Whoa... I ate frogs!!!!

Elder Petersen and Eric

Dear Mom and Dad,

First off, I will have less time to write today, because I had to just set up a new email account that everyone has to switch over to. It took up a lot of my time to do. So I have a new email address for you to give to the family. This is my third email account so far! But it's awesome because it uses gmail, so everything's organized and fast, so I'm very excited. So from now on, send all emails to this address! I don't think they're going to delete the old emails for a couple of weeks until they're sure that everyone has switched over to the new system, but just send to the new one from now on to be sure. It's a good thing that you sent that email to me 3 times, because I only got the third one. You probably had that problem because of the email switch, so it should be working better for next week, now that my new one is all set up.

I didn't have a chance to tell you last week about how we got the district standards for our district. Districts here consist of 2 companionships, so 4 people. Elder Petersen and I have two sister missionaries in our district. In order to get district standards, your district must both average the standards (good thing we got extra!) and have a baptism. Well, we did it, and we were the only ones that week, and so far I believe the only ones this month in the whole Rosario mission! Also, Elder Petersen and I got the standards again this week!

Anyway, two days ago we ate with a member and had a very typical Argentine meal: melanesas, mashed potatoes, soda...and not so common...RANAS!!! Which are frogs!!!!!! Yes, we ate frogs!! And not only did we get to eat them but we got to go pick out the frogs from his bucket and he cooked them!! Believe it or not they were really good and tasted like chicken. I had a lot of frogs, and it was a good meal.

Something else crazy about food, Elder Petersen and Elder Carrillo ate worms and worm eggs yesterday!! The worms were in their candy bar and they were quite disgusted. It was funny for us, though.

And yes, we do eat whatever people offer us or they would get offended. Every time we have eaten with a member, regardless of their financial situation even if they are dirt poor in a one-room house, they make enough food to feed the whole zone...and it's just us! And if we ever stop eating, they say, "Co'me" or "Co'melo" which means eat!!! Which is vos form (I don't know if they have that form in Spain, but it's basically just another form of tu that the Castillano Spanish uses.) But it's great when we get to eat at member's houses, I love it.

As for Ramon and Guiliana, we're passing by often to keep them active. They are still doing really good. Ramon went from not even believing in God when we first met him, to being baptized, it was way cool, and he's very strong now. I wish the ward could take care of them now, but...this is Argentina. I took for granted how well set up the churches in the States are. Here, in our city at least, there is no home teaching, members will leave if they feel offended by anyone in the slightest, and even the leaders will struggle with what they are supposed to be doing. We have even seen the branch president just walking down to a kiosko in his underclothes, or wearing jeans to church. Anyway, our president is still a really good guy, who works VERY HARD for the branch, always working, he just doesn't always know how to work effectively, but a great guy. As of right now, in our church's zone, we have 650 members and of those, only 67 are active, so as you can see, we really need things like home teaching and visiting teaching. We're trying to work on getting home teaching, ward mission leaders, etc. so hopefully we can have better retention that way.

Our penche is just like a small home on the ground floor, pretty nice, although our kitchen could be better. Our kitchen is outside and we share the patio with the landlady, and we always catch her stealing our food. But other than that it's really nice.

To do our emails, we usually try to go to one of the same two internet cafes, but they are usually full, so we often go to new ones. The Spanish is coming along pretty good, I understand everything my comp says now, and some of the investigators. If they speak slow I can understand, but their typical 500 mile an hour speed is too fast for me still, and I only get bits and pieces of it.

A typical P-Day is like this: We wake up, go to the church and play soccer or volleyball as a zone, then go to lunch, then do emails, then go back to the penche for an hour or so, then leave and go back to working. That's what we've done every week so far, it's fun.

Well I'm glad to hear everyone had a fun past week, and a good Valentine's Day. We of course, did nothing for it, I didn't even know it was Valentine's till someone told me, but it was a good day of work! Sounds like Holly and Scott had a really fun time in Disneyland, and PS, I like all the same rides that she mentioned she liked!! And Marisa and David must be very excited to know that the baby is doing good. I'm glad you could all have a good time with all the activities everyone is busy with.

Well, I love you and am so glad you're doing well. As for my clogged-up ears, I called Sister Villalba and she told me to get some drops that I put in twice a day, and it seems to be helping.

Love you,

Eric

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