The work continues

Eric sent us this picture last week, showing Maya before her baptism, with her brother in the church

Hey family, how is everyone!!!

Today for Pday we were going to go fishing with the Rios dad, but it turns out that as of recently, the rule is we can no longer go fishing. Well, that's mission life. It is pretty cold and rainy today, so it probably wouldn't have been too fun, anyway.

So today we just went to San Nicolas to get our letters for the month, (I think the zone leaders are in San Nicolas and they had picked up their mail from the mission home) and the few pedidos that made it to us, and I was happy to get a few dearelders. I got a dearelder from Aunt Lisa, Nana and Papa, and some from you which include some of Jared's letters. I've wanted to send you a postcard for some time now, but it seems Ramallo just doesn't have any. There were lots in Rosario, but out here it seems like they don't even exist. I'll keep checking and see if I can get off a hand written letter, too. By the way, you asked if I needed another camera card, and I do now that I have them all full.

Well for this week, nothing too exciting happened. We found some really cool people that wanted to be baptised (they've listened to missionaries before in other cities) but now they can't because of husband problems, but whatever, we'll help them anyway, and other people too.

On Sunday, the whole Rios family went to church, even the dad which is pretty cool. The dad told us he'd go if he had clothes to go in, because he doesn't want to go in his awful work clothes, so I lent him 600 pesos from my personal money, and he went out and bought himself 500 peso tennis shoes, which funny enough, are the exact same type and style of shoes that he's bought for the last 10 years. (His old ones were pretty gross, though.) Then he bought a jacket to wear. So after he bought those things, he was ready to go, and on Saturday when he got paid, he paid me back in American dollars!! So the American paid him in pesos, and the Argentine paid the American in dollars, so go figure. Either way, it all works out equally so it doesn't matter, but I thought it was funny.

He enjoyed church a lot on Sunday, which was testimony meeting, and we expect to see him again. He also wants to have his baby blessed, so we'll see if we can work that out maybe even for this coming month.

After church, we celebrated the birthday of Juan's sister, Angelica, who is living with them right now, and to celebrate it we ate pig, asado style (cooked on an open barbecue), which was extremely good. It was a pretty fatty pig, which is good because Argentines love fat. I enjoyed it a lot, though, and I also ate some of the brain, tongue and other random parts, because they eat EVERYTHING here.

I've been sick pretty much this whole week, and every time I start to get better, we have to run 10 blocks to make the colectivo (bus), or I have to tear up somebody's yard with a pickaxe to level it for several hours. We do service stuff like that sometimes, and I can't deny helping someone, I like it too much. But I think today I'm doing much better, although my throat still hurts, and I'm pretty sore, but I think the flu or whatever is going. I may go to a doctor this week concerning my ears, but other than that I'm doing fine.

You asked about jobs around here, and like most places in the mission, the majority are blue collar jobs. Construction, what Juan does, is a huge industry, just because it's something that everybody knows how to do, and it pays decent, and because people are always adding on to or changing their tiny house, and sometimes they have to call specialists to do certain things.

I'm glad to hear you went to Elder Petersen's homecoming and met his family, I enjoyed seeing the photos.

This past week, three X-sister missionaries (he means former sister missionaries) passed through here, visiting after their missions which was pretty cool to see. We ran into one couple, the X-sister missionary with her husband now, which really stood out, because her husband was at least 6'6".

Regarding my shoes, they are kind of hard to wear right now because they rub my heels raw and put holes in my socks because the back just has jagged plastic sticking out, but I'll see if I can put some fabric there for protection so that I can keep wearing them.

I forgot my camera this week, but next week I will send you pictures. I am going to get off now because I am going to write to Marisa and Holly.

Love you both,
Eric


The email to Marisa and David:

Hey, I just decided to write you a quick email to say hi. I expect you guys already know this from reading the blog, but 8 days ago, there was a ward baptism for a girl named Maya!!! She's the niece of David, who was baptized about a month ago. She's a really cute little girl, and just makes me think of your Maya, mostly because apart from her name, she kind of acts like Marisa does, or like I'd imagine Marisa to act if she was a little 8 year old girl. Well, your Maya will grow up considerably different than this Maya. This Maya enjoys luxuries like her outside toilet, and her outside "shower", which is known to us, or any American, as the garden hose. I can't wait to see little Maya when I get home!! Well, have a great day, and enjoy the new car!! I really like Nissan x-terra's, so good choice on that!

Anyway, love you both, Eric


The email to Holly and Scott:

Hey Holly, how are you!! I just decided to say hi, since I have a couple of minutes!! I'm only sending this email to you, because it turns out I don't have Scott's email, so send me his email or tell him to mail me so I can have it and write you both. Or just share this with him. Sounds like you guys are having (or had) a long winter. We're kind of having the same thing down here. From what the weather forecast says though, that's about to change this week, but we'll see. I liked seeing that new car that you guys bought, how much was it, and second, have you guys found a place to live? I think that's really cool that you're both going back to college together, although it's too bad you can't go somewhere closer!! Of course St George really isn't that far, and it'll be cool to visit you guys down there sometimes because St. George is really nice. In Argentina, it is common to have your whole family live on the same street their whole life, and sometimes even in the same house!!! So 4 hours away would be hard for any Argentine, but I'll be able to manage it. Well, I'm doing good here, enjoying the peaceful life of this quiet city.

Love you both, Eric

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