Day 89

¡Hola Familia!
this week i received both of the paquetes (packages) that i have been waiting for! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! i look so studly in my glasses and when the people look at me in the street, they no longer think of me as some fetchin´ gringo. they think ´´oh my goodness, i want to learn something from him´´. yes, they have already made a huge impact here. by the way, abásalo is a small town outside of comodoro rivadavia and it is kind of like the ghetto part of the area. other than that, i also received the package from jacie and it was the best-est most awesome package ever!! i loved getting it and i loved the pictures and the scripture mastery cards! they are very useful and i am very grateful. i already received some little pictures from my mission president that i can use but i think the pictures you sent are way better. the pictures of me made me a little discouraged because i was way chubby before my mission. i think i will still show them i guess... please send me more pictures! now i only have one (now old and outdated) picture of the family and a bunch of jacie´s family, so if the rest of you guys want to be represented, you should send some pictures of yourselves (preferably with me or whatever). oh! and please start putting dates on the dear elder letters because the papers i receive do not tell me when the letters were sent.
there is one woman that we are teaching right now, Cecilia, that is accepting everything and wants to come to church. her mom was baptized years ago but has not been to church in a long time. cecilia has a son that is 8 years old (santi) that tells us all the time that he wants to be a missionary too and that family is very cool. she is waiting for an answer to her prayers about the church so the last time we talked to her, we just helped her to recognize the different ways that God answers prayers to know the truth. we are just waiting now. maxi is a stud because he came to church again this week without his family but he is very enthusiastic about the church and he is really helping his family. we set fechas with maxi´s older brother, nico, and nico´s friend, leo, for the 12th of febrero and we should be able to set a fecha with maxi for the same day or a week sooner. the family is really cool and they accept everything we have taught and they are actually reading the folletos y el libro de mormón! there are tons of inactive members that we find all the time. there are about 100 priesthood holders in our ward but only about 15 are active. we found one man, hno lepicheo, that is a chef, and he has been making us lunches about once a week. yummmm. milanesa con huevos y jamón y los mejores papas fritas que he probado en mi vida! me encanta. is there another temple in construction in Argentina? i have heard that there is another temple in cordoba but i am pretty sure there is only one temple in buenos aires. this morning i cut e´ escobar´s hair and i did an awesome job. i am coming to know i have thousands of hidden talents but i never imagined cutting hair would be one of them...
i talked to pte peterson this week because he came to the zone and we all had interviews with him. i asked him if he could send some bigger missionaries to my ward because my comp and i are the same height and we aren`t the biggest, but pte made it sound like he was thinking of transferring us both to send in new elders there. i sure hope not because things are just starting to come around!!! my last companion in the mtc, e´ page, is officially in argentina and i really want to see him again. pte peterson told me that he is in trevelín in the mountains and he wanted the pte to say hello for him. my companion and i have officially made a weekly tradition to go to Grido Helado every monday to buy 2 half kilos of ice cream and then we go to the beach to eat them. i discovered coco dulce de leche and bariloche chocolate. amazing. momma- there are sister missionaries in this mission but not too many. there are none in comodoro but i think they are all more in the northern areas. that is awesome to hear people are getting their mission calls. shouldn´t jeff alldredge be getting his mission call really soon? the missionaries here from different religions get really angry with people when they don´t want to talk with them. one jehovah´s witness was talking with a woman from our ward when we walked up and said hello but we didn´t stay because we had servicio to move a bunch of dirt for a family that is building a house. the next time we talked to that hermana, she told us that the jehovah´s witness said ´´i was just about to talk about jehovah when those mormons showed up, now, i am sorry but i can´t do it.´´ she then said ´´well if you can´t have love for mormons, you cant have love to teach anyone so you must not have the truth. please leave.´´ i was impressed with her. i love bearing testimony with them because they don´t believe jehovah is jesus so i say things like ´´and i know that the great Jehovah, the lord Jesus Christ, lives and loves everyone of us.´´ it is great to see their faces twist because there is nothing they can do to respond.
lately it has been really hot so my comp and i leave the window open at night and because there is a ton of dust and sand everywhere, we find tons of little footprints of a cat all over the pensión in the morning. in the kitchen, the trash was ripped apart and spread everywhere because the cat wanted the meat that we threw away. the trash system in argentina is a mess because everyone has these little metal baskets in front of their houses that they are supposed to put their trash. nobody does it and there are diapers flying everywhere in the wind. we dont have big garbage bags, just little plastic bags to fit in this little basket so we have ´´trash corners´´. its bad but we do pretty well to contain it and keep our place looking tidy but it is hard when those dumb cats spread it around. my comp wants to catch that cat and feed it to our starving dogs. we have two that guard our pensión and i named them Tontito and Amigo de Tontito (Dummy and Friend of Dummy). my comp likes those names a lot. here, to tell people that they are stupid is VERY strong and people get very offended. i thought that was interesting because in the US it isn´t that bad.
there are 2 main futbol teams in argentina- boca and river. these teams are very popular and people get killed here because they are fans of different teams. here in abásalo, people are mainly fans of river so when people ask me which team i am for, i say am for river. people here are not respectful at all. when they ask me how to say ´´you are a (bleepin´ bleep)´´ in english, i tell them you say ´i wish i was missionary too´´. it is really funny to hear them shouting those things at me as we walk away because they think they are cussing me out. fetchin´ chorros... so dumb. i am pretty comfortable speaking castellano and i it is a lot easier to speak with people now. i feel like i am in my element now and things are going great. i have definitely come a long way in the last 3 months and i like looking back in my journal to see the challenges i used to have. the last few weeks i have been focusing on teaching people, not lessons and it has been incredibly easier to understand people. when i open my mouth, i dont think about how to conjugate verbs or about using proper grammar, but i just talk to the people and say the things they need to hear. after those lessons, i feel great. i LOVE being a missionary and it is so much fun! thank you for the packages, they were so awesome! now i just need some pictures from mis papás, shane, annie, jamie, and mollie. there is this one old woman in my ward that asks if i have more pictures from my family every week and i am ashamed to tell her that i still dont have pictures. i regret not bringing any from home but i´m working on sending my own pictures from the mish... but it is a little difficult to whip out my camera right now. there´s a lamanita next to me that is watching me pretty close right now so the pictures will wait for next week.
¡¡Con mucho amor de su misionero favorito!!
Elder Summers