Panchimalco

This week was a pretty crazy week.

I had changes! I am now in Zona San Salvador. The name of my area is Los Planes, but we are in a pueblo called Panchimalco. Panchimalco is exactly how I imagined El Salvador to be. I love it!  To get there we have to take a 40 minute bus ride up into the mountains above the capital. I haven't seen a map, but It feels like we are in the middle of nowhere.

I also really like our house, even though it's pretty small, and it also gets pretty hot. It's on the top of a hill overlooking the pueblo. We have an amazing view. I sent a picture. The only downside is that we have to climb the hill to get home every night.

The view from my house in my new area.

My new companion is Elder Torres. And he's awesome. He's probably my favorite companion so far. He's also my first Latino companion, which is nice because now I have to speak Spanish all day. He's got a lot of time on the mission, about 20 months I think. He goes home in March. He's the district leader too. Our district is huge, 6 companionships. He spends about an hour on the phone each night.

I got the packages! Thanks! Next week I'll send pictures of all the decorations I set up in the house. I really like the fireplace and the lights! That was a nice touch! Today I opened the first day of Christmas. That nativity is awesome! Thanks! I'm really excited for the 12 days of Christmas, that was a really cool idea. We have already eaten the pumpkin spice kisses in the first package, I think they got left in the sun or something, because they were pretty melty, but we put them in the fridge for a day and didn't have too much trouble eating them.

We have an investigator named Guillermo, and we have an adventure teaching him, because he's deaf. His family is teaching us some signs we can use, which helps. I thought I knew a little little bit, from ´Signing time with Alex and Lea¨ but I've learned that not all of the signs are the same. The letters are the same, but certain other signs,( for example mom and dad) are completely different.

The family learned sign language from a class put on by the Jehovah's Wittnesses. The JW actually have missionaries here who know sign language and taught the family. The family still attends classes to learn sign language from the JW, but they stopped taking the religious lessons from their missionaries.  Kind of an interesting situation

Have a great week! Thanks for the packages and prayers! I love you!

-Elder Goodman

We found this spider.  That is a quarter next to it.

Elder Beecher and me.