This has been a totally nuts past week, and I’m pumped to tell you all about it.
All right, first I went through the candy cane forest, across the sea of swirly
twirly gumdrops, and then through the Lincoln tunnel... It was like the longest
trip of my life. Kind of felt longer since I was in a suit. I took a bus, that
took us to the train, which took us to the airport, where I was talking to my
neighbor about the gospel and turns out she was already a member. BAPTISM. Then I
made it to Georgia where this guy who was like "I have a son in Argentina,
let me buy you all chick-fil-a"... So of course I said "GET IN THAT
BUS." Sweet. Then we had free chick-fil-a.
Then we got on our 10 hour flight,
and for some reason the church decided to put all the missionaries together, and
then put me in the back with all the Argentinians. It was all good because I
was talking to this old Argentinian dude for like 3 straight hours about Argentina
and stuff, because he’s been there his whole life. He was also saying stuff
like he was high up in the government, but I don’t know, maybe he’s full of
crap. And this whole conversation wasn’t in English, it was Spanish. Sick...
right!
Anyways, 10 hours go by, and we made it, and I hit the biggest wall of heat in
my life, seriously. I was dry, and then I was not. Incredible. Anyways, we get off the plane and don’t know where to go, but we found our
way to the non-Argentinian section. Cool. Now everyone’s looking at us saying
who you are? and why are you here? Instant preaching all over the place. "Jose
Smith, mas brillante que el sol´s." So I gave out a few pass along cards.
Cool.
Funny story: my ex companero goes up to the visa guy, and the visa guy
says "what flight?" and Elder Hopkins says, "Lo siento mi espanol es mal.
"And then the visa guy says, "I'M SPEAKING ENGLISH." Yeah we`re white.
Eventually we made it out of the airport and get picked up by a bus (how convenient).
But check this, Caleb Trotter from the AZ is there and it’s his last day. I was like,
"No way! This is my first day." So we talked, and now I know everything I need to
know about anything.
Anyways, we take a stop at the temple and meet up with the Argentina
MTC President who is way chill and speaks English, and we then pick up some bandwagoners
(natives). Now we take an 8 hour drive to Santa Fe. Finally we made it,
and meet Mr. President... President Perez. Who it turns out doesn’t know any English. That was a fun interview. Anyway, very cool, very nice. In fact,
so nice that he decided to give us enough food that he made me gain probably 10
lbs. Sweet. It was like tons of breads and meats. We're told the members feed the missionaries
all the time. Apparently one guy gained like 60 lbs here. So I might come back fat.
Way cool. So we eat and chill and get the whole lowdown. By the way, every
native I talk to loves to pull out the fake hand guns and go "boom boom" every
time I say I’m from Texas. I should say I’m from Virginia, but whatever.
Time
goes by, and now we all hit the hay at the zone leader's place. Packed City. And
way hot. We were fine for a little bit because we had a fan, but the power went
out. So I just slept on the tile. And I decided that’s what I’m going to do for
two years.
Check this! This place has a bidet (I think that’s how you spell
it). But not just this place. Every place. Argentina is Bidet City. I will
never use toilet paper again. It’s so cool. And uncomfortable.
Anyway... next
day hits, and we watch a broadcast with Bednar who spoke in Buenos Aires. It
was very good, as he tried to Spanglish his way through a talk. But very good.
Sister Bednar made this awesome comment saying that she didn’t want to go on
a mission because she was afraid of living in a hut. I almost died because a lot
of those people probably did live in a hut. It’s the life.
Anyways, you want to
know about my companion, well his name is Elder Ricra, and he is from Peru, and doesn’t
know English. Spanish for days son. It’s really good and it’s helping me. But
he is also trying to learn English, so he's always saying words wrong and it’s hard
to tell if he is speaking Spanish or English. He was trying to ask me if the
doorbell was my name the other day. I said "no, that’s a doorbell." Anyways, I’ll
send you a pic soon.
Then we were sent to our actually serving location, Galves. It’s
like 2 hours south of Santa Fe. We took a bus there which is totally funny
because before the buses leave, people start to get on and throw things
on your lap screaming in Spanish... trying to sell whatever they put in your lap.
Everyone says no, and then the guys pick up their stuff and leave. Anyways, we head
down to Galves, which took a lot longer because a bunch of Argentinians decided
to have a party in the road, and burn a tree, and then burn a bunch of tires. 3-4
hours later we make it to our apartment, which we are sharing with two other missionaries
for right now, and the place is super tiny. Like not meant for two people. But it’s
okay because we have a bidet.
Galves is way cool. Actually Argentina in
general is cool. It's full of white people that speak Spanish. We live right next
to the great abominable church. It’s really cool and like the center of town.
The city is pretty nice. We live downtown, so there are always the happenings
going on.
Okay, there is an incredible amount of stray dogs around here. And
they either chase and bark after you, or they sit and chill, but if you pet the
chill ones they start to follow you. I had like 3 dogs following me like I was
their mom. Super cool. I think they stopped because they realized I did not have food
or anything. Sorry. My companion doesn’t like dogs some reason, so he gets real
nervous by houses that have dogs.
Let’s get into the proselyting dealio. For
the past 3 days it has been really nice weather, because at night we have had crazy storms that literally just rip out these huge trees. But during the days
it has been cloudy and really nice. Everyone around here is super nice, and everyone is
down to talk. Everyone does say "I’m Catholic." But we are like, "yeah
we know." 90% of the people here are Catholic. So we are always like... "we
want to talk about Jesus"... and everyone loves Jesus. But some people get weird. We talked to one guy that said he pulled the spirit out of someone’s body
and flew around the world with it. I thought I translated that wrong, but no, Elder
Ricra confirmed it.
A lot of people don’t have doors or doorbells, so we have to
clap in front of people’s houses. And you know how in the States every southerner
calls us Yankees. It’s the same here. Now I’m way south and everyone calls me Shankee.
Also, like the dogs ... there are stray children everywhere, and they always want
some kind of bible scripture.
People down here totally listen to American
music. Like no joke, Phil Collins "You’ll Be In My Heart" right now.
Our neighbor blasts his tunes during lunch. Three days ago he played the entire
Pink Floyd The Wall album. So it was very hard not to go along and say
"Hey teacher... Leave those kids alone."
Okay, so our ward here, or stake, or
whatever it is, has like 70 members, but only 15 show up to church. But this last
Sunday only 5 showed up including the Branch President, his wife, his kid, 1 other member,
and an investigator. It was nuts, and the second hour we hopped in the car of the Branch
President and went to go look for members, before we took the sacrament. Too
bad we couldn’t get anymore. But we did get a baptism date for the investigator
that showed up.
A lot of times, we are teaching less active members, but this one
lady we taught who was a member for 28 years, didn’t know we had prophets
today... who baptized her?
Anyways...
totally running out of time. Great times. I totally can receive packages, it
just costs me like 40 pesos, so don’t send me a bunch, so I can actually afford to eat.
Love you guys!
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