Day 103

Hola Familia!!!
I am very upset that you guys did not get my email last week because the computer told me that everything was ok. very upset... well that means ya´ll get a double dosage!!! yay! First off- happy valentines day!! we dont celebrate that here... and happy birthday to brandon and annie!! and i think my parents have their anniversary this week so congrats!!! and i received an awesome package from the murri family so could you guys let them know how awesome it was and how much i appreciated it? my new comp has never tasted skittles. can you believe that? apostasia... so i am in zapala now and it is incredible. i love it so much and i think that there is no comparison between comodoro and zapala. here there is no trash, a lot less dogs, everyone here is incredibly nice to us and lots of people let us into their homes! the people even stop to listen to us in the streets and sometimes have discussions with us about the church. most of the people give us their addresses and times to visit them, and that never happened in comodoro. my companion, elder suarez es un capo and i love being here with him. he is very ´´chill´´ but we still get lots done. my last companion was very stressed all the time and we always walked like someone was chasing us but now things are just normal. e´ suarez has a lot of videos from the church that we watch with the less active members and it has been awesome in the lessons. he is very good at explaining things and the lessons go very smooth.
we are in charge of half the city of zapala so we have a branch and a ward so that means that we are in church for 6 hours a day!! yahoo!! it really is pretty cool, surprisingly, and i really enjoy being in the church. i dont have to play the piano in either of the sacrament meetings because one woman there teaches and we actually had a 5 year old girl play one of the songs (simplified of course). pretty neat and she did pretty well! that means i´m off the hook for a while but i´m there if they need me. in the branch they asked me to speak for 10 minutes. yikes! i just started talking (in castellano of course) about the savior and more about the atonement and what it means to me and i ended up talking for 15 minutes with my scriptures and everything. i am now a stud in spanish. my comp does not speak a lick of english and i know that after a solid week of talking to him, i am way faster and i no longer have to translate things in my head and i can just speak. k-po. (cool). life is good! we spend the mornings either contacting down town or visiting less active members and then we spend the night knocking doors finding new families or teaching lessons. being in charge of so many people is a little intimidating because of so much we have to do but we manage. it takes about 45 minutes to walk from one side of our boundaries all the way to the other but we live in the middle of everything, about a 10 minute walk to the chapel. this area is huge but i love the people here!!!
the people tell me that i speak very well and they thought i was from uruguay because there are some whites there. they are very surprised that i have only been in the country for 3 months! here in zapala, it is pretty hot, but there is some wind too. its not as bad as comodoro but some people tell me that in the winter it gets worse than comodoro. i think they are exaggerating (sp?). there are lots of snakeys here zapala, especially in the church and there moms want me to come back to argentina after my mission and marry them. snakeys are girls that want to date missionaries, and here i already have quite a few. fa! we found 2 new complete families this week and i feel pretty good about them. i will provide more details later if things progress this week. we also have some investigators ´´de oro´´ that i know will get baptized this transfer. pablo is a really tall guy that used to play futbol for boca and now is learning about the church. when i started talking to him, he only had the first discussion about the restoration of the gospel but this week he has had us over many times and even made us lunch on saturday. he wants to learn more and his girlfriend was baptized 2 weeks ago. the other people that we are teaching are the children of less active members or the less active members ´´partners´´.
one day as we were walking, i felt so dumb because we saw one old man that had one leg and i greeted him just like i greet everyone. i asked him ´´¿como anda?´´ which literally means ´´how do you walk´´ but people say it to say ´´how are you?´´ he flipped out and just started yelling at me calling me a dumb gringo and telling me that my life is so easy and i have no right to come to his country and talk to him. it was pretty bad but i apologized and we just kept walking.
a lot of the streets arent paved completely so there are lots of rocks in the road so we sometimes play futbol with the rocks and we have to kick them in between the other guys legs while we are walking. im pretty good at it and im winning. we dont play all the time, just when there arent other people to talk to. there are a lot more trees here and i love it. here i can bring my backpack everywhere and i have no worries of someone robbing me. awesome. anything else? hmmm. i found a street called ´´maipu´´. that was awesome. there are lots of small people in maipu.... you guys know yann tierson? my companion has an mp4 with lots of his songs and we listen to his music every morning. im not sure if its the best music but it is pretty tranquilo. just piano, accordion, violin, and that kind of stuff. you should look up his music and tell me if its good. there are not many missionaries here in zapala. one companionship is hermana misioneras and another is elderes. my comp is the district leader and the rest of the missionaries in the zone are at least an hour away in junin de los andes. yes, i can see the mountains sometimes but they are very far away.
i love you all! dad- you asked for a scripture and i really like mormon 9;21. i read that a few days ago and it is about praying without a doubt. im out of time because this ciber is very expensive...
i´ll do better next week.
chao!!
Elder Summers