Week 071 - The Last I Heard From Lucy

Hey Guys,

I didn’t even realized that we still had all of my pinewood derby cars. Claire may have rocked everyone’s socks with the green car, but if you don’t remember... It has Illegal derby wheels. An instant disqualification. Dad and I thought we could hose everyone in the races but some party poopin leader caught us in the act of our tricks.

I’m glad you guys have met "the Dean" maybe someday I’ll have the privilege of being in his presence. Mom if you need activities you got to go check out the Houston city underground tunnels. I don’t know if you ever knew this but someone here was showing me a video of the Houston underground mall/tunnels. Due to the hot summers, and high population of complainers; Houston built tunnels with air conditioning that connect all the main buildings in Houston. It’s pretty much an underground mall. I never knew. I told the man who showed me the video that it was the most necessary of luxuries.

I recently got a call from the morning star himself. I’ll explain. When we knock doors I usually have a stack of little cards with me that have our number on it. For 15 months I’ve been waiting for the call that says I want to be baptized"... it hasn’t happened yet. But we got a call from a random number. So I’ll call over my companion thinking "here it comes, the golden investigators". And so I answer "hola, who is calling"... and the mystery man says... "I’m Lucifer”. Oh geeze. "Estaba en mi cama, calentita, hasta que vinieron a romper la joda. Estamos viendo." (I was in my bed, nice and warm, until you guys came to break the party. we´ll be seeing each other). And turned off the phone. Well, it wasn’t the "golden investigator" but I defiantly saved the number into my contacts as "Lucy". Anyways a few days later I get another call, and it’s him again. And so I’m calling over my comp like, "Hey, Lucy’s calling". We answer "hola... Lucifer?"... and we start to hear this weird static growl and it starts getting louder and louder. "GhjkghhghghgljghjkglgGJHJGLKGJHhgHGJKHg"... then it goes silent and quietly we hear, "Lucifer mandas saludes.” (Lucifer sends his regards). And that was the last I heard from Lucy.

We´ve been spending most of our week trying to prepare Osvaldo for baptism. He’s not quite there in the head sometimes, so it’s becoming kind of difficult for him to understand everything, but he is totally down to do whatever to become a member. He’s got no religious background so this is all new to him. But he’s loving it.

I’ll keep you guys more updated on Osvaldo. I don’t have as much time to write today, but I love you guys a ton and miss you all tons.

Elder Greene

This is the Rafaela soccer team team. They play against colon sometimes so let’s get ready. I guess it gets violent and that’s why they have to put up a big sign that says no violence and a barbed wired fence.

Week 070 - I Hit Life... Now Life's Hittin Me Pappi

Wow

It was really great to talk to the fam yesterday, I super glad that you’re all doing well, and that mom had a great mother’s day. Mother’s days are the best. Well, moms are the best. Right? But its way better to talk face to face, than in a bunch of emails. Even though we got to talk, I didn’t really get to all my great stories from last week.

Our area is really great here because there’s a ton of people to teach, and so we have been pretty busy with lessons. A lot of the people actually read the scriptures, so it’s been the first in my mission where I’ve used the bible alongside of the Book of Mormon to teach. Normally when I ask people if they read the bible they respond with, "Oh, uh, you mean the word of god?" Yes. “Yeah, I listen to my prophet at church, so I get it." Oh, ok. And then we learn that they don’t really get it. So teaching people who know a bit of the scriptures is fun.

We are teaching this totally white family that do not fit in with their neighborhood, but are totally cool. The first house I’ve been to that has a microwave. That’s neat. But they’ve got a crazy mix of religions. There’s the parents and two of their kids that live in their house and each believe in something different. We teach them all at the same time, but they all have their own idea on religion, god, or no god. The son is totally atheist, but believes Satan is real, but respects Satan’s space, no witchcraft or anything. And the mom is die hard Adventist. All she wants to talk about are Saturdays, "the holy day". The mom is always giving some kind of passive aggressive talk to her son because his belief doesn’t really make any sense. Anyways, they’re fun and give us doughnuts all the time. But don’t really progress as investigators of the church.

So if you don’t really know, there are people who are always juggling in the middle of the street at stop lights. So while people are waiting, they can get a good show. And sometimes these jugglers get money. Anyways, we are walking down the street and one of these juggler fellas yells for us, "EY JESUS PREACHERS COME OVER HERE." Well I guess I’m the Jesus preacher. And so we go over and he wants us to say a prayer to his friend who is sitting on a bench in a close by park. So we go, and it turns out his friend is a 70 year old man that fell of his bike while he was drinking with the juggler, and broke his ribs, two hours earlier. "Well,did you call an ambulance?" I said. He says, "Yeah. But the police don’t really listen to me." Alright. So we gave this guy a blessing and called for an ambulance. And this old man is in a lot of pain, so he’s all in my face saying, "OH DADDY. OH DADDY. OH DADDY." And then whispers into my ear "I hit life... NOW LIFE’S HITTIN ME PAPPI." Anyways, he’s alright, but they left us with their bikes, so we had bikes for an entire day until we had to give them back.

Another bike story. I was on divisions with my good ole pal Elder Andrew right. And they have bikes to get around town. And so we stop at this house just to knock on the door for like 2 min. and seriously some kind of phantom robbed Elder Andrew’s helmet, out of nowhere, without a trace. I was impressed. Anyways, disappointed as we were, we were still able to find the culprit. Who actually was just a 12 year old id from two blocks down the street. I saw it and said, “Hey, I think that’s the helmet.” Right as that happened, the kid sees us and drops the helmet behind his feet as if we couldn’t see it. Elder Andrew goes up and asks, “Hey, I think that’s my helmet." And this kids face was totally awesome. And not knowing really what to say, he says, "Uh wait, no way. This is your helmet?" “Uh yeah. Can I have it back?” "Sure man." Then he just ran off. Apparently the helmet business is good lately, and kids just steal bike helmets all the time and try sell them, because kids are always asking the missionaries, "Hey you want to buy this helmet?" They know that the missionaries are the only ones that wear helmets.

South Americans are total fanatics for the Simpsons. It’s on in every house.  But what I think is the most asked question I get from people… "Is Springfield a real place?” Springfield is where the Simpsons live, and I just tell them yes, because it makes everyone happy. And happy people are great.

I love you guys, and I am thankful that I could talk to you yesterday.

Elder Greene

Week 069 - The Argentine Price Is Right

Holy Cannoli.

Well I had a great week full of good times! So it turns out that the area that I work in now is too massive, and it takes me like an hour to just walk to an investigators house. It’s so big, because for some reason 4 of the 6 missionaries were taken out of our district for this transfer. So Elder Hopkins and I are the district. If you don’t know how missionary work is set up; each companionship has an area, and every district has like 2 to 4 areas. So we have 3 areas with a ton of investigators left by the last missionaries. Cool. So we are loaded with investigators now which is good times, I just have to walk a lot, so that’s good. We are supposed to have meetings with our district every week. So I just report to my companion who is my district leader. He says I’m a good district.

We are teaching this old dude named Osvaldo. He´s the next Donato, I’m telling ya. I talked to Osvaldo for like 5 minutes and told my companion, “This guy will be baptized, no doubt about.” He loves the church and says he feels really peaceful when we teach him. He says his home is pretty wild and is always complaining about his granddaughter that always slams her phone on the table when she’s mad. Tragic. He read the book of Mormon in less than a week, but he has no religious background. So if you don’t have much knowledge about the gospel of Christ, it kind of seems like a normal book with a ton of wars. So now he’s always asking about wars and why people are dying and such. He’s cool.

I’m not sure if I’ve told you my Argentina/nightmare before Christmas analogy. But before I explain my next story you must remember that Argentina is Halloween town, and just like the Jack Skellington, they see something they like and try to mimic it. And I’m putting emphasis on trying to mimic. We know that when Jack Skellington wanted to celebrate Christmas, he couldn’t quite do it the same way. Well so recently I saw with my own eyes, the Argentine price is right/minute to win it. It is these two game shows mixed together with a theme of fruits and vegetables. It’s quite incredible. For example one of the members of a family has to look at a basket of apples and guess how much the basket of apples cost. And if they get close enough they can take home some amount of apples. And to move on to the next round, in under a minute, they must stack 6 apples from the basket on top of each other. I asked my investigator if this was some kind of funny talk show event. But he tells me no this is the game show. But before they used to stack 7 apples.

The branch here is super cool and old. It’s like Galvez but a little bit bigger in attendance. There is one youth named Alexis and he is really cool and wants to come help with missionary work all the time. And everyone feeds us every week, but like really good food. One guy that everyone calls Juancito makes us like 6 milanesas each (Milanesas are like chicken filets that are breaded) with other good stuff. But I guess he’s gotten tired of talking to missionaries, so he just asks us to bring over a church movie to watch while we eat.

So Rafaela is full of Nazis. Totally. I’ve only been here a week and seen 3 pretty obvious Nazis. But the best was when we left the apartment at 8 in the morning and saw a naked man in a towel standing in front of his house, who screamed at us from across the street saying Heil Hitler; while giving the classic Nazi salute, and screaming whatever garbage about the Jews. And so I give the casual response of, "Oh uh ok, buen dia." For some reason everyone thinks we are from Germany. People don’t ask me if I’m from the United States, they ask me if I’m from Germany.

We had this other great contact the other day. We met this old man in front of his house, and he couldn’t understand a word we were saying and so I had wanted us to go talk to the senora and he couldn’t open the door, so he tried ringing the doorbell. But there wasn’t a doorbell on his house. He just kept pressing the keyhole a thousand times while getting really mad at the senora. So we left.

We had a missionary activity with all the youth in the other branches nearby; and so the missionaries from those branches came as well, and we taught the youth how they could have opportunities to share the gospel to their friends. And they came out with us to go pass the word out in the streets. It was good times

I love you guys a ton. You is kind. You is smart. You is Important

Elder Greene

I’m going to try to connect (Skype) here at 4 which would be 2 for you guys. Is that fine? What time do you have church?

Week 068 - Rightly Reunited The MTC Power Companionship

Dear Family,

I am quite glad that all is good in the livable forest. And way to go to Jake for taking with him the best dance partying representative of the Greene family. So he surely must have had a great time. Dad, I hope you complimented Carson on his scouting pants, because everyone knows if you’re going to be an eagle scout you got to represent the entire look. Sadly he could not represent well from the knees down to the feet (Lacks tube socks).

So things are getting exciting here. They officially kicked me out of Recreo and put in a new city called Rafaela. Now I have no idea if that name has any relation with the wife of the ninja turtle Rafael. But we can continue to believe so. But it is definitely one of the most beautiful and Richest cities I’ve worked in. well of the 3 I have worked in. Which means we´ll be racking in the tithing down here in Rafael.

That’s not the only exciting news. There is more. After 15 Months of waiting, they have rightly reunited the MTC power companionship, couple, whatever you want to call it. Together again. Elder Hopkins is my companion and we are going to show Rafaela what is life.

It was very sad to leave Recreo, and I grown attached to city and, people, the cows, wheat, dirt streets, old guys, and the one light post. It will be missed. But I greatly appreciated that I had a bit of time to visit some families to say goodbye.

Before I left, a boy name Naitan Ramirez was baptized. He is an investigator with the sister missionaries, and he’s been coming to church for quite some time and his parents recently allowed him to be baptized. It was a great experience for this boy. And it was cool because a bunch of his family came to the baptism who originally were all were pretty against the church. I think they just had to get a little push with a chocolate cake incentive.

I recently have gotten into building soundproof rooms, so the bands of Recreo can freely play music without being disturbed or disturbing the outside world. A member asked us to come over because he needed some very important help. And that Important help was building Recreo´s new soundproof room. Apparently we were worthy for the job, and I proudly accepted. We also got into building roofs. It’s really funny when we ask people if they need help, or if we can help them with something. Because they either say, "We need money" or "Build me a part of my house." I accept as long as they provide the parts. But it’s fantastic how dangerous the way people construct houses. Don’t worry I don’t get into dangerous situations. But when they are building houses here, everyone is climbing on anything to get to high places while throwing brick up to the second floor. For example I was helping this man named Lalo while he was using a drill to place screws in the roof, but he was standing on 5 stacked objects to get to the roof. Cool.

So yesterday, I got to Rafaela and I had some time to meet a family in their family home evening. Apparently we were the first missionaries to ever eat in their house. And they are a super fun family. The mom was born a member, and the dad recently was baptized about 6 months ago. I soon began to learn that this entire family are fanatics about video games, and I realized that about 10 minutes after I got there and the dad asked me, "hey....(then looking into my eyes all seriously) do you play videogames?" And so I responded well with, "Obviously." And that just got these beautiful fellas wild up. This dad, his name is Maxi, was a total crackup about it, he was just talking to me about everything and anything about video games. My companion was actually in the middle of sharing a scripture when Maxi whispers to me (because he’s right next to me) asking for my opinion on a certain game. I was like dude we are teaching a lesson. He’s a character, the whole family is very enjoyable.

But so far I like Rafaela a lot, it’s a large city, a little smaller than Santa Fe, but it is very beautiful and nicely taken care of. Apparently we work with a branch of about 20 to 30 people, and so we’ll be getting pretty close with all the fellas.

I love you guys and I’m super glad that y’all are together for the summer. I miss you and can’t wait to talk to you on Mother’s Day.

Elder Greene

I believe that my release date should be the 14th of December, or maybe a little after but I’ll have to clarify that.