Second Week in the DR

So i survived another week here, there really isn´t anything new this week from last week. i am still eating the same food and it is still rediculously hot here. The only emails i have gotten are from mom and dad so if any of you others sent me something i didn´t get. as far as dearelders go, we get them every wednesday so it would probably be best just to email me because i can print the emails off and read them and then get on the computer and reply. if you do want to send me a dear elder though, you can just address to the Dominican Republic MTC and i will get that. The address i sent you last week is the best for pouch, and for packages they gave me this address

Elder Johnson
Dominican Republic
Centro Capacitacion Misional
Av Bolivar 825
Los Roblesç
Santo Domingo, DR

(they also said it might be better to send it to the mission in case i am gone when they get here but that is up to you) On tuesday, we went to the university again to do some proselyting. My companion and i were really excited because we were hoping that Manuel (the investigator from last week) would be there. we prepared a good lesson and had a book of mormon with some highlighted parts that we wanted him to read, but unfortunately he didn´t show up. We just had to go around and contact as many people as we could in about an hour. we talked to about 7 people and gave out a book of Mormon. My favorite is when we walk up to someone and they say they are Christian or Catholic and aren´t interested but we still talk to them and after a while they get really into it and have a lot of questions. We also got rejected a couple times but they were really nice about it. i need to get used to it because i am sure i will be rejected a lot on my mission so it´s good to start now. Earlier this week, we had the Area President of the Carribbean come and give a devotional. It was a really great talk. my favorite part was at the end when he gave us the opportunity to ask some question. someone asked how can we invite the Spirit more strongly. He did an experiment with us that he did when he was a mission president. He had someone give a prayer, he had another person (who was a recent convert) tell about their conversion, he had another person bear their testimony about Joseph Smith, and another person talk about their love for their companion. After this he asked if the Spirit was any stronger. There was a huge difference that everone could feel.On Monday, for one of our classes our teacher was about 20 minutes late. when we asked him why he was so late, he told us that some gut cut another guys head off with a machete and he wanted to see. he was on his way to work but he wanted to see so he got out of the car and walked over. he said he was only about 10 feet away from the body. The funny thing is that he was totally cool about it like it was an everyday thing. We thought this was the craziest thing but he told us not to worry because the people hear know that we are people from God and don´t mess with us. i´m not worried though, i know the Lord will protect us. I really don´t know what more i can say. My companion and i get along really well, even more so than my old companion in Provo. We are starting to teach with unity which is good because we are taught that, along with the Spirit, is one of the most important things. My Spanish is improving everyday but it is still no where close to being really good. Tomorrow we teach the entire 2nd lession about the Plan of Salvation in Spanish which i am really excited about because it is my favorite lesson. The only other thing that is worth mentioning is the soup we had today. It was a chicken soup with potatoes that looked like sewage, but it was actually not too bad. it looked like they threw a whole chicken in there with a couple of big potatoes. its not even worth picking around all of the bones and extra stuff. you just have to put a big spoon ful in your mouth and spit out all of the ¨unnecessaries¨. This last week has flown by, i can´t believe i have already been here for two weeks. it still hasn´t hit me yet that i am on an island in the middle of the ocean. i hope the 4 weeks left here go by as fast as this one did. i get more and more anxious to go out into the field everyday. oh yeah, i was talking with one of my teachers about baseball because he used to play before his mission and he was telling me that he used to go to the field and watch Vladamir Guerro (i´m not sure how to spell his name but you know who i´m talking about) practice when he was about 18 and just about to get signed. He talked about a couple of other players were lived really close to him that got drafted as well. I am so excited to go out and play some ball with all of these future mlb players. Anyways, my time is up but i would love to hear from you all.

Love, Elder Johnson aka Marky Mark