I love this area!

Eric and Elder Page with the children of the familia Rios

Eric with the familia Rios, except for the husband/father who is not in the picture

Enjoying a few minutes of foosball with the Rios children

A mouse (or rat) in their apartment! I wonder if it lives under the oven?

The kitchen all cleaned up. I wonder if the mouse/rat is still lurking around!

Eric's desk after cleaning the apartment. I think he should have taken a "before" picture first.

Snoozing buddies in the bus terminal

Hey family!!! How is everyone??? That's great that you all enjoyed your Easter with the family.

This week was quite a full and busy one, but I'll try and get all the details in. Well, I'll start at the beginning of the week.

Tuesday we had capacitaciones, which is the leader training meeting that takes all day, which is for zone leaders, district leaders and trainers. It was in the Pergamino estaca, which was my old church in Pergamino! It was great seeing it again, although I was sad to hear that some of the members have not been attending anymore. :( I was very sad because the elders in Ameghino (Ameghino is the particular area of Pergamino that Eric served in) told me that Jose stopped going to church, maybe because church attendance has dropped so much. Anyway, during lunch break, I grabbed the current elder of Ameghino and we ran out to visit Jose, even though he said Jose had moved and was impossible to find. I was sure Jose would be there if I went by, and sure enough he was there, and he hadn't moved away. We had a good visit, and Jose told me some things. He definitely still has his testimony and said he'd start going back to church. He also wants to serve a mission really bad. His biggest concern is he's nervous to get the (Melchizedek) priesthood, which is a reasonable concern, but he promised he'd go back to church again, so it was cool seeing him. So after that the other elder and I went back to the training meeting.

The rest of our week was a really good week. We had a lot of success, and ended up getting 15 references contacted. (The Standards now require 7.) So we had lots of new investigators, most of them coming from references. We really took advantage of Easter and passed by members' houses and talked to their friends. We found some really cool people, too. We found one kid that's about 18 in a wheelchair who's wanted to be baptised for a long time, but just hasn't talked to the elders. He has a problem in getting to church because he can't get on the bus in his wheelchair, so we are going to help him get to church. He already has a testimony, so we set up his baptism for the 7th and will be passing by often to teach him all the lessons and stuff. Also, that guy I told you about last week, the one whose sister is a member, went to church again and of course liked it. Last week the capacitacion ruined our cita (appointment) with him, but this week we have a cita with him Wednesday, so that'll be good.

We've also been teaching the familia Rios, who we came across last week, and they're awesome. The three kids went to church with us this week, and the parents wanted to, but they didn't want to leave their 20 guests alone, who were visiting them for Easter. But the three kids went and loved it. It was probably one of the funnest experiences I've had taking people to church, just because the kids are so awesome. It's a great family, they're awesome. I just sent you some pictures of the family, and just as a quick note, it's a girl in the white shirt. Many people, myself included, get that mistaken at first, but she's a girl! I had brought my camera to church that day, to take pictures of the church, hence why I was able to take some pictures of the day. We showed the kids around our pench after church, and then took the bus into Pueblo where we started to head back to the house. As we passed the plaza we noticed there were foosball tables set up and a couple of guys were setting up more stuff for some kind of big event. There was some good music, too. So we took advantage of the situation and played a few games of foosball. I'm sure you're not wondering this, but I'll say it anyway, I still play awesome, ha ha. It was all super fun, and I loved doing it mostly because kids here don't often have dads who do fun things like this with them. After that, we went to the house and finally met the dad, who loves us just because his kids do. He's a great guy though, and wanted us to play "Need for Speed" (a video game) with him, but of course we didn't. Then we had to leave because we had a lunch appointment.

So Sunday was really good, and we had an asistence of about 57, which is really great for this branch! We're doing lots of menos activo (less active) work too, which I think the branch really loves us for doing. The branch itself is doing great, though, they're doing more inactive work than we are!! They're working like missionaries!! They're all super excited and working hard, I love it! It's probably one of the best ward/branches ever, leadership-wise.

Our last inactive visit was pretty funny. Saturday evening we passed by an inactive lady's house and her nonmember husband. She told us about her life's problems, which are MANY, and basically her kids were taken away because she's mentally unstable (which is true). She then told us that she wants to go to church, but can't because she got "thrown out last time" by a very mean man. Anyway, it was really funny because later when we showed them our personal family photos, she looked at the photo of my family and pointed to Dad and said, "He's the one that threw me out!!!" Ha ha, Dad, and you have never even been in Argentina. I tried explaining that the man is actually my Dad, but she kept insisting that he was the one that threw her out of the church!

Stella and Rodrigo, my investigators from my last area, kept their promise and they did get baptised as planned!!!! (They are the mother and son in the picture from April 12's email with the pink walls.) Although I called the elders in Las Delicias today, and they told me that Stella and Rodrigo didn't get confirmed today, so the ball was dropped somewhere. Anyway, they got baptised and I'm sure they'll get confirmed this coming Sunday. So I am very happy!

So last Tuesday at the capacitacion, I got my mail. I got dad's letter, and also a letter from Nana and Papa for my birthday, and also a New Year's/ Valentine's card from the ward!!! Please tell everyone thanks cause it was all great!!

I'm out of time, so to answer your question, yes we have a lady that washes our clothes, she washes and IRONS and does an awesome job.

Today we spent all day cleaning, yes ALL DAY, but now the pench is beautiful like the Las Delicias pench.

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!!!

Love,
Eric
_____________________________________________

Getting started in Ramallo

Eric with Elder Page and President and Hermana Villalba

The trainers (kneeling) with the new elders standing behind them

Hey family!! It's great to write again. I'm glad to hear that although Grandma still has some way to go, that both she and Grandpa are doing much better.

Elder Page and I are doing great out here, too! I'll tell you a little about the area. Our area is called Ramallo, and it's in the zone San Nicolas. It's not as far away as I heard it was, because in a car, it is really only about 20 minutes away from the little city San Nicolas. Although in a bus, it takes over an hour, because it kind of does a zig zag pattern, and of course buses are our only transportation besides walking.

Our area consists of two parts: Ramallo Pueblo and Ramallo Villa. We live in Ramallo Villa. To get to Ramallo Pueblo, we take another bus which takes about 30 minutes to get there. Ramallo Pueblo is a very beautiful area and it's also very peaceful and a safe area. They say it's touristy because it's so pretty, but we haven't seen much of that. It's fairly small, but big enough not to make me go crazy. (In small areas, missionaries have to keep tracting the same streets and houses over and over again.) We have a good neighborhood and it's overall just a good place. We've got some pretty rich homes, it seems this area has more middle class and upper class than the average.

The branch here is pretty good. From what the members say, we have an average assistance (attendance) of about 30, although this last week we had 38 although like 8 were from the stake because it was ward conference. So it's small but powerful!

I'll tell you about the pench. When we got here, we walked into what looked like a pench that had several bombs go off inside, and then was just abandoned for over 100 years. Yes, it was the dirtiest pench I've ever seen in my whole life! Smelly and with cobwebs everywhere and just dirty and stuff all over. We already cleaned the pench pretty good and plan on cleaning it more today. Anyway, you'd think if the pench was so dirty, that it was maybe because the previous missionaries were working so hard. But no, this was a dying area, with ZERO investigators! The last senior comp here was on his last transfers before going home and I guess just got trunky and stopped working. The area book was also the worst I've ever seen, no map, no entries, etc.

So we decided to just hit it hard, going out and talking with everyone with NO GUIDE WHATSOEVER. Well, it worked out good because it seems all the members at some point or other saw us in the street and it got them excited, because they thought this area was going to be closed. (If an area does not have much progress, the mission president will close that area and no longer assign missionaries there.) So they were happy to see elders here, out and working. We've had members pass by our pench nightly giving us cakes and stuff, which shows the members here are super good and strong, and want to help. One member brought her brother who had never been to our church before, and I think he liked it. So the branch is doing really good, and we're excited to be working here! We have also had lunches (provided by members) almost EVERY DAY! So that's cool!!

Elder Page is great and loves working and learning. He's a great guy, and did rodeo back home, roping. He reminds me of myself when I started, struggling with the language, the change of life in a strange country, etc. but he's adapting great.

Tomorrow I have to go to another one of those all day capacitaciones (leadership training meetings) but I just learned about it today (with NO HEADS UP) from an email the mission sent me, and we already had some things planned with some investigators. To make the problem worse, we don't have a working phone so I don't know how we'll be able to tell them, and we don't know their phone numbers yet. We didn't get their numbers because we don't have a phone. (The phone stays with the area, and the previous missionaries probably lost or broke the phone.) But it really is a good area, and we'll have lots of success here.

I am sending you pictures of me picking up my hijo at the mission home. It was pretty much the same as last time, the same basic procedure. By the way, tell Aunt Lisa thanks, because I got to pick up my mail then and so I got her card. It was a really nice card, so please let her know I got it.

We met a really great guy who is here visiting his friend for a while, and he is interested in the church and says he wants to attend and be baptised. (His friend is a member.) He actually lives in Rosario, so he will probably have to finish his lessons and get baptised in Rosario.

Well, I better get off now, but I love you all very much!

Love,
Eric

Eric with Elder Page, ready to go to their new area and get to work

______________________________________________

My birthday was great!

Eric with Sonilda, the landlady who does so much for them

P-Day fun with one of the districts

Eric's birthday celebration with the Sanchez family. They made him dinner and a cake. There is a birthday candle on the orange tray.

The Sanchez family

With a family in Las Delicias, Rosario

Eric wrote about this picture: "Stella and Rodrigo, they are getting baptised on April 23"

Hey everyone!!! I hope everyone's doing great!! First, thanks so much for the birthday package, cards and letters!! I love them so much!! I've already enjoyed all the candy, and am still enjoying the other stuff. And thank you to Grandma and Grandpa, Nana and Papa, Aunt Lisa, and Holly and Scott for the birthday money!! I haven't decided what I want to use it for yet. Thank you so much!!

I really enjoyed that xylo thing, it really is genius! (a frisbee-type toy) So today we were playing with it, and having lots of fun with it. We were throwing it around the church in San Martin because it's got lots of space, and we were getting some good throws. So good that it actually went up on the roof! So now I'm going to climb the 30 foot high chain link fence to get it!!

I also enjoyed everything I got, of course, and so did Sonilda. Ha ha, Sonilda seems to be freaked out by American stuff. I handed Sonilda the Elf card you guys sent me, which is awesome by the way, and Sonilda opened it up and in fear threw the card when it started talking!! It was pretty funny, because she's never seen something like that before. She thought the purpose of the card was to scare people, and well, it worked for her. She also told us she slipped on one of my bouncy balls while cleaning and almost died, which is funny because every day it seems she tells us of some "near death" experience that happened while cleaning.

I plan on gifting the bouncy balls to the family Sanchez, which is the family that we enjoyed my birthday with, and is the family in the photos I sent you. They're 6 in that family, and they're awesome. (one of the kids is not in the pictures.) I absolutely love that family and they really love us. For my birthday dinner, they made spaghetti, as in they made the noodles themselves from flour, and did everything from scratch!!! It was super good and we really enjoyed it. After that we talked a while and then we played that cat and mouse game you sent me which was a huge hit! I love playing games with Argentines because the simplest things just amaze them. They're super cool and it was fun being with them. They also made a nice cake, which got burnt on the bottom, but we enjoyed it just same. Their names are: (youngest to oldest) Lucia, Alma, Agustina, Alejandra, then the parents Alejandro and we just call the mom Hermana, and I can't remember her name. Alma and Agustina are baptized, and we are working with the parents to help them live the commandments better so they can be baptised someday.

The family really likes us alot, and this last time that we went over, LOL the youngest daughter started calling me daddy! Well, that just goes to show that I am getting old! I truly can't believe how time has flied! (I guess he has been speaking mostly Spanish for so long that he has forgotten how to conjugate the verb fly!) I can't believe I'm 21 now and I also can't believe that Maya's 7 months. I've been telling everyone in this country that I have a niece that's two months old, but now I realize she is 7 months, ha ha!

So today we'll be passing by to say goodbye to the familia Sanchez, because both Elder Towner and I are leaving!! I'm going to be training again, this time my child's from Utah, woohoo! So naturally, I'm not zone leader anymore, which is sad because I had some good new ideas for that, but I've been called to be a trainer, so I'm really excited for that. Elder Towner is not going to be a zone leader anymore either, he's just going to be a normal companion.

I'm going to Ramallo in San Nicolas, where I'll be whitewashing the area with my new hijo. I'm super excited and expect great things. That area has been absolutely DEAD for the longest time, so I plan on changing that!!

I've been writing and sending pictures from the church, but the hermano who works here has to go and he's closing the office, so I'll try to finish writing from some other ciber. Love you, bye.

***Second email, later in the day. In the meantime, I emailed him not to climb the fence to retrieve the toy. (Of course by the time he read my message, he had already done it.)

I'm back to finish the letter. Alright, so yes, in case you're wondering, I climbed up the perilously made chain link fence and found the xylo on the middle of a chapa roof. (corrugated metal) Upon testing the chapa, I realized it had no support and would cave in, so I then had to find some branches and fish it out while balancing on the bricks that go around it, but I got it!! Ha ha, right after that, I threw it and it went on top of the AC section which is only like 10 feet high, so we got that easy. It just flies so high and good, but it's hard to control.

Anyway, we played some soccer and then some Uno. It was super good. I'm going to miss all of this a lot, because I'm going out to another 2-man pench, but it's in a tiny pueblito and we are two hours away from any other missionaries! So, it's going to be crazy! But it'll be good. Tomorrow I go to the mission home where I'll give birth to my new son. (mission slang for picking up his new greenie.) I'm really going to miss this area, Sonilda, the pench, the members, the investigators, and the city of Rosario, but I'm going where I need to go.

I don't know if I told you yet, but we have two sure baptisms for the 23rd here. It's Stella and Rodrigo, the mom and son that went to conference with us, and the next week after that, her daughters will be baptised also. We passed by last night to say good-bye and they were very upset that we were leaving, but promised us that no matter what they're going to be baptised on the 23rd, so that's good at least. We've been teaching Rodrigo a little guitar and he's getting pretty good. I'm going to miss that, but that's the mission. And I'm going to miss all the American fast food I can get here.

I'm also going to miss all the crazy and cool things I have seen here in this area. The people all try and decorate their cars to look cool and "fast and furious." For example, it's common to see cars that have stickers of air vents in the hood, or stickers of a racing gas hole, and they ALL take out their mufflers so the car engine sounds low, and they all put the racing gauges inside their cars, although they're not hooked up so they don't measure anything. I think every bullet bike I've seen here is fake, but anyway, yesterday I saw a ghetto car, all decorated, and it had blinds all inside it. It was pretty cool because the people here don't even use blinds for their homes, but this car had them.

Another crazy thing I saw here is a marijuana plant the size of a small apple tree!! It's absolutely huge. I had no idea they could become that big. I'll try and take a picture of it. It's sad that many of the people here smoke marijuana daily, and no one cares so they just do it openly. It's just one of the many things we have to help people with here.

Well, there is so much and so many people that I have loved here, but I will look forward to going to the new area and working hard and preaching the gospel to the people there!

Anyway, I must go, I love you all very much and will inform you about the new area next time!!

Love,
Eric
_____________________________________________

Conference was great!

Eric in Rosario, March 1

Hey family, how is everyone!!! We're running late today so I don't have much time to write, but I'll try to update you.

First I want to send my love to Grandma and Grandpa! I hope they're feeling a lot better now, it's too bad they are going through such hard stuff both at the same time. I will pray that they got all the cancer out and that Grandma recovers fast, and that Grandpa's heart will be okay. They are both in my prayers.

I hope you all really liked conference this year, because it really was special. I loved all the sessions, although the priesthood session for me stood out by far as the best. As missionaries, we can't watch the Saturday sessions, however Elder Towner and I stayed to watch the Saturday evening session because we brought 3 new investigators to it! (The missionaries can watch the Saturday sessions if they have investigators with them) It was their first time in a Mormon church! It's the family that we're teaching in the Barrio Las Flores, and they're doing great. I think they loved the conference, and are really liking the church. Then on Sunday Diego, the guy I had told you about that was in prison before, came with a member to see the afternoon session on Sunday. He also really liked it, even though we missed about a quarter of it. The reason we all missed a quarter of the session was because a big rain storm came in which blocked out the satellite, so it was cut out for a bit, but luckily it came back before the end. We watched it in English with all the other American missionaries, and a few Argentines who know some English (except for the Saturday session when we were with the family) . It was really good and we all loved it, and it was great to get together as a zone since we don't get to do that anymore.

Today for Pday we hung out with the district of Elder Chapman, which was really fun. We played soccer, card games, ninja and ate hamburgers that we cooked. Also, they have computers there so we tried to send off the billions of dats that we have to send in the first Pday of every month. After that we had to go by the mission home (long story and I have no time) and while there I picked up my birthday package!! Thanks so much, I'll open the package itself tonight, and the presents on my birthday.

Thanks for the advice Mom, it's obvious you've seen the church from both points of view being a convert. I'll also try to add in some more little fun stuff for the kids, games or magic tricks, etc. Unfortunately, I've forgotten EVERY SINGLE card trick I knew before the mission, but it's okay, you sent me those tricks last year I can use.

I just watched the Maya laughing video clip, it's awesome!!! She looks like a great baby.

Anyway, I'm glad that everybody's doing better now health-wise and hope it stays that way!!! I love you all so much!!! Thanks for everything you do!!

Love,
Eric
_____________________________________________