Glad to receive gas detector

Elder Rojas and Eric in the penche

Eric with his birthday cake, wearing the new River jersey. We had sent the candles (and the matches you see in the little Ziploc bag.)

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Eric and Elder Petersen after playing soccer on P-Day, wearing their "penche jerseys." This picture is from the old area of San Martin, Venado Tuerto.

Hey everyone!! How's it going!!

Right now I'm in La Paz, so I'll be sending you some fotos!! Also, yesterday (Tuesday) I just got the other package you sent! It was the one with the gas detector (Mom's note: it's a propane/methane detector), the bouncy balls for the kids, and the candies!! Thanks so much, I love American candy and the bouncy balls are great, and I'm going to use that gas detector everywhere I go!! Monday night we accidentally slept with the gas on. Luckily we had to get up at 4 in the morning on Tuesday to travel, because much longer could have been bad!! Every time we cook, we have to go open the gas valve, cook, and then turn it off when we're done. Well, Elder Rojas was doing the cooking but forgot to turn it off Monday night so we slept with the gas on all night, it was pretty bad at 4 when our clocks woke us up!! Don't worry, we're fine, but now I have the desire to always have that gas detector with me while I'm sleeping, ha ha!*

I also got your dearelder letter, too, which is always good!! Also, I wanted to let you know about the buttons that you sent me. They worked great, and they were actually the same size as the original ones, so I just had to add the one. Our member whose place we live in sewed it on really good for me, it's great to live by members.

I have been enjoying my new cd player. It wasn't too expensive and it's really good quality for here. No one really knows what kind of music we can listen to, it seems the rules change every week, but basically we're allowed to listen to good music that gives us the desire to be more spiritual and prayerful. I have about 8-10 cd's from when I was in Venado, copied from Elder Petersen and Elder Wilkinson, so I already had some. I have all the EFY songs, a Joseph Smith tribute CD, and a couple of other random ones.

Speaking of Elder Petersen, he's doing really good. I spoke to him Tuesday night on the phone and he's doing really good as Zone Leader, and I'm sending you right now a picture of us in our matching jerseys! It's the Real Madrid team, you can't tell from the front but the back has the name of the famous guy of Real Madrid and all, it's pretty cool. Although this is one of my birthday jerseys, I bought it a little early because it was our "penche jersey" that all four of us in our penche in Venado bought together. The black and red jersey that you see in the picture with the birthday cake is the River jersey. There are two big teams in Argentina, River and Boca. I'm technically a Boca fan, but don't really care too much, hence the River jersey because I liked the way it looked.

I'm in La Paz right now, after this we're going to go have an asado (barbecue), and then we have to return home and get right to work as soon as we arrive. I'm very excited for the asado, we're going to have it along the river!!!!!!!!!! Oh, and yes, Hermana Hansen, she's in my DISTRICT, I could hardly believe it when she told me! I wish I had been old enough to remember being neighbors and playing in the sandbox and all. This world is a small place, especially in the church. A new hermana just came into our zone and is in the same district as Elder Welker. And believe it or not, they were friends before the mission! It's crazy how small the world is!! (Mom's note: a district usually has about 4-8 missionaries in it, and 3 or 4 districts typically make up a zone. So it's kind of like the district is the "family" and the zone is the "extended family", for at least that particular 6-week transfer period. There are 12 zones in Eric's mission, with a total of approximately 190 missionaries.)

Yes, I would love to have you send me some recipes. We usually eat pretty boring because we always have to travel and have no money, but I'd still like some recipes to try, nothing too fancy though, there's not a lot of spices and whatnot to buy in Feliciano. We drink bottled water here too, we buy the big 5 gallon jugs when the water guy passes by in his truck.

Things are going good in Feliciano. We brought it back from the dead, ha ha. I don't think we'll have any baptisms this transfer :( but we did a lot of good at least. Elder Rojas and I get along great, and yes, I get to teach a lot. He has a year and 5 months in the mission, and he just barely went up as senior comp, so as a result, he's both experienced and new at the same time. So he lets me teach plenty, because he's very shy and timid and doesn't like to contact very much.

Feliciano is a lot like Venado, for fun the people go partying, which we hear outside our penche all night until we fall asleep. That's about all they have here, it's so small and poor there isn't much else.

No, we have not taught any gauchos. We really can't understand them. They're funny people, and they have their own language, I think. I usually can't understand a single word they say, and neither can my Latin comp!!! He is always asking them to repeat, and repeat, and finally gives up. Walking away from them, I always ask my Latin what they said, and he always says that he has no idea what they are saying!! They are way cool though, they all wear these sweet looking hats, with the big belt and boots and all, but the hat is the best. I will try to get a picture of it for you. It's kind of like the flat french hat, but really cool. (I guess he is already forgetting English, or at least French-English words! I think he means a beret.) All the gauchos look like they've been in the sun too long, and I think their skin is made of leather, ha ha.

Mom, that's very exciting about your new calling, I'm sure you'll love it, and I'm glad you were able to give a talk in sacrament meeting! Church here is going great, but with only 15 to 20 members each week, sometimes we get called on randomly for things. Last week Elder Rojas got called on to give a talk in sacrament meeting. I was randomly called on to give the prayer (whew.)

Mosquitoes aren't bad here, we don't have problems with that, if I needed any repellent it would be dog repellent, ha ha. The seasons are changing, and the leaves too, so I'm glad you sent the winter gear because it gets cold in the nights and mornings. We're allowed to work with hats, like the beanie type, and gloves, so if you could send some I would really appreciate it. If not, don't worry, it's still not terribly cold, but it's definitely changing!

I love you all and thank you so much for your love and all you do for me!!!

Love,
Eric

The new birthday CD player. It's a good thing he could choose his own, because I would have thought he needed a really small one.

Eric said he also bought this new bag with his birthday money. I think it is for carrying missionary supplies around every day, and/or to carry stuff as they go on their overnight travels to La Paz.

* Mom's note: If this were a "miracle" kind of story, Eric would have received the gas detector one day earlier. However, I still can't understand how Eric received this package so quickly, in less than 3 1/2 weeks since I sent it. This package beat the one I had sent two months ago, which was smaller and he still hasn't received. Usually the packages sit in customs for about a month, not even counting traveling time...and then Eric wouldn't normally be receiving any mail until the next zone conference which is in the middle of May. I guess Heavenly Father knew that they really needed it, and I'm glad because I wouldn't have slept a wink after hearing about the gas valve incident, if the gas detector hadn't arrived! :)

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We have more new investigators!

Hey family,

How's it going!! I hope all's well. Life here in Feliciano is going great!!! We spent our last week on the road a lot and in La Paz. But this week, we only have to travel on Friday and Saturday!! This time all of the other missionaries in our district came up here for Tuesday's District Meeting. So as a result, we'll probably be able to get the Standards (hopefully) and get to stop by to see all of our investigators this week!!! We still have to travel Friday and Saturday though, but at least not as much as most weeks.

Regarding the bus ride, we usually try to sleep on the buses because we often arrive back at our penche around 1 or 2 in the morning. But we still have to get up on time the next morning, even if it's only 4 hours later! So even though I could, I haven't taken the time to write letters while on the buses. But today, I'll probably be able to write a few letters because we actually have a P-day (instead of spending it traveling). But I will have to wait until we go to La Paz again to mail them.

Well thanks again everyone for the birthday gifts and money. I'll tell you about the cool stuff I got with the money. I took pictures of it all, and I also finally found and bought a camera card reader that can hook up to the USB port! However, as I am here in Feliciano this time, I can't send any pictures because these computers don't even have a USB port. I guess we're just lucky they have computers here at all. So I'll send you some pictures next week when we go back to La Paz.

I bought everything in La Paz and brought it back. I bought a really nice CD player that plays CD's, Mp3's and it has a USB port to connect ipods and whatever to listen. It's a really cool CD player and has great sound. I have about 10 cd's from Elder Petersen, so I have good music. (Mom's note: The missionaries can listen to church music and similar types of things.) Elder Rojas already had a cd player, but now it is nice to have one of my own. Last week I also bought two trucho soccer jerseys at Taco, which sells trucho jerseys. (Trucho means a fake or knock-off.) The real jerseys are around 300 pesos, but we got awesome ones that look the same for 40 pesos each! One of them is for the team River (even though I'm a Boca fan, ha ha) and the other one is Real Madrid! Dad should like that one! Hopefully I can send you the pictures next week because they are really cool. I also bought a butterfly knife, which is way cool. Don't worry, I don't need it or anything, it's just cool to have because everyone around here has one, and it only cost 40 pesos. (I looked it up, and a butterfly knife, or balisong, has two handles that open up and close around the blade. You may have seen these knives used in the movie West Side Story, as well as some martial arts movies where people demonstrate great skill flipping them.) I bought my knife at the terminal. They sell them everywhere around here. What's crazy is that you can even buy them in some of the kioskos, along with switchblades. (Mom's note: With all of the strict rules these missionaries live by, I was somewhat surprised to hear that he is allowed to buy a knife...but then I realized that his mission president is a South American, who encourages them to do interesting things like climbing up to sleep on the roof on hot nights, so I guess this is simply just one of those culture differences.)

It's crazy the way they can sell just anything here to anyone. We see little 5 year old kids going down to the local kiosko buying beer and smokes for their parents and then walking back home with them. The police don't care about anything, they are usually sleeping in their cars, and they are so lazy they don't even usually have their shirts buttoned up. But the armored truck guys all walk around with uzi's and submachine guns, it's a really funny world down here!

The Spanish is going pretty good. I feel I have been blessed to be able to speak it pretty well now. People understand me the majority of the time. The thing that's been hardest for me is being able to understand them, ha ha! But I have found, that when you really need it, that's when the Spirit helps you. Whenever Elder Rojas is off in an interview or talking with someone else, and I have to talk one on one with somebody, I can understand everything they say and have a good conversation. But when Elder Rojas is with me and they all start talking really fast, sometimes I still get lost! But having a Latin comp helps a lot. All of my studies and my whole life right now is in Spanish!

We're doing really good here, and we now have about 30 investigators!! That is great, because at the time I arrived here, we had none. Many of them are progressing, although I don't know that any will be getting baptized really soon. I'm hoping we can get more members and build up the church. Our church is so small here that Elder Rojas and I always have to bless or pass the sacrament on Sundays. We also need to help out with lessons in Sunday School, too. It's fun, I really enjoy a close, small branch, and we're good friends with all the members, although none of them have had us over for any meals yet.

Yes, there's plenty of dogs here, although I haven't seen the gangs or packs of dogs roaming wild like there was in my old area San Martin VT. So it's safe here dog-wise.

The financial status here in Feliciano is about the same as San Martin. Overall poor, although every once in a while, there's a mansion in the middle of the ghetto, but otherwise poor houses. Many have the thatched straw type house that you think of as only being in Hawaii and tropical islands. They look pretty cool.

I hear that the rain here can be really bad, but surprisingly, so far we have not had any. There are plenty of streams in this area. There is one stream in particular that we have to cross often, which we can cross by walking on a narrow pipe. Elder Rojas is kind of a chicken so he takes the 5 minute detour, ha ha, but I always take the pipe.

It's awesome the way we are teaching the people here with the spirit in almost all of our lessons. And the mission itself is awesome here in Feliciano. I'm coming to love the place more and more, and I can't believe how much time has passed already!! It just gets faster and faster.

Thanks for all the love and support! ;)

Love,
Eric

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Mom's note: I found this article and two pictures in a Feliciano online publication dated March 23, 2010. The article discussed how a team of Social Health and Welfare workers visited families in Feliciano and provided mobile health and dental services to the residents for several days, as well as worked on ways to improve conditions there. Since Feliciano is so small, I wonder if Eric has met or perhaps even knows some of these residents?

	Info. Local	23/03/2010
UN EQUIPO DE PROFESIONALES RECORRIÓ BARRIOS Y EL ÉJIDO DE LA CIUDAD
SE REALIZARON CASI 1.000 INTERVENCIONES SANITARIAS Y SOCIALES EN UN OPERATIVO EN FELICIANO

I also found this picture showing the stage where each year in February Feliciano holds a festival...it is called "Fiesta del Ternero Entrerriano" which is some sort of celebration about bull calves. Since the area is inhabited by mostly cattle farmers, I guess that makes sense!




The last article and picture I found, dated April 20, 2010, is about a man the authorities are trying to track down for smuggling into the country $12,000 worth of electronics. They suspected he was traveling through the Feliciano area, which would be logical since there aren't very many other roads from Brazil or Uruguay to reach the more populated areas in Argentina. I guess it must be just the local police that sleep in their cars, because this operation looks like they mean business!

	Info. Provincial	20/04/2010
EN PROXIMIDADES DE LOS CONQUISTADORES
GENDARMERÍA SECUESTRÓ ELECTRÓNICA EXTRANJERA INGRESADA ILEGALMENTE AL PAÍS

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My birthday was awesome!

Hey family,

Thanks for everyone's letters and the package!! We actually had the zone conference on Friday, and that is when I got the package. The zone conference was really cool because it was like half our mission was there. I got to see Elder Vanderholm my old MTC companion, and a lot of other good missionary buddies!!! It was a really fun zone conference, but the best part was receiving my package and letters and cards, ha ha!

So it ended up that for my birthday I was in Feliciano. Elder Rojas and I worked as usual during the day, and then in the evening we bought a cake and I ate cake and opened my presents, it was way fun. I loved opening all the gifts and seeing the little letters and notes. I missed you all, of course, but despite that I still had a way awesome birthday because I felt like you were all there anyway!!! Your gifts were all awesome and were things I'd been wanting! I took pictures, but even in La Paz the computers don't have card readers, so I can't send them to you yet!

So THAAAANK YOOOOUUUU to everyone for the gifts and cards!!!!!!!! I love all of them and am using them already. (Mom's note: Shipping to Argentina is so expensive that his gifts were quite limited in size: ties, candy, small magic tricks, mini sewing kit, fold-up umbrella, etc.) The candy is already gone, ha ha. I am very excited about the money everyone put in my debit card account to buy stuff. I can't wait, today I am going to buy a cd player and I already bought a couple of inexpensive soccer jerseys. I'll send pictures of all this as soon as I can!

Regarding the pictures, I haven't been able to find an XD to USB converter yet. I found converters for SD, Micro SD, and everything BUT the XD! Today I'll look again. (I am in La Paz now, more on that in a minute.) But if I can't find it, then that would be great if you could send me that cord, but I hope I can find one today because if you send it to me, it will take forever before I receive it.

Okay, the reason I am in La Paz is that we spend a lot of our time here working. We leave Feliciano on Tuesday mornings at 5 a.m. and travel by bus to La Paz. We have our district meeting and then we just start working, and we don't leave until Wednesday night. We also have to come down to La Paz some Saturdays and Sundays, too. So as a result, we'll probably never get the Standards, because all the contacts and everything we make while in La Paz get counted toward the La Paz's missionaries' stats. It's okay, though, it's all the same work, but anyway, that is why I am in La Paz a lot.

I had to buy a second sheet set and towels because here, I have to wash things by hand and then air/sun dry them, so the whole process takes a few days because nothing dries fast. So, I put on the other set, while the first set is drying.

I'll try and answer some of your questions now. The bigger kioskos I told you about have enough food to get us by (noodles and rice) and they have milk, too. But we can't find "real" milk here, just the stuff that is sitting out on a shelf in the carton and can sit there for 2 years, because they probably just vaporize anything healthy and living inside of it. It's not the best but it gets the job done.

As far as meat goes, we have tons of that. Feliciano is all about the cattle, and there are gauchos and cattle everywhere around here. So as a result of all the cattle farming, we actually have more carnicerias (meat shops) than La Paz does! Every corner has a meat shop on it, so we can get meat pretty cheap in Feliciano.

At the time when I first arrived here in Feliciano, we didn't have any investigators, but right now we have about 15. The only problem is that it's harder to stay in close contact with them because we're always traveling, because the people that are learning about the church and thinking of being baptized need daily contact. Nevertheless, the work is going well here. It'll be great to get some more members. Right now we have an assistance (that must be the Spanish word for attendance or membership) of about 20. Last week was pretty fun in church. It was definitely the smallest church I've been in, but it was really fun and cool because all the members are so close.

We are not too far from the borders of Brazil and Uruguay, but I don't think we'd be able to go to the border ever. We mostly spend our P-day traveling. But I'm going to find out to see if it's allowed, and if so, maybe one P-day we could.

School in Feliciano is pretty much the same as it was in Venado Tuerto. School is only 3 to 4 hours a day, that's it, either in the morning or the evening. In the schools here, you only progress if you can pass the classes. As a result, you can have an 18-year-old that is in second grade, and crazy things like that!! But they don't really think education is important like we do in the States.

Yes, our area is a lot of fun and we have some crazy animals here. We have some risky toads, but as long as we don't mess with them, the toads never attack us. There's also a weird animal here that doesn't exist in the States. I forgot what it's called, but basically it's a BIG hamster!! It's really weird to see, but that 's just Feliciano.

Mom and Dad, thanks for everything. And Dad, thanks for the inspirational stories, I love reading those, they always help me a lot. Thanks for everything you sent me, and the warm clothes too, I can feel the seasons changing so I expect I'll need the warm clothes soon.

Well, got to go, love you all and thanks to everyone for making my birthday so great!!!

Love,
Eric

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Hola from Feliciano!

Hey everyone,

How's it going!!! Sounds like everyone is doing good, which makes me happy. I'm doing very good in my new area, getting to know the people, working with a Latin and living in the two-man penche. I miss Venado Tuerto and all the great members and fun I had there, but I am coming to like this area more each day!!! Venado Tuerto was a pretty decent-sized city. My last area (the San Martin area of Venado Tuerto) was pretty small, but we had the Centro right next to us, which was pretty good. But Feliciano is the complete opposite!!! It's the smallest "pueblito" (village) you can imagine. They don't even have any stores here, just bigger kioskos!! We're about 2 hours by bus northeast of La Paz, which is the farthest north and east that you can possibly go in the whole mission. And we're just kind of out in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. Our area is pretty jungley, which is both good and bad. It's really fun, because we can walk through the forest without a trail and no homes in sight!! That being said, we also have the other extremes of the jungle, it's crazy! (Mom's note: we're not sure what he means...is he referring to things like mosquitoes, rain, snakes, etc?) But it's fun just the same!!

There's a lot of gauchos here. We see them on the road a lot, riding their horses back to their homes. They're pretty cool guys usually, though extremely uneducated. We are definitely in authentic Argentina here. There is NOTHING touristy at all! (The town of La Paz is kind of touristy, but Feliciano is the most extreme opposite of that as you can get.) We see people taking their horses around a lot, or people traveling in their carts pulled by a donkey. We're in a very secluded area which is kind of fun, and there's not a lot of people, but there's enough. Sometimes we can only reach one house every ten minutes, though, which makes it hard because you can spend a whole hour working and not find anyone at home! Around the more central area of Feliciano, though, they have a little more normal neighborhoods and homes.

Thanks so much to everyone for the birthday money!!! Our zone conference is this Saturday, so I really hope my package is there!!! We travel every Tuesday to La Paz for District Meeting, so that means every Tuesday, we have a 2 hour bus ride, whooo! And then back, of course. I'm thinking of buying a cd player (it has to have speakers) with my birthday money when I am in La Paz. Also, I'm going to try to find a device that converts my XD camera drive to a USB format in La Paz, because otherwise I probably won't be able to send you any pictures while I'm in Feliciano. I don't know if they'll have one, but I'll try!

General Conference was good, we traveled to La Paz to watch it, and we had to watch it all in Spanish. It was a cool experience to hear it in Spanish, although I would have preferred to hear it in English. We traveled to La Paz with our 20 members to watch it!! Yes, there are only 20 church members here in Feliciano, but we're going to fix that!!!!

Our church is nice. It's basically just an old house that the church bought and turned into a meeting house. I don't know what a church session is like in Feliciano yet, since last Sunday was General Conference, but I will let you know next week.

My comp Elder Rojas is awesome, he's from Peru and is about 4 feet tall, ha ha. (We assume he is exaggerating!) He's really short and small, so we probably look really funny walking down the street together, but nevertheless we work together really well. I'm learning lots of Spanish from him, and can actually tell that I'm starting to transition into thinking in Spanish unconsciously. A couple of times as I have been writing this, I translated my thoughts into English because they came in Spanish!!!

The two-man penche is pretty cool. It's definitely a lot more spiritual, too. We live near members, in what is basically their barn in the back. It's not the best pench, but it keeps us safe. I'll be honest, when I first walked in, I thought it was a joke, ha ha! At least we have a floor in the bedroom and bathroom. Still have the bucket shower, though. But I have already come to love this penche. It makes me think of when I first got to Venado and saw my first penche with its bathroom and the outdoor kitchen (even though it is good by Argentina standards.) I was thinking you've got to be kidding me! But it came to be the coolest pinche ever.

The travel from Venado Tuerto to Feliciano was quite a trip. I went from the very bottom left corner on the map of our mission to the very top right corner, so I think someone in the offices was laughing when he assigned me here. It took a whole day to get here, and then some. I woke up Wednesday morning at 5, left Venado and after taking 5 different buses at 5 different terminals, arrived in La Paz at around 9 at night. I slept in the penche of the missionaries in La Paz, because there wasn't another bus that goes from La Paz to Feliciano till the morning. Then I caught the 4 a.m. bus the next morning and arrived in Feliciano at 6 in the morning!! It was fun traveling and seeing all the different cities as we passed, and as I switched buses.

Regarding celebrating my upcoming birthday, I'll tell you a little about how Argentines celebrate. Birthdays and Christmas are celebrated big here, just different. Instead of having a nice family meal on Christmas, they get drunk, shoot off fireworks, and go crazy. Birthdays are pretty similar, although the big birthday here is when you hit 15 years of age. Here in Argentina, you'll see "Feliz 15" spray painted everywhere, because that is the HUGE birthday where the Argentines go all out and celebrate. But for us missionaries, birthdays are pretty small. My birthday will be on zone conference, which will make it extra fun!!


Thanks again for everyone's emails, the birthday money, the package and the letters (in advance), and your prayers!! I love you all very much!!!

Eric

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