Where The Streets Have No Names

   This was the first letter Elder Rowberry sent us from El Salvador last week on Monday August 26, 2013

So I made it to El Salvador safe and sound. A ton of stuff has happened since last week. My emails will be more exciting then they were in the CCM. I am in the Juayua Zone but my area is in the city of Nahuizalco. The streets have no names and a lot of them are dirt. It's a little town in the mountains and the jungle. It's pretty sweet though. There are little shops everwhere selling cheap snacks and drinks. The houses here are pretty interesting. Our house has a tile floor and even for the missionaries it's not very nice. It's not comfortable and we have no furniture. Also its really really hot and humid here. I just sweat all day long. There is a thermometer on my clock and when we go to bed it's 80-85 degrees. Even though our house isn't comfortable and the water is freezing, compared to a lot of the other houses here it's really nice. A lot of the houses are dirt floor shacks that use corrugated tin and balck plastic to make walls and roofs. An intersting thing though is that everyone has cell phones. The spanish is coming. I'm understanding more and more Spanish everyday its much different then the Spanish I've learned. I'm super glad I took the five years though. It rains harder and thunders harder here than I've ever seen. There's a bunch of buses here that are just refurbished, jacked up, and painted. They look like there from one of those crazy car video games. One, of the many, interesting experience that I had this week was yesterday. We were going to this families house, with another family. We had to hike like 2 hours though the jungle. On the way there I ate a bunch of exotic fruit and knawed on some raw sugar cane. I drank some coconut water from a coconut that came right off the tree. On the way home there was a sound and I saw these two rats fighting. These rats were the size of small dogs, almost as big as Carmel, my cat back home. The dad of the family we were with took out his machete and killed them. He then took them home and skinned them right in front of us. I think he's going to cook them for us today. My companion is Elder Guzman. He's from Peru. He speaks zero English. So I go basically all day without speaking English. It can be frustrating at times. Especially because my companion doesn't really talk to me. I will you tell more about the missionary work next week when I know more what's going on. I don't really know anything about anything yet. Anyways I only have 45 min to write on the computer. So my letters will have to be brief and I may not be able to specifically back to everyone. I still enjoy the letters though. If you send me physical letters I will have more time to answer and read them.

Send them to Apartado Postal #142 Santa Ana, El Salvador, C.A.

-Elder Rowberry