Email 11 April 2011

Pues mi familia y mis amigos,
Everyone doing well? Glad to hear it! Well, not too much has changed with me. Well a lot has actually, but it is complicated to explain. Anyways, about the week :)
So as I told you last week, there are two new Elders in our area. Shaw and I are still together... We are in charge of just Colotenango and Ixtahuacán. The others are in charge of Ical and San Pedro Necta. It is a lot more fun than I thought it would be to be honest haha. The two Elders up there are Elder Bergeson (from my group...spent most of my time with him in the CCM), from Houston, and Elder Larson (just like Connor!), from St. George. It is awesome. It sucks not having Ical anymore, but we are adapting quickly. All of our investigators were in that area, so now we have like nothing, but oh well. Time to find more new people I guess... Moving the new Elders there was the biggest pain in the butt ever. We did it at like 6 pm. The truck we were using overheated, so we had to deal with that. They moved into the church in Ical, so it isn’t the easiest place in the world to get to. It was horrible... I wrote more about that in my letter home though.
I finally had a conference. The first one in two months... We spent 8+ hours in a church in Xela. We had 8 different classes that taught us about different purposes of a missionary and such. The lessons were great and all, but the day just seemed soooo long. I got 3 hours of sleep the night before because there were 8 of us staying in the Zonies. It was just chaos haha. I did get pouch though and that was well worth it for sure... I got 4 packages and quite a few letters. I got the package from you guys Mom and Dad. I got one from my CCM teacher, Hermano Cuque. Dr Pepper baby! haha. Another was from Macs parents and the other from a friend. It was awesome.... As for letters, I got 2 from friends. DearElders from you, Mom and Dad. And I got Rachel’s birthday card, speaking of which was slightly inappropriate ;) haha. Getting mail for the first time in two months was great. I loved it so much! Thank you all for sending me stuff! I don’t deserve it at all, but I sincerely appreciate it.
On Friday, as Shaw and I were walking through Colo.... We heard 4 distinct gun shots from right by our house. We tried to go down one street to see what happened, but the people wouldn’t let us. They said, "Don’t go this way. A drunk has a gun." haha. We found out that the bar 3 houses down from us, which is the bar that the guy that owns our house owns, had a drunk shoot in it for some odd reason and then speed off in a car. Wasn’t as sketchy as it sounds, but still not very safe. We went in after that haha. We do hear gun shots just about every night though just to let you know.
We went up Ical the other day to help the new guys get to know the area. I rode on the back bumper of the truck of course ;) About half way up, I dropped down and started running still holding on to the truck haha. The guy that stood in the back and took the money thought I was falling so he started tripping. Let's just say that by the end, I had quite a few corte people laughing their heads off. It was great! haha.
Just to let you know, I ordered a Colo flag from some guy. I really wanted one, so I just went for it. It’s just a small one. It is going to be 300 Quetzales, which is roughly 40 dollars. I figured it was worth it. If you think otherwise, sorry. The guy probably needs the money pretty bad though.
That was basically my week in a nutshell though. Nothing too great... Nothing too boring... I still want spray cheese stuff for Ritz. Other than that, I’m pretty good I think. I love you all very much and miss you all as well! Hang in there and have a good week! Smile :)
Love,
Elder Bitner
PS-I love you Connor. Get ready to have the best two years, but hardest two years of your life!