Mas Chicharrones

It's been a long six weeks but she can finally start to exercise again. When we were home for Madison's wedding 78 weeks ago Hermana Borup had some surgery done on her foot. Since that time she has not been able to exercise and has only been able to walk with a special shoe. It is now off so we went to the beach to celebrate with her first swim in 8 weeks. We actually swam 3 times this week. SHe still can't run for a few more weeks and we are going to try to ride tomorrow. For those of you who know how much Hermana Borup loves running, you will know how hard this has been for her. She really has been positive though.

This week was zone conference. They usually have 3-4 zones meet at the same time and are held one time every transfer period (6 weeks). This time around The President is having them with each Zone individually and we received training in the morning of the first day and then we went and practiced what we were taught and then reported and received more training on the next day. We were challenged to place 2 Books of Mormon and do it by making it personal for those that receive them. Hermana Borup and I took the challenge as well. We went next door and spoke with our neighbor that helped me translate my talk. We happened to have an Elder who was sick with us so if we got stuck with our Spanish he could bail us out. I think we did pretty well. Our neighbor only had to ask him a couple time what we were talking about. She said that she would read it and pray. We really like her.

Our other Book of Mormon was given to another neighbor that we had never talked to before. We found out that she has a good friend that is on a mission. She seemed very interested and we think she will read it as well. I feel like we were supposed to talk to her just the way it worked out. We were going to see a young man across the street and he was eating so since we had a sick Elder we didn't want to wait.

The best part of the Zone conference was that Hermana Borup and I were asked to teach about faith, our favorite gospel subject. There are so many people here that believe the message of the missionaries of the restored Gospel, but they lack the faith to act on it. It's the most basic and first principal of the gospel but it's the one that needs to be taught with power and authority.  We challenged the missionaries to make it personal and teach the investigators how to apply faith in their own lives. This assignment was a challenge for us because it needed to be in Spanish. We think it turned out pretty good. We felt the spirit and we think the missionaries did also.

As you can see from the picture below of the man getting a ride in his wheelchair by hanging onto a motorcycle, that you never know what you will see here. It has got to the point that we are never surprised to see something like this because unusual things happen every day. It's is a result of people having limited resources but high levels of desire. About a half mile from where this picture was taken there is a government building. I saw a man in a wheelchair with the LDS logo on it when I was in that building a few weeks ago. He probably needed to get to work and found the practical cheap way to get him and his wheelchair to work. We have seen washing machines and full mattresses on the back of motorcycles, or construction workers dragging 20 foot long pipes or rebar that they are holding in one hand while driving the motorcycle with the other. It all just seems to make the people more endearing to us.

We really love it here. There are some hard things about living here but the kindness of the people make it so enjoyable. Last week when we were trying to find the optical store, I stopped and asked an elderly lady if she knew where it was. She didn't know so she asked a guy walking down the street. He knew but had a hard time explaining it so he walked down the street until he could point it out to us. Just helping out someone in need. We can't wait for a new week. We are excited to share the good news with soo many good people.

We hope all is well with everyone. We miss you all.

Your friends
Hermana y Elder Borup

This guy in the Wheelchair was holding on to the motorcycle and going down the main road to and from Azua. They were going about 35 mph. The back of the wheelchair had the church's logo on it. 

2nd week of being taught the art of making Chicharrones. IS is wahing it and then putting lemons on it to marinate.  This is my favorite way of fellowshipping.

Everyone enjoys chicharrones.

Hermana Borup had her return to exercise this week. We went for a little swim.

President Santos teaching the missionaries at a Zone Conference.

An Elder reading a contract he wrote (he wants to be a lawyer) which will commit this Hermana from drinking soda for 6 months. 

As part of the agreement, This Elder will drink his first coke in 8 months.

Hermana Making it official. Her main goal was to help the Elder enjoy a coke. She felt bad that he hasn't had one for so long. By the way, her companion is not very confident that she will be able to keep her side of the bargain

The last and the first. Hermana's last coke for 6 months, Elder's first coke in 8 months.

We had district conference this week. We loved to see how everyone wanted to stick around and visit. 

After conference, you can see the people across the street waiting for the Guagua (bus) to take them back to their cities. The far away branches rent a guagua for the whole branch to travel together. 

Santiago and Danny who were recently baptized with the littlest ones of their family headed home after conference.