Monday, February 6, 2017

Jan 9, 2017

​​​Alright... I`m having to pay for every 10 minutes, so here`s doing my best. Probably still gonna be super long. Anyways, the title is because I finally have a way to upload my pictures... I think I was going to sort through them and only send so many/the higher quality ones... but here is the whole load of em all at once. The first few pictures are with the dudes from my first few days at the CCM- I really love them all. They`re really great guys. Elder Pietz always made me laugh- one of the bigger blonde guys. Elder Nance is tall with the camera in front of his face- 6 ft. something and a huge teddy bear. Super great guy, always there for ya. Elder Ruiz is my look alike- people always confused us. Then I have pictures of after I changed to be in the all latino district. When we`re wearing jackets and doing a sweet pose on a bench was my compañero Elder Correa. El es el mejor, jaja. There`s a picture at the christmas party, and some pictures of me with my class/district Josè. After that, we get to pictures of mi nuevo compañero/"papi" Elder Bills. Èl es el Kapo, haha. The drink is Mate, the weird picture with us holding the giant meat things is the Vaca... This huge milanesa thing they do over here. Yup I think that`s it.
I saw my friend Elder Smith from North SLC doing this cool thing where he takes note during the week of things he wants to write so I did my own- hopefully means that my emails are cooler, who knows. 
Cool thought I came up with all on my own- I said it the first time in castellano but in english it is- when your head is in the clouds, your face hits the trees. I said that because I keep not paying attention and hitting my face in the low-hanging branches of the gorgeous Argentina arboles.
I`ve been hoping I could make a difference in my pension by doing a few little things... (general habits of most 18+ yr. old boys turn out not to be the most clean or healthy ha- and also one of our Elders in our Pench is thinking of going home because of problems so we`ve all kinda had to take out our time to be his therapy and stuff like that) Every time I make a real breakfast, the look in their eyes is like on Christmas morning or something haha, it`s hilarious. All I would do is make omelets or pancakes (with homemade apple syrup stuff- super easy and simple) and I swear it changes everything. Someone gave me an automatic Mate cup thing in gratitude. Yeah, little things to make things neater, cleaner, brighter, healthier... I`ve got a good mommy, haha.
Yikes, sometimes people are really mean to us. Or they`re really angry at God and we get the brunt of it. But the people that need the message we bring make it totally worth it. This work is wonderful. 
We found this super cheap and awesome pizza place in a rougher neighborhood- the owner guy is super awesome and after our first meeting he´s really interested in the church and he`s coming with his family on Sunday... It`s interesting that we spend so much time wrestling people to actually come to church, and then there are some people that we hardly have to teach and they do it all by themselves. (Sigh) Sometimes I get to have wonderful albeit humbling reminders that this work is God`s work and not mine, haha. A really hard day and then at the end things will just go totally great in spite of us messing everything up, ¡haha! Yeah. I just love this work.
If you guys are wondering about cultural shock things- not much besides- and I`m not being vulgar or anything, but it really surprised me how people breastfeed here... Like some kids until they`re 10. Yeah, they just come up and the mom feeds them right there. That really was distracting during some lessons for me.
Jonathan, after everything, said- I know the book of mormon is true, but `mnot going to change anything.That was hard. But now his brother is inestigating- that lesson was crazy, because we brought this awesome and well-intentioned membr with us that ot into crazy stuff like the millenum before the opening prayer... Yeah.Someimes all I can do is sit and pray and remind myself that the work is in God`s hands.
We sure do meet interesting people. This guy we met told us he wanted to kill his family and that they knew he could do it...I hope the gospel helped him calm down a bit.
Above all, I know we`re sent here for specific people at specific times in their lives when God is using us to give specific and personal messages. There`s this wonderful lady Julia, and she`s 89 but she is crazy active. Everything we tell her, she has a really strong testimony of- she only asks how to do it. Like tithing and everything- she is just really supermotivated. We tell ng and crazy awesome old lady. Her sister Marta rejected us which is sad but things keep going.
Everything is going great! This is really wonderful for me. I hit my face in the trees sometimes but life is fantastic, and I love my compañero and this area! They sure love to talk, and every now and then we find someone who listens. So far very few. But they are awesome.
¡Aloha!































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