May 5, 2014

May surely is upon us and I can hardly believe it!!! So first of all Happy Birthday mom!! I'll be able to tell you again on sunday anyways thoough :) By the way we will be calling Sunday! I will be calling at 5:00 p.m. here so that will be 9:00 a.m. for you guys. I don't know if we wanna just do the same thing where I try and call all the siblings quickly to say hi to them but then I will spend most of the time talking to you? We can do that if you want. I will just use Jamie's account to call. So be ready Sunday morning! 

So unfortunately Elder Biddulph got sick and had to go down to Maputo on saturday to go to the hospital. We don't know what is quite wrong right now. But I called him and he said he definitely knows them haha. He said he remembers when Joby left for his mission. 

I am super jealous that you all got to go to Christy's! I cant wait to see their new house finished when I come home! That will be super exciting! 

Umm so here is a quick review of our week over here. We went to open the marriage process with one of our families but unfortunately the mozambican law has changed, and so now you have to be 21 years old to get married without parents consent. She is only 20. So we went to the mom and asked her to come with us to sign the paper but she is refusing saying she wont do it with out the bride dawry of 6,000 metacais. Well this man isn't even working right now. He doesn't have this money, so we are really searching hard to figure out how we are gonna talk this mom out of it. Its really hard for us because she only speaks dialect, she doesn't speak portuguese and so we cant even have a conversation with her. Everything has to be translated for us and to her... So we are trying really hard.

But in good news, we successfully opened the marriage process for another family and they will be getting married on the 10th of may! Their marriage will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday, then at 2:00 p.m. we will have General conference until 6:00 p.m. Then on sunday we will have the baptism of the family that was married a couple weeks ago, this family that will be married, the husband of felicidade, and the son of a couple we baptized in April. All of this will be at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. Then at 12:00 until 4:00 p.m. we will have Sunday session of General Conference and then at 5:00 p.m. we will be skyping! So we will have a busy weekend but those are always the best! We will also be waiting to hear what is going to happen with Elder Biddulph because as of right now, his companion is in a triple with us, and his comp just got done being trained so he has only been on the mission for 4 months... So now I have the most time on the mission of anyone in my house and my district.... Super weird. Is that even possible that I am coming up on a year on the mission!? I don't feel that old haha! 

Well Elder Van Leuven has never been to the beach so that is our plan for today is to go to the beach. Its a super nice overcast day today which is a huge blessing!

Also in other news, I have finished my first week of P90X and my second week of my get healthy diet. I have cut out all sugar out of my diet and I am trying to stay away from a lot of carbs. It was hard at first but its getting easier and I have so much more energy now and I have been feeling a lot better. So I am excited to continue on with the workout and diet. I still eat as much, just now I eat a lot more vegetables, fruits, meats, and beans. Its nice to be healthy!! haha :) 

Well be prepared for sunday! Write all the questions down that you have so we can make good use of our 40 minutes!! I am super excited and I love you lots!!!

Love,
Justin