First Letter from Argentina!

Hey family!!!!!

I made it to Argentina!!!! I'm so glad to be able to finally write you!!!! So much has happened that I won't be able to say everything, but I'll do my best to get the highlights in.

First, I won't be able to hand-write personal letters anymore, or at least hardly ever, because they're slow and expensive and I won't have much time for that. And for why I am sending this from a different email address, President Villalba has set up new email accounts for us to use. I don't really know why, but this is what I'll be using from now on.

Well, I guess I'll just get started with answering your questions and telling you a little bit about Argentina. The flight went good, and after getting into Buenos Aires, we went through customs pretty smoothly. Our flight had been delayed two hours, so we actually met up with the Mendoza elders from our MTC district! They left two hours after us, but arrived at the same time! We didn't have much time to talk, but it was cool.

Then we all went outside and loaded into a van and drove out to the President's house (Mission Home) in Rosario, which was like a 3 1/2 hour drive, and we all enjoyed the beautiful scenery. It's very green here, everything is green: trees, farmlands, everything, and all very beautiful. Once we got to the President's house, we entered his air conditioned home (at the time we didn't realize what a treat air conditioning is!!) and then had some excellent beef and ice cream. We slept there that night, and met our trainers and drove to our specific areas the next morning.

My area is the San Martin area of Venado Tuerto. My trainer's name is Elder Petersen, and he's been in Argentina just barely over 4 months! But he is awesome at the language already, and a great teacher and missionary. He's very young for a trainer, and I am his first person he's training, but he is very good! In my penche (apartment) there are two other elders: Elder Wilkinson from Provo, Utah and Elder Carrillo from Colombia. They've been out about a year.

Our penche is very nice. We're one of the few to have an air conditioner, although it's more like a wussy (wimpy) swamp cooler, but it does help. Also, our shower had one temperature, cold! But two days ago we got a hot water heater, so no more ice cold showers in the morning!!!! I'll try to take some pictures so you can see. You'll probably be surprised, but it is a very nice penche.

We're living about 20-30 minutes away from our "working area" so that we can have the nice penche. Elder Petersen and I work in a very poor area. Half the homes are just metal cardboard box homes called casas de chapa, and the other half are just slightly above that. So we have a verrrry nice penche for this area!

The food here is really good, but is definitely something my body is not used to. Elder Petersen is teaching me how to cook a lot of cool things, and today I cooked a Chinese rice with diced carrots, green peppers, onions and ham, it was really good. We have not had meals with the members yet, but they give us snacks sometimes.

It's a very casual thing to visit the people here, half the time we'll just sit on a bucket and teach the family. When we go inside, it still feels like the outdoors. Everyone keeps their doors and windows open all the time, so it's pretty dirty inside, with flies buzzing all over and chickens walking in and out. But it's great, I think it is so awesome, and being inside is still a good break from the sun, because it is so hot here. I already got a little sunburnt.

I love it here, and am so glad to be here. We work very hard, and I was very sore every day last week, but am doing great today. I love working hard, though, it makes it so much funner. We have a very nice church, no air conditioning of course, but lots of fans. It is a branch, but our branch president is pretty cool. He's not one that you'd expect to be President, but he's a great guy and he tries really hard.

The language here is awesome. I don't really know anything the people are saying, but I'll occasionally pick up some words. It's such a different culture here, and I could go on forever explaining about it, if I had more time.

There are lots of dogs here, just running around everywhere. Some are friendly, and some are...very NOT friendly. Elder Wilkinson says he has already been bitten over 40 times! So what you do whenever dogs come charging at you, is what they call the "baile" which means dance. Basically, when the dogs charge you, you reach down and grab (or pretend to grab) some rocks and the dogs will usually run away, because all the kids here throw rocks at the dogs, and so they know the motion. It's only happened like 3 times so far to me, but it's worked every time. I was able to totally shut down a whole pack of dogs with the baile just a couple of days ago. So far no bites!

I can't believe I am out of time already. I'll be able to write once a week on Wednesday, which is our P-Day, unless it's a transfer week, then it could be either Tuesday or Wednesday. To answer your question about sending a package, you should use the US postal service. Mark the value very low, because I have to pay half the value to get the package, and also it would be less likely to get stolen. Also, you should put pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on the box, especially Virgin Mary on the seams of the box, because Catholics don't want to cut the Virgin Mary. If you do those things, I'm sure we'll be fine. Next time you send a package, I would really like a few more pairs of those tracting socks from Missionary Mall.

Other than that, I'm good. I love it here, we have an awesome area and awesome people in our penche and zone. I love you all, and don't worry because I am having a lot of fun here!

Love,
Eric


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