Hola from Feliciano!

Hey everyone,

How's it going!!! Sounds like everyone is doing good, which makes me happy. I'm doing very good in my new area, getting to know the people, working with a Latin and living in the two-man penche. I miss Venado Tuerto and all the great members and fun I had there, but I am coming to like this area more each day!!! Venado Tuerto was a pretty decent-sized city. My last area (the San Martin area of Venado Tuerto) was pretty small, but we had the Centro right next to us, which was pretty good. But Feliciano is the complete opposite!!! It's the smallest "pueblito" (village) you can imagine. They don't even have any stores here, just bigger kioskos!! We're about 2 hours by bus northeast of La Paz, which is the farthest north and east that you can possibly go in the whole mission. And we're just kind of out in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. Our area is pretty jungley, which is both good and bad. It's really fun, because we can walk through the forest without a trail and no homes in sight!! That being said, we also have the other extremes of the jungle, it's crazy! (Mom's note: we're not sure what he means...is he referring to things like mosquitoes, rain, snakes, etc?) But it's fun just the same!!

There's a lot of gauchos here. We see them on the road a lot, riding their horses back to their homes. They're pretty cool guys usually, though extremely uneducated. We are definitely in authentic Argentina here. There is NOTHING touristy at all! (The town of La Paz is kind of touristy, but Feliciano is the most extreme opposite of that as you can get.) We see people taking their horses around a lot, or people traveling in their carts pulled by a donkey. We're in a very secluded area which is kind of fun, and there's not a lot of people, but there's enough. Sometimes we can only reach one house every ten minutes, though, which makes it hard because you can spend a whole hour working and not find anyone at home! Around the more central area of Feliciano, though, they have a little more normal neighborhoods and homes.

Thanks so much to everyone for the birthday money!!! Our zone conference is this Saturday, so I really hope my package is there!!! We travel every Tuesday to La Paz for District Meeting, so that means every Tuesday, we have a 2 hour bus ride, whooo! And then back, of course. I'm thinking of buying a cd player (it has to have speakers) with my birthday money when I am in La Paz. Also, I'm going to try to find a device that converts my XD camera drive to a USB format in La Paz, because otherwise I probably won't be able to send you any pictures while I'm in Feliciano. I don't know if they'll have one, but I'll try!

General Conference was good, we traveled to La Paz to watch it, and we had to watch it all in Spanish. It was a cool experience to hear it in Spanish, although I would have preferred to hear it in English. We traveled to La Paz with our 20 members to watch it!! Yes, there are only 20 church members here in Feliciano, but we're going to fix that!!!!

Our church is nice. It's basically just an old house that the church bought and turned into a meeting house. I don't know what a church session is like in Feliciano yet, since last Sunday was General Conference, but I will let you know next week.

My comp Elder Rojas is awesome, he's from Peru and is about 4 feet tall, ha ha. (We assume he is exaggerating!) He's really short and small, so we probably look really funny walking down the street together, but nevertheless we work together really well. I'm learning lots of Spanish from him, and can actually tell that I'm starting to transition into thinking in Spanish unconsciously. A couple of times as I have been writing this, I translated my thoughts into English because they came in Spanish!!!

The two-man penche is pretty cool. It's definitely a lot more spiritual, too. We live near members, in what is basically their barn in the back. It's not the best pench, but it keeps us safe. I'll be honest, when I first walked in, I thought it was a joke, ha ha! At least we have a floor in the bedroom and bathroom. Still have the bucket shower, though. But I have already come to love this penche. It makes me think of when I first got to Venado and saw my first penche with its bathroom and the outdoor kitchen (even though it is good by Argentina standards.) I was thinking you've got to be kidding me! But it came to be the coolest pinche ever.

The travel from Venado Tuerto to Feliciano was quite a trip. I went from the very bottom left corner on the map of our mission to the very top right corner, so I think someone in the offices was laughing when he assigned me here. It took a whole day to get here, and then some. I woke up Wednesday morning at 5, left Venado and after taking 5 different buses at 5 different terminals, arrived in La Paz at around 9 at night. I slept in the penche of the missionaries in La Paz, because there wasn't another bus that goes from La Paz to Feliciano till the morning. Then I caught the 4 a.m. bus the next morning and arrived in Feliciano at 6 in the morning!! It was fun traveling and seeing all the different cities as we passed, and as I switched buses.

Regarding celebrating my upcoming birthday, I'll tell you a little about how Argentines celebrate. Birthdays and Christmas are celebrated big here, just different. Instead of having a nice family meal on Christmas, they get drunk, shoot off fireworks, and go crazy. Birthdays are pretty similar, although the big birthday here is when you hit 15 years of age. Here in Argentina, you'll see "Feliz 15" spray painted everywhere, because that is the HUGE birthday where the Argentines go all out and celebrate. But for us missionaries, birthdays are pretty small. My birthday will be on zone conference, which will make it extra fun!!


Thanks again for everyone's emails, the birthday money, the package and the letters (in advance), and your prayers!! I love you all very much!!!

Eric

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