Holidays

Hey family, how is everyone!! I hope everyone is doing great and enjoying their changing lives! I'm glad to see the pictures of a great birthday for Holly, and also to see the pictures of the new house.

Thanks also for sending me the flight plans, although since you guys are coming down here I guess it really doesn't matter. Thanks for offering to come and pick me up, I think it's a great idea. As far as where to come I believe you can come directly to the mission home, from what I've heard. Most likely you'd fly into Buenos Aires and take a bus to Rosario and from there take a taxi to get to the mission.

I couldn't write yesterday because it was a holiday here and everything was closed. It was the memorial of Jose de San Martin, but it is celebrated pretty much the same as Kids Day, which was last week. Kids Day Celebration was Saturday and Sunday, the biggest celebration being Sunday. All holidays in this country are always moved to the weekends or Monday. For Kids Day, they give small gifts, and lots of chocolate. The government even gets involved and hires those big blow-up things for kids to play in, and buys LOTS OF CHOCOLATE AND CAKE to give out to all kids. On Saturday, the government had their little stands everywhere giving out free cake and chocolate, and then Sunday the park was filled (as it always is) with the big blow-up things and foosball and whatnot, but this day was from private companies.

In the church, they also gave out little gift bags, although we didn't get any. David's a really funny guy, and enjoyed making fun of all the adults that did get the gift bags (which as he pointed out conveniently fell into the hands of the leaders.) It was a good day. No fireworks that day, also no asados except the asados that people do just because. We saw the Rios kids on Saturday, which was cool, as they went hunting in the plaza with their slingshots.

I should get my package this Friday for the zone conference in Pergamino. By the way, Elder Larson (my first son) is secretary now! It's cool because that's a good job and not just a job where they put the lazy missionaries.

We found a cool girl who's the daughter of a less active. She's super cute and fun and wants to be baptized, so we're working with her parents right now, trying to get them to come back. We thought the dad might come to church this week, but he didn't. Surprisingly of all the less active people we taught this past week, the people we least expected came, and the people we most expected didn't. For example, one guy, Jose came to church who I thought would be in jail (when we met him, he told us he was leaving the house to do a murder.) We of course taught him and helped him, gave him a blessing, and invited him to church and he came!!! I almost fell out of my chair when he walked in. Anyway, so it's cool to see random people start going to church again. It's super hard to get people to church right now, because it's been VERY COLD and even many active people struggle getting out of bed. That's because most people here have a house with no insulation or heater, and it is FREEZING COLD inside their houses.

I keep trying to download pictures but this computer won't do it. I'll keep trying.

Everyone's doing good here. We're just enjoying Ramallo and everything. Anyway, I better go, but I love you all!!!

Eric

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