Week 15: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Hola!

This week's letter isn't going to be quite as long as some of them.  We've had some good stuff going on this week.  And I have some exciting news.  This Saturday, I get to baptize one of our investigators!  Happy Valentine's Day to me!  This will be the second baptism in all of Ilobasco since I got here, and the first for my area.  As a district, we have a few more for the 21st and 28th of this month.

The story behind the title happened on Wednesday.  We were having a tough day.  All of our appointments fell through, and the member who we were working with had to go home.  When we got to his house, he invited us in, and his wife offered us dinner.  Of course, we can't refuse an offer of food, so we stayed for dinner.  She had made tortillas and beans (simple, but delicious), and she offered us some home grown chilis to have with the beans.  I accepted the offer, and she brought over several tiny chilis.  She said that they weren't very hot, so I put all of them in my beans.  The first bite of chili wasn't too hot.  Neither were the second, third, or fourth bites.  So I ate a whole chili with the fifth bite.  Turns out that about every 1 in 5 of those chilis is super hot.  And that chili happened to be of the super spicy variety.  Let's just say that I was sweating a bit.  It was delicious though.

As always, I love all of you!  Write me, send me pictures, all that good stuff!  I want to know what's happening back home!

Be good!

Elder Colton West

El Salvador, San Salvador East Mission

Family Home Evening with a part-member family.

There's a Chinese restaurant in Ilobasco!
Crazy, I know, but they have good chow mein.

I found a Salvadorean Army Special Forces patch lying in the street.
Que Chivo!

This morning we went to the church to study.  

The Ward Mission Leader was there hunting with a slingshot.  

This is what he got!

Editor's Note:

As his letter is much shorter than usual this week I thought I'd share a few things from a short personal letter I received.  He had told his dad in a letter a few weeks ago that he'd lost a lot of weight so I asked about that. I also asked how he was doing with homesickness.  Here are his replies:

"Yep, I'm down 20 pounds from when I left the CCM.  Though I had put on another 10 in the CCM!  They give you a ton of food at CCM Guatemala, and it's really really good, so portion control is difficult.  Elder Hood and I are both really trying to watch what we eat this change.  I'm going to keep up with that for my whole mission.  I want to be back under 170 by the time I come home.

I haven't had any homesick days so far.  Too busy to be homesick.  Don't get me wrong, I miss you all, but I'm really focusing in on my work here so that I can be the most effective missionary I can possibly be."