A few months ago, I had asked Eric to take a picture of one of his pairs of shoes, so I could see how they were holding up. This picture shows his shoes after about 6 months in Argentina. With most of the roads being dirt, sand or mud, this is probably typical of how his shoes always look.
This is a new, identical pair of shoes that are currently on their way to Eric. By the time he receives them, he will probably need them.Hey family, how's it going!!!! Happy birthday, Dad! I hope everyone is doing good!!! Aca andamos (one of the most common phrases here.) Things are going really good here!! We managed to get the Standards this week, which was amazing because all our five investigators that came had to spend a lot of money, travel for 30 minutes in the bus, and walk 30 more minutes to get to church this week, and yet they came to church!!!! We were definitely blessed, because most of the time it seems people struggle to walk a block to get to church!
Today was a good day, too. We found out that interviews are going to be in all of the missionaries' penches this month! So we cleaned our pench really good this morning, including one room which is basically a big dump. (Believe it or not, many penches have this.) Whenever we have stuff we don't quite know what to do with, we just open the door and randomly throw whatever it is in the room and close the door before the dusty air escapes. We've done it since I've been here, and so have missionaries for the past however many years. So you can imagine the amount of stuff in there! It's been like that in a lot of the penches I've lived in so far. We worked hard all morning and cleaned the room and the pench is pretty good now, although we need to cut the grass! Cutting down the grass here is something different. The most common way is with a machete, or sometimes a weedwhacker. I've only seen about two machines for cutting grass here the whole time, and believe me, they are not really lawnmowers, they are sort of weedwhackers on wheels. So mostly everybody just uses machetes to cut the grass, they just hack away all day and night cutting the grass. I really want to take a photo because it's really funny to see entire families with their kids and all, outside all hacking away at the earth with their machetes. It's usually an all day (and sometimes several day) activity to cut it, too!
Well, after cleaning the pench, we went to the closest place we could get to America, or in other words, Walmart. I took my suits in to be drycleaned because now because of the warmer weather, I am no longer going to use them till next winter or zone conferences and stuff. We then played some awesome soccer with the zone, just like last week, and dominated everyone. I think we won 20 times in a row, ha ha! There are 3 teams, and the team that loses leaves and the other team rotates in. We NEVER LEFT, cause we never lost. I can't really take credit for our amazing success though, but I will anyway because the person making all the goals was my companion! He plays really good!! Anyway, after that we hit up McDonald's with the zone leaders, which was fun too, because we have really good zone leaders. Then we came here to use the internet.
I apologize today because I don't have the right camera card with the pictures, so I can't send any pics, but next week for sure I'll send some. Please tell Nana and Papa thank you, I got their letter and they told me all about the happenings in Lopez, it was a great letter!
Well, this past week was good, I absolutely loved General Conference, the part I heard at least. We watched the Saturday morning session with a member while eating lunch, it was really cool and I loved it. (We watched via the internet.) The afternoon session we weren't able to see, so I was sad. Also, we missed the priesthood session which really made me sad. I heard it was awesome. (Mom's note: If I remember correctly, the missionaries in Eric's mission are only permitted to watch the Saturday and Priesthood sessions if they have an investigator with them; if not, they go out to work as usual.) For Sunday, we were able to go to the stake center itself and watch the conference!!! Ha ha, Mom and Dad, the funny thing is that as you were watching it in Spanish for me, I watched it all in English! That's really funny that we watched it in opposite languages, what a switch! So thanks for trying, even though it turned out opposite, hopefully you understood some of it. I loved all the talks (except maybe the one about the stuff in the tree from the guy with the strong accent, maybe I would have understood it better in Spanish.) I loved all the talks and learned a lot from them. We, all the American elders, watched the conference in English in a classroom, and it was awesome!! It was awesome to be able to peacefully watch the conference on a TV with a group of about 8 guys, with big desks and room to spread out and take notes. In addition, we had tons of food and snacks to eat the whole time. I loved it and wanted more conference! My comp, of course, watched it in Spanish in the chapel with the members and investigators, so we split up (divisions) for a bit. It was a really good conference, I loved all the talks, and I hope you guys enjoyed it too.
You asked what I needed, and I don't need too much, but this is what I do need....SOCKS!!!! It seems every time the lady washes my clothes, a pair of socks is missing. Socks are something that I never have enough of, so please send lots of socks! In addition, the few pairs of socks I have left, have holes already, so please send lots of socks, I can never have too many socks.
One other thing that would be really nice is to have a watch (cheap) that could clip onto my bag. It doesn't have to look good or anything. Also, I am almost out of acne medicine.
Our investigators are progressing, hopefully we'll get a baptism or two before the end of the transfer. The people of Rincon are doing good also. To answer your questions, lots of times they just eat with a spoon instead of a fork, which is frustrating at times with pasta and noodles! Also sometimes you'll see an Argentine who tries to keep to the Italian ways and uses the fork and spoon together. But they use knives and forks, too.
I also wanted to ask if you could send more photos, the printed out type. Any photos will do, I'd especially like photos of my baptism (I think you have some) or any photos with church stuff in it, to be able to show investigators. Also, just whatever other fun or exciting or boring photos that you have, I'd like those too!
My comp and I get along great, he's an awesome guy, and I love having an Argentine comp. My Spanish is doing good, and he teaches me some culture stuff sometimes, and some soccer stuff. He's a great guy and lots of fun.
Well, to close I'd just like to say I love you all very much, and appreciate all you do. Thanks for the support, prayers, letters, and everything else you do for me, have done, and will do. Thanks for all the help, I love you all and will write again next week!!!
Love,
Eric
Since Eric did not send any pictures this week, I went online and found these scenic shots of Rincon.
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