Salinas & Lettuce

I went on an exchange this week to the scariest/deadliest part of the mission. It's a small farm town that produces 80% of the nation's lettuce. Who knew? It's also full of gangs. Mainly, just lazy teenagers that don't want to work hard like their parents did so now they do dumb things in the streets. President recently opened this area up to sisters to everyone's surprise, but great things are going on down there! It was a really fun exchange and not at all like I had created in my head. It was not at all like West Side Story. 

Yesterday we went to the Monterey Aquarium and played with the jellyfish and penguins. I touched a stingray. I can't remember the last time I did that...then we spent the next 20 min trying to get a scardy cat Elder to touch it. He finally caved and was surprised that it was not at all the terrifying experience he thought it was going to be. I on the other hand thought they were really slimy and didn't care too much to feel it again. Our dinner last night was at Google. The Google buffet to be more specific. It was so cool. We have a few members that work there so we got to be special guests and eat anything we wanted! It was so exciting to eat something other than beans and rice! Also, I felt so cool being inside Google. Like maybe some of their success would drip down on me. 

We had a pretty awesome lesson this week at In-N-Out about prophets. He wanted to go to the Starbucks next door which reminded me that we needed to teach him about the word of wisdom...but I managed to point out that there was no room for us to sit and talk there. We walked over to In-N-Out and I realized I already had 2 dinners so there was no way I could eat any more but how awkward are we just sitting there and not ordering anything. No worries, our investigator ordered coffee. Dang it. We really have to teach that lesson...

I've got a week an a half left. How am I going to make the most of it? Well, we are for sure going to try to baptize everyone on the street. I'd like my despedida to occur in front of the baptismal font with a line of people in white jumpsuits out the door. Now, that's a party! 

xoxo, 

Hna Hall