Day 33

¡Hola Familia!
primero, you can still write me dearelder.com letters. just remember that i am in the argentina neuquen mission and my name is elder summers and i can receive your love on paper every thursday. i have been on my mission for one month!!! yay! to celebrate my one month anniversary, a kid stole my glasses. i had a bad feeling about this group of kids but my companion felt like we should talk to them. why? i have no idea. they were very vulgor and i was very uncomfortable talking to them. one reached over to ´read my nametag´ and then he snatched my glasses and ran. the only reason i was wearing them was to protect my eyes from all thne sand blowing around but i told a hermana in the ward about it and she gave me some goggle like sunglasses to use when we are tracting on large dirt hills. i still have plenty of contacts to use so i am not blind but i was a little discouraged about it. i just hope he has a friend with terrible eyesight that can use those glasses more than me... the people here are mainly pretty mean to us. some yell at us like dogs and tell us to ´shoo´. others tell us they already belong to the catholic church and they need no other religion because all the other churches are going to burn. it just makes me so grateful for the people that actuallly let us talk to them! our goal is to find a family to baptize before la navidad and i think we may have done it. The Gauto family is very young and the parents are both 26 with two young kids, but they are both feeling really good about the things we are teaching them. i met a woman with a beard the other day and she let us into her home. it weasn´t a full beard but her face was so furry. things won´t go far with her because she makes fujn of the things we say and she would not let us pray with her after the lesson. Choir practice here was so funny because there was about 6 old ladies in our ward and none of them could really sing but e´ escobar and i helped them get things together. we did not get the opportunity to climb cerro chenque with the other missionaries because they decided it was too cold to go so we played futbol at the stake center. i think it is funny how the gyms in the churches have soccer goal posts instead of basketball hoops and nobody can throw a ball but they have pretty good accuracy kicking one. the other day i was thinking about my last check from the country club and i was wondering if you guys could pay my tithing for me? thanks! shanes birthday is coming up this week so i want to say ¡Feliz Cumpleaños! you are getting old. i think dougs birthday is in a week or two so i don´t want to forget his birthday either. sorry doug, im not sure when it is but i know it is coming up soon! for la navidad this year, i think people just eat lots of asado and light a bunch of fireworks. i think they might have already started lighting them off at night or those might be gunshots. i can´t tell but it is really loud... people really eye me here. the people tell me i have a ´yankee face´ and they can tell i am not from here so i try not to wear a whole lot of costly apparel because i hate getting robbed. we pray all the time that we will be protected from bad people because we can see groups of about 6 guys on every corner that are smoking, drinking, or sometimes doing both. we get really bad feelings walking down some roads so we will turn around and walk down a different street. on the other side, we sometimes look back and we see we avoided a pretty bad group and we know the lord is looking after us. people don´t celebrate thanksgiving here and there was no holiday that i know of but we still eat some pretty good food everyday. every day for breakfast we buy some alfajores because they are the breakfast of champions! i know that probably is not the best but we don´t have anything else really. i ate an orange this morning if that counts... the lunches here are the ain meal and nobody really eats anything else. bjecause it was kthanksgiving, i will tell you what i am thankful for. i am thankful for the opportunity to be here in comodoro right now. i am thankful for the opportunity to talk to the people and the spirit blesses me with the things to say at the right moment. i am learning the importance acting on my impressions because they always seem to be right when we talk with investigators. i am thankful for the scriptures and the guidance from the prophet. i read the ensign and my scriptures every day and i look forward to my study time each day. i particularly liked the talks from pte eyring and pte monson on serving with the spirit and being grateful. i am thankful for the other missionaries in my zone because they are all great examples for how this work should be done. i am thankful for my family and for their support and prayers every day because i can feel it as i work. i am thankful for joseph smith because he restored this gospel when there were many that wanted to hurt him but he did it with no fear. i am thankful for the saviour and for his atonement and example so that we all may live and return to live with our heavenly father again. my pictures take awhile to download so i will get going on that. i love you all!
con animo y amor,
Elder Summers