Week 067 - No Joke. Everyone Is Making Tarta-Frita

Dad, you’re so South American. Look at me, I’m always bragging every week about my southern stories. But I’ve only ever visited Santa Fe. But you’re setting foot in every other country down here. You’re right though, that no one likes Argentinians, especially the Chileans.


I will have to say, that I have a way better alfajor collection than you do. You have to save me the wrapper though, for reals I collect them. But looks like it was a fantastic trip.

So first off, Recreo had a Flea market fair. And people from all over the place came to sell stuff they made. Way cool. Actually it was just a ton of people from Parana. Which makes me think that the city of Parana is way cool, because all these Parana fellas were selling tons of cool stuff. I found this lady that makes personalized mates for really cheap; a ton with the logo of bands like Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, and some of my favorite Argentine bands like La Beriso and Las Pelotas. It’s great to be a missionary and go to one of these things because people see some white kid all dressed up buying mates and people get wild about it. Especially the radio. Which leads to my radio story. 

So I’m loving this fair right, and I wanted to check everything out, and there was this aisle of stickers that I wanted to check out. And the whole time we are here, there are these two wackos talking with microphones about what’s good and all. It turns out these two are in the same aisle as the stickers. My companion doesn’t really want to come look, and I’m way distracted by these stickers. Well, I finish checking out the stickers, right. And I take a nice 180 degree turn to find a microphone shoved in my face and a radio spokesman blabbering about who knows what. Now I’m stuck and I just figured out I’m on the Santa Fe radio. Cool. "Well, Senor Elder, what’s up?" – “You know, just checking out y´alls mates.” - "Aw yeah you tried mate?" – “Yeah, of course.” Everyone finds it funny to see a Yankee drinking a bit of mate. - "Well, do you like it?" – “Well, it doesn’t do well my stomach.” - "What, do you mean to say that it does good?" – “No, it doesn’t do good.” THAT’S WHEN I REALIZED I SCREWED UP. It was awesome because my companion was standing 20 feet away with unbelief in his face, that I pretty much said how lame mate is to a bunch of mate hooligans. And the radio director is in the background waving his arms to the guy with the microphone mouthing, “Keep it on the Yankee!". And so we went on talking about how we preach the word. And all the great things about my president. Super Star Elder Greene.

I met a Jewish man the other day. He is actually a friend of the girl Milena who was recently baptized. He´s pretty awesome. He looks like he is from Hobbitown. But we asked if we could come over because we wanted to know if there was a Jewish synagogue nearby. Well it’s not too nearby, but maybe someday I’ll make a visit to the ole synagogue. As he cooked up a nice asado, he told me his entire life story. He is from Israel. And moved here when he was young. And has had like a billion jobs including the circus. Circus life is great. He actually joined the circus because he thought it would be cool, and there he learned how to tight rope walk while juggling torches. He is also the guy that can eat a sword. He taught me how to train your throat to eat a sword. Who knows I might be circus material.

We found Domingo the other day sitting on a wall, pondering on life. So we took a seat and talked with him. And of course the first thing he says is. “You know what sin is.......The sexuality?"... That’s small talk with Domingo.

It was another great week for Jessica Perez, who was baptized on Saturday. She’s totally awesome because she comes to church, always with her two newly born twins in her arms, followed by her other kids; by bus. She was really happy about her baptism. She invited us over to eat tarta-frita. It was raining.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but when it’s raining, everyone makes this fried food called tarta-frita. No one knows why, they just do it. That’s also why it’s hard to teach people in the rain because if you knock on someone’s house while it’s raining, they come to the door with flour all over them yelling "sorry but we are making tarta frita."

No joke… everyone is making tarta-frita.

I love you guys

Elder Greene