Christmas Day Phone Call

It was wonderful being able to talk to Eric on Christmas Day, although we had a few challenges with the phone lines and connections. It was the high point of the day to hear his voice and for all of us to talk to him. Eric's sisters think he now sounds exactly like his dad on the phone, and if they hadn't known it was really Eric, they would have thought their Dad was playing a trick on them! Eric sounded happy and healthy, which made us all very happy. Following are some of the questions we asked him and his answers:

How has your Christmas been? Great, it's been a really good day. We woke up, opened our presents and hung out a little bit, and then we came to the church to do our phone calls. We even got permission to watch the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on DVD. We started it and it is really good, but then we stopped because we are all taking turns to call home now. There are six of us elders taking turns with the phone here in the church building, because this building is the stake center. We have a planning meeting from 6 to 9 tonight, so we hope we can finish the movie.

Did you receive the package? Yes, it was awesome, thank you! I loved all the presents, I loved every single thing. The helicopter (toy that flies up in the air) is a big hit while we're all waiting for our turns to use the phone. We played some games with those blue balls that you sent, too.

What was your favorite gift? That's a hard call, because I enjoyed all of them. Everything was great. I traded a couple of the ties though. We all got ties and so we did a big tie swap. I kept a couple and traded two, so I ended up with the best ties of all!

What are you going to buy with the Christmas money you received? I'd really like to get an authentic Argentina soccer jersey, the real kind that costs like 300 pesos. (About 80 dollars.) I'll have to wait to buy it, though. We can't leave the area we work in, and in my area, there are no stores. But sooner or later I'll get transferred to an area that has stores.

How was your experience passing by the members' homes on Christmas Eve? Did you have a nice dinner? It was fun passing by all the members' houses, but here everyone celebrates by having a big asado (barbecue) at midnight. So no one had any food when we passed by, but they all wanted us to come back and eat with them at midnight. We ended up just having a piece of bread, because we can't be out that late. But that's okay, because we're going to make tacos today and they should be good.

How was the ward Christmas party? It was fun, we had a ping pong tournament!

What part of Christmas in the States do you miss the most? I guess mostly having a really nice dinner on Christmas Eve with the family, and just being with the family.

What is it like there today? Christmas here seems more like a crazy, intense 4th of July. There are fireworks going off everywhere, it sounds like we're in the middle of a war zone. They have lots of fireworks here that would be illegal in the States.

How is the work going? It's going great, we hope to have some baptisms in the near future. The districts all got changed up a few weeks ago. There are still six in my district, but now there's only one set of the hermanas, and some elders. So yeah, the work is going really good. Ameghino (his area in Pergamino) is a good area.

Have you had any "tummy troubles"? Well, that's just a fact of life here in Argentina. But I haven't had anything out of the ordinary. Everyone has to deal with that here.

Are you reading the talks and articles that we send you? I've read them all in the past and really enjoyed them, but right now it would be hard to read anything you send me, because we started a Book of Mormon reading challenge in the mission, where we read the Book of Mormon in 120 days. So that's taking most of my personal study time.

Will you be able to email us on Monday, your regular P-day? No, because we're talking to our families on the phone today. So on Monday we will have a little time to get our laundry done and buy groceries, but then we just go back to work as usual.

We asked Eric if he would speak some Spanish for us. He laughed and told us that he can't, but he could speak some Castellano for us! He reminded us that the Argentines think they have their own language, Castellano, from the Castilian region of Spain, even though it is exactly the same as Spanish except for pronouncing "ll" as "sh".



In this clip, Eric is describing a typical day in the mission.




Eric is bearing his testimony near the end of the phone call. The baby that you hear is Eric's little niece in Utah, because of course she needed to be in on the phone conversation, too!


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