Two church activities

Hey family!!! I hope everybody's doing great!! We had an awesome week. Well, the first thing to mention is that we're going to have a baptism this Friday! Woo hoo! It's the girl Abril, although everyone calls her Chachi, that's going to be baptized. (It seems like almost everyone in this country has a nickname known by everybody, not just family or friends.) We're super excited and today I called up President Cansinos and he said he'd love to accompany us to our appointment tonight with her at 7, so it'll be cool for her to get to know the branch president well. The whole family is excited, because lots of them are members, except for her adopted mom who wants to be baptized too, but can't because they aren't married. Just the same, though, she's very supportive of Chachi's baptism and is very excited. We're trying to cram in all the lessons now to have her ready, but we're not too worried for a girl her age that has a good family and friend support in the church. She's almost or possibly by now has finished reading 2 Nephi (yesterday she had finished chapter 31) in the Book of Mormon, so it's really cool to see how much she loves to read. She's a really smart girl and has a bright future ahead of her. I'll be sure and take lots of photos for you guys.

This week we also had 2 super successful and fun activities. Don't worry, I took plenty of photos at both activities; however I lent my camera to a member to take some photos so she could put them on her computer and then pass the camera back to me, but she still hasn't given it back and I can't get a hold of her, so sorry but I don't have the camera this week to send photos. Next week there will be tons, though!

Well, the first activity was a stake dance here in Ramallo! It was Friday night and it turned out really good. They did a fabulous job decorating (we helped a little but the members did the majority) and the church looked like a little "boliche mormon" which is like a Mormon dance club, and it looked really good! Tons of less active people went, and also some non members. Actually, more less actives went than actives, so it was cool to see so many new faces at the dance. The dance was in the sacrament meeting room and they had a little bar set up with "shots" of juice and things like that. All the juice was homeade by us. We made orange juice by squeezing out the juice of at least 9999999 oranges, or it seemed like that, and they also made a cool banana and orange mix after we left. Of course we didn't dance and we couldn't stay because we had to get back to the pench in time. They had empanadas and lots of cool things there, and it was very successful. The music was pretty good, too! So it was a great activity.

Then the next day, we had our soccer tournament that we had set up in Ramallo. It turned out great and about 30 people showed up. It was a good mix of about 15 kids and 15 adults so we had some great games! The Rios family showed up too, and I was super happy to see them and they were super happy to see me too. I gave Juan the dollar (for luck) and a letter I wrote them. The soccer tournament was great. Again, more less actives showed up than actives! The main teams were me, my companion, Juan and his two friends. One of them came with his girlfriend and played in alpargatas (like slippers!) and just destroyed everybody, and the other friend also just rolled up casually in pants, but he was the best goalie I've ever seen. It was a great team, but the other team was also very good. We definitely had the two best players, but the other team had 5 strong players, so they beat us 2-1, and then after that we just went around playing mixed up teams for fun. My comp and I were definitely the weak links on the team, but we still had lots of fun with it.

After that we played ping pong, while the kids just played and did whatever stuff. It was all really cool, and everyone enjoyed it.

That's great that you'll be able to come and pick me up!! It sounds super exciting and don't worry, everything you guys are planning sounds fine with me. I'm a deprived missionary remember, we're easily entertainable!!! I'm excited to be able to visit people in my old areas and to see Iguazu Falls. We have an investigator named France who's there right now! He's taking photos for us cause I told him I might go there after the mission. He accepted a baptism date for the 24th, so we'll work with him and see how it goes. He's going to send me his photos and tell me the good places to go and all that!

So the travel details sound great! It'll be good to have time to think and plan out where to go. The great thing is most of my areas are really pretty close. It feels like some areas are really far away because we have to take slow buses which make like 500 stops, but in a car I think everything's pretty close. The top areas I want to visit so far are this area (Ramallo), Rosario, Santa Fe, and Venado Tuerto (in that order of importance), although I want to go to more areas too, if there's time.

I wanted to ask you about the sending things home that you mentioned. I am planning on giving away lots of my stuff, so I should have lots of extra space in my suitcases. So I don't think I'll need to mail anything home. Let me know what you think about that.

I wanted to tell you about the root beer mix you had sent me. I've already used it up, I made a ton (all) of it a few days ago, to gift it to all the members and people, so Argentines will know the taste of root beer! So thanks for that, it was great!

Well, I really am enjoying it here and I just love all the people of this area. I better get off, but I love you all very much, and hope the best for you!

Love,
Eric

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