Monday, August 20

Dear Family,

How is everyone?  I’m doing great, but we still have very few teaching opportunities.  We have been teaching a few lessons to members at their houses for practice, but those aren’t much fun.  I will send pictures this week.  I’ve got quite a few pictures of the living quarters and my desk and journals, but I really haven’t taken many pictures.  There’s quite a bit from an MTC temple walk though.  I’m not sure where to start.  We had zone conference the other day; I saw Mitchell and some MTC people.  Everyone seems to be doing great.  I met Grandpa and Grandma W.  They have 7 kids, 33 grandkids; the youngest grandkid being about 20.  I’ve met a handful of grandkids that are about my age.  The house we live at gets pretty crazy because all the family neighborhood kids come over, especially on Sundays and party in the basement.  They put on family plays and stuff down there too, recently a mutual activity was "W Family Play" and it’s all great grandkids with the big setup in our basement.  Grandma and Grandpa wander downstairs whenever.  The other day grandpa came down, asked if I had read the constitution, and then gave me a copy.  I like it here where we live, it’s pretty cool.  I miss having a full fridge all the time, the other day I was craving baby carrots.  I eat a lot of cheerios. 

We have made quite a few less active visits, and the other day we were in a pretty scary apartment.  On the side of each building, the street address is spray painted in huge letters, in a really sloppy way.  It’s kind of weird how the housing style out here and the lack of humidity and stuff make old places look nice.  There’s no dirt or moss or anything, or wood to rot, and so brick and stuff just always looks way nicer.  After we stopped by to see if this guy was home at one, and his girlfriend answered and said no, this really thug looking guy that watched, came over and asked us if the man of that place was home.  My companion said no, but I was about to say yes.  He immediately realized that was a mistake, but we came back later and everything was good.  We see ghetto birds in the sky all the time, they are always out.  From our place and apparently from about even two hours away, we can always see the spotlight thing from the Luxor, and other stuff from the strip.  Apparently the Luxor recently dimmed their light to save money too.  Also coming back from Zone conference, we were able to see the strip from the road way far away.  That was pretty cool, there’s one really tall space needle thing we can see a lot of the time, but that was all I had seen so far.  The other night we had dessert at the home of Brother W from the Bishopric.  They’ve got a really neat family, he’s a jeweler and she works at the DI, but on their kitchen counter they have a corn snake.  They just play music all the time.  They’re all really musically talented, and just play super casually as a family. He’s amazing at the guitar and piano, and sings too with them, but he can’t read music.  There’s hardly a square inch of wall in their home without pictures.  He can give basic greetings and say thank you in about 65 different languages, I can’t come close to naming that many.  He’s a really smart guy.  It’s really different out here weather wise, it’s always so hot.  Because you can see so far, a few times we have seen rain and thunder way in the distance in a way you can’t in Virginia, and it always gets my hopes up.  Apparently they had a storm everyone was talking about late the other night, but I missed it.  Rain came down hard for 15 minutes and just flooded everything, I was asleep though.  And in the morning there is hardly any sign of any rain.  I was bummed we missed that.  Also everyone always talks about how humid it has been, by their standard, which is nonexistent to me.  After Zone Conference the other day we passed like 20 minutes of gated communities with HUGE houses, with celebrities and stuff.  We passed Nick Cage's old house, and Will Ferrell’s.  We came by one house with a big fence, but that you could see easily through, and they had a bunch of guard dogs, and about 12 cars, all Lamborghinis and stuff.  There was some really cool stuff back there.  The houses are the only places with any green too, most had like really neatly trimmed vines and looked really jungle like in the front, but in a really new, clean, looking way.  Not like you would picture a 200 year old mansion in New York, but like with a lot of glass and trimmed and maintained every day.  That was a pretty neat experience.  So I heard about Dwight Howard, crazy stuff.  We had dinner at the Ms the other night, that’s where I had dinner my very first day here.  They are doing great, and we had some AMAZING and real Mexican tacos.  It was probably my favorite meal so far, the steak on them was so good.  They also have Horchata which is this really good cinnamon rice water drink.  They gave us a packet of the mix because I liked it so much, it’s amazing stuff.  They say you can only get it at the Mexican grocery stores.  Oh and I decided a while ago, and confirmed the other day, but I am going to see if I can go the whole two years without drinking any soda.  The last time I had any was on the plane from Virginia, because those little cups of Sprite with so much ice are so good.  So it’s been like 33 days, and I didn’t have any for a while before that.  I’ve turned down a ton so far, even on the plane from the MTC.  I guess I have so much of this stuff to talk about because our wards have so little going on.  We spend a lot of time at member’s houses which is fun some, but I am and have been really trying to do less.  I love the Book of Mormon so much though; reading usually is the highlight of my day.  As far as things I need, socks and ties are always cool, and maybe a shirt or two.  I got ink stains from pens in my pocket in two, but I made a pocket protector out of a picture of the temple, my hand book sleeve, and my name tag, and a lot of tape, as you will see in the pictures.  It works great, for all sorts of reasons and other purposes.  Let me know what’s going on with you guys, mail is more fun here than it was in the MTC. Let me know what else you wanna know!

Love, Elder Pyron