  An interesting challenge we're dealing with is the language; because I never really had to work hard to get my spanish and neither did Elder Mortimer.  I'm not really sure how to help, but I'm doing what I can.  

I'm excited to hear all about Brittney's adventures in College! (Shoot down those young men for about one more year, alright!?!  I'm gonna be there!)  She'll do super good.  I can't believe Danielle is almost as tall as me!   That's not the way it's supposed to work!   I love you all; and hope Dad has a happy birthday! 

ps: I did recieve the package, but we haven't fixed the bikes yet; we're going to a bike shop this afternoon. Also; the faster you can send the memory card the better; I accidentally left the backup somewhere in Simi Valley.  Sorry!

Love,

Elder Matthew David Clough