Diego's baptism

Eric with Diego at his baptism

Diego with his wife and kids

Hey family!!! What's up dawg!!!

A lot of the Argentine church members greet me by saying, "What's up dawg?" because they watch American movies and learn funny phrases like that, ha ha.

Well the first thing I want to mention is Diego's baptism, of course. HUGE SUCCESS!!! I'm uploading photos now of the baptism but it's going very slow. I was a little nervous if he'd be able to get baptized or not. I wasn't doubting his desires, but his worthiness. Diego's such a cool guy that he let us know when we taught him repentance that he needed to fix some things up in his life to be more in harmony with the gospel. Well, he had repented long ago, but we weren't sure how long he had to wait, or if he could be baptized this Saturday. He had his official and final interview with the stake president on Saturday, right before the baptism!! The stake president couldn't come to our church building so we had to go to a different building, which was pretty good, though, because they had hot water at their church, unlike our church building which is out of gas so we couldn't heat water. Well, the president said he was ready for baptism, so we went ahead with the baptism! Diego's family came (because of the change of location, we were also a little worried about them coming), but it all worked out. His friend in the church baptized him (a young man) so that was really cool for both of them. So he was baptised on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday.

Diego is really an awesome guy, you'll notice from the pictures that he has a lot of tattoos on his arms and neck. They're the names of his kids, but the thing that's really cool is that he has an appointment with a guy to have them removed!!! We didn't even mention to him that he should remove his tattoos, he just told us he wanted to have them removed because he understood that his body is a temple of God and he wants to become more like Christ. Probably the greatest joy that I got from this whole thing is when we invited him to repent and then saw him go through the repentance process. The baptism was great, of course, and it's a necessary step to complete the repentance, but the work he did before the baptism was the best. Just to see the weight of his previous transgressions lifted from him was a miracle. It's something he'd felt bad about for quite some time and I can tell this man is truly happy now and doesn't have feelings of guilt or shame anymore.

Anyway, it was just a really good baptism. We did his baptism at the church with 6 other baptisms in our zone, so our zone had 7 baptisms, which is A LOT for one zone in our mission! It was a great service with lots of people.

So now you will be able to see the picture of Diego and his wife and kids, he is a really funny guy. I don't know what I have and haven't mentioned about him before, so just ask me if you have any more questions about Diego or whatever. I'm also sending you a picture of him and his wife in front of the temple, (most likely he means in front of a picture of the temple, since the temple is 4 hours away) which is where they plan to go in about a year from August, after they get married this August. (It takes time here to get a marriage date. Also, even though they're not officially married, everyone just uses the words wife and husband.) (Unfortunately we did not receive the husband-wife-temple picture.)

The weather here has been pretty nice today and the last couple of days, although of course very cold in the mornings, and it has been very cold all day long before that. Today was P-day and we got here together in the morning as a zone in Esperanza, and we played futbol. After that we had some good Grido ice cream and we got to watch a movie, because of how our zone had so many baptisms. We watched Disney's Princess and the Frog in English, woo hoo. It really wasn't that great, but being as deprived as we are, we were like criminals just out of prison, laughing at every stupid thing, and so we all really enjoyed it, myself included.

Regarding peanut butter, yes, you can get it here, but only in one place, WALMART, the favorite store of all Americans. It's true that peanut butter doesn't really exist here, nobody knows why that is, that's why you'll only find it at Walmart. We recently showed peanut butter to a member who has a panaderia (factura/alfajor shop) (bakery), and he said he's going to start making peanut butter alfajores for us and call them "THE YANKEE." Ha ha, yes, people sometimes call us Yankees, although it's pronounced more like "shonkees."

I enjoyed seeing the photos of everyone, they're always nice to see, and Marisa and David look content in their new apartment and look like they're ready for kids!!! It still shocks me to see my sister expecting a baby, maybe someday I'll fully believe it.

Regarding the package you mentioned, no, I did not receive that one with the candy and stuff you described. Like you said, I would assume it's just slower or maybe the office elders forgot it. I should get it sooner or later, although as of now, we will ONLY get packages every 3 months. Even when zone leaders go to the mission home, they can only bring back letters, but packages they can't bring because it would be hard to carry them all, and also because we have to pay for them all. We pay according to the value declared on the box. Thank you for being smart and declaring the value of all my packages low, I only have to pay 10, 20 or 30 pesos to get mine, nothing bad. One of the hermanas received a 90 peso package, and so have some other missionaries here, because many parents don't know how the system works. We have to use personal money to pay for packages, and that's sacred money, ha ha!!

Well, I better finish up, I am having trouble uploading photos because this ciber (cybercafe) is so slow, I've never been in a ciber so slow. It's a huge ciber and there's tons of kids all playing World of Warcraft (a computer game) and so that's making the internet VERY SLOW. I love you all and hope the best. Remember to "SEGUIR ADELANTE" (press forward) always and enjoy the journey.

Till next week,
Love,
Eric
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