I’m from Spain?

I think I take after Mum, far too much in my cooking skills. It's not that we can't cook. We just don't like to cook, and get lazy and forget things. Anyhow, last Thursday Sora DeRuvo and I decided to make cookies to bring to our gorgeous Familia Costros, (the ones with the adorable kids I told you about last week). So anyway, I go into the kitchen and take the chocolate bars and start breaking them up. Chocolate chips are scarce to be found in this country so we have to buy regular chocolate and break them up. I took a knife and began chopping. Sora DeRuvo then came in and very kindly offered to chop up the chocolate chips. Now me... in my silly tired state interpreted this offer as her way of trying to take over in the kitchen, as if to say, "I'm Italian, I cook so well, so I'm taking over". But of course I was being ridiculous and she was just offering to help. But anyway, my grumpy thoughts stayed in my mind and I left her to the chopping and frustratedly took the sugar and butter and began to make the rest of the cookies. I was still silently grumpy, thinking, "I'm just as good! Look, I can follow a recipe...blah, blah etc." I finished adding all the ingredients and took a little spoonful to taste the dough. UGH!! It was awful! Sora DeRuvo saw my frightful reaction. She too tasted the dough! "It's almost entirely butter!" she exclaimed. I was shocked and looked at the recipe. Immediately I burst out laughing as I realized that in my frustration I'd accidentally added 3 times the amount of required butter. Whoops! I then told Sora all my silly thoughts and how those silly thoughts had led me to make the mistake and prove that yes in fact she is a faaar better cook than me. We laughed so hard!! We ended up tripling the other ingredients too and making about 40 cookies that night and we still have at least half of the dough in the fridge... oh well!

Familia Costros are soooooooo amazing still! I adore them so much! We had an FHE the other day. We made it about family prayer and committed them the pray together. Sadly the father doesn't really want anything to do with us. He's polite enough when we come over but usually leaves quite quickly. We've prayed a lot about it though and have some good ideas of how to get him more involved. After the lesson we played a game with the kids. The Angry Birds card game, which Dad sent me for my birthday. It was perfect! The kids loved it! Sebi and I teamed up against Sora DeRuvo and Alexandra. Sebi kept playing "miss a turn" cards against Sora DeRuvo and giggling his head off as she sat there missing her turn again and again! The mum, Mihaela loved it too! We're going over again tonight and we're really hoping to get the father involved.

We had an interesting exchange with one of the branch members this week:

"Next week... you must come over and teach me how to make Spanish food!" Sora Florita tells me.

"I don't know how to make Spanish food," I told her.

"Why not?!" She seemed out raged at my lack of culture.

"I don't know. I've only been there once."

"Didn't your Mother teach you how?"

"No...?"

"Why not?! You're SPANISH!"

Oh.. now everything made a whole lot more sense. Some how she saw my name "Rivera" and assumed Spain, and he was on heavy medication when we first met and I told her that I was from England. I then explained that I'm not Spanish, my name is from my Dad's family being from Puerto Rico.

"Oh okay, you will come and make Puerto Rican food."

By this point, I didn't want to argue... "I can make Mexican food if you like?"

"Yes, Yes, Mexican... that's what I said in the first place."

Haha, so anyway, this Thursday we're going to Sora Florita's to make burritos! YAY burritos!

The weather here is getting better and better every single day! The sun shines and it's beautiful every single day! But it’s not yet too hot, and the breeze is perfect and oh my life it's so amazing!! I love it! Because of this amazing weather we've been park contacting! We went into one of the parks the other day and did park chalk contacting! This is where we drew the plan of salvation using my super awesome 3D sidewalk chalk and then get people to come over and we explain the plan of salvation to them. It was super fun and we actually got one phone number from a girl and the elders got 2 guys' phone numbers. okay, 3 phone numbers might seem like nothing to some people, but that's tons for us! YAY! I'll attach a few pictures. Elder Taylor wasn't there cos he went on an exchange so we had Elder Ralph from Timisoara.

All right! That's all for now folks! This church is true! I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Keep the Faith!

Sora Rivera