Week 43: Cairo, Cows, Peru, and "Ginny-Pigs"

Dear Friends and Family,

This week started a new adventure for me! As I said last week, I am serving in Cairo, Georgia. Which is pretty awesome and there are a ton of people here. Most of the Hispanics are from a place called Chiapas, Mexico and speak a Dialect called Tzotzil. Pronounced "suts-cil" or something like that. And pretty much it is super hard to communicate with them... They have a lot of similar Vocabulary as Spanish, but also have a lot of different words to define things and explain things. I want to learn it, but thought i should better stick to Spanish. We use their kids, who speak Spanish, English, and the dialect to translate. So we will be waiting to see how they are all doing!

We live in a little house in the middle of nowhere... there are seriously cows everywhere... HAHA I will hopefully send pictures later! But the house is all to ourselves and we love it! Though it is a change from the place that I called my home in Foley. HAHA My companion, Elder Valenzuela, is from Peru and is a pretty funny guy! He likes to eat Ginny-Pig, though I'm pretty sure that's illegal to eat here so I'm sorry to inform you I have not tried it. Though I really want to! HAHAHAHA Hopefully I'll go back to Peru with him some day :) He loves to have fun and he has a great personality when we are around the people here. I can't wait to continue working with him.

I love it here and am excited to get to know the members in Cairo. It is a small branch. (Really small, like we had 12 people at sacrament meeting last Sunday.) But all the members are super nice and super willing to work with us. We hope to expand the branch to make it a Ward. This area used to only have English speaking missionaries as of 7 months ago, when they switched them out for the Spanish speaking missionaries, so we have the Spanish work on top of the English work to do. It is pertty exciting, but WAY different. I'm not used to these Americans,... HAHA totally kidding!

I love you all! And wish you the best of luck! Till we meet again :)

From the little heart of Georgia,
Cairo!

Elder Stonely

Editorial note (Todd): I couldn't help laughing how Riley spelled Guinea Pig (Ginny-Pig), so I included it as written in the subject line. HAHAHA. Also, the use of "pertty" I believe is a clear sign that our boy is developing a southern drawl...not sure yet whether I should be excited about that or not???