Hello again from Argentina on my first real Pday!
Life is pretty okay here. People are nice and really respectful. We try to say at least hello to everyone. We are meeting the members and we are trying to find new investigators to teach. We’ve got a few. We stop on the street near anyone who is sitting down or not walking that quickly. The Argentines have the goofiest schedule that I’ve ever seen. We don’t get out of the house until nine because of study in the morning and other things we have to do. Then we have about three hours of proselyting until noon when everything closes and everyone goes home and doesn’t want to talk to anyone. They call this four hour period the Siesta. So we go home too and do some more studying. At four thirty we go back out to proselyte until nine. So we have about eight real hours of proselyting time.
Apparently nobody in the whole of South America drinks root beer. I tried to explain to my Peruvian companion what it was and how to make it but he didn’t understand. The fact that my companion and I are the only missionaries in the city of Pirane and that he doesn’t and none of the other people speak English means that I don’t get to speak my Native Language anymore. Except in my journal.
The area here is pretty nice. The roads are mostly dirt in the Pueblos, and when it rains they get muddy. There were some rain boots that got left in the Pension (that is what we call the apartments here) so I wasn’t left completely helpless. It rained the first day we got there. Then it rained again. The air has been pretty cold hrere the last week. Nothing like the air in Utah or Mexico even. Everyone here rides a motorcycle or moped here. They are all called motos in Castellano though. And everyone that drives one is a bit crazy. They put three to four people on these motos and a lot of times they put their little kids on them too! I’m talking crazy little kids, smaller than Cannon! Like little kids like three or four years old! Then when it gets muddy when it rains they are swerving around puddles and huge patches of nasty mud. They drive on the wrong side of the road to do it. People ride side by side on their motos and they talk to each other. Since nobody wheres a helmet they pull up next to each other and start having a conversation. And since there are very few sidewalks Elder Mercado and I are walking in the middle of it all. There are horses everywhere. Some of the people have horse drawn carriages that they drive instead of a motorcycle. That was pretty funny to me. The carriages have like four wheeling tires so they can drive through the ruts. There are so many of them. Not as much as the dogs though. There are stray dogs everywhere. And pet dogs too. Everywhere I’ve been except one restaurant has at least two dogs. Some have five or six. They are everywhere. They are mostly pretty calm in Pirane. I haven’t been chased or anything yet. It is wet enough here that fungus or grass or something grows on the power lines. All the way across. There is lot’s of farmland around but it’s pretty far. I saw on like my third day though a big orange tractor. I wish I could have taken a picture of it. The thing had wheels that were taller than me or Hunter! And it was driving right down the middle of the road. You see lot’s of green and brown here and that is about it. And a few birds, that are also brown. Those are the only colors that I have seen until you come upon a painted house, which are not as often as they are in Mexico.
I’ve eaten some weird stuff here. The first night, we bought a pizza. The only thing that was on this Pizza was sauce, cheese and a big green olive every slice. the cheese wasn’t even normal cheese. It was strange. The pizza was tiny. It didn’t taste awful and I was hungry. The next day we jumped on a transpueblo Collectivo (they are double decker buses that take you city to city) and we went to Pirane because we stayed the night in Formosa. That was Tuesday and Wednesday. That day because we got there in the middle of the Siesta we couldn’t buy anything and we had to clean the pension. When it was time for dinner, there is a place called a resto bar here a nice one too that is very close to our pension. Literally it is right next door. We stopped and got a Lomito there. We had chicken Milanesas for lunch, and then we had two lunches that members prepared for us. They call it Giso. It’s like the soupish version of a Utahn casserole. And usually they have some kind of meat. The first one we had was a mystery meat. Kind of like beef but not beef. It didn’t taste bad. The other was beef I think. Then one of the members made us Arroz con leche while we were talking to here. It is a dessert. It was weird but didn’t taste too bad. One of our investigators made a dessert called torta frita. Or fried tortilla. She took tortilla dough and plopped it in hot oil. It was basically a really flat scone. It tasted really good. Yesterday we had a member help us make and eat empanadas. They were very good. They had beef and Eggs in them. The big meal around here is lunch I think. We usually eat a large lunch. For dinner one night we had rolls with jam spread on them. My companion doesn’t seem to need to eat. When I get home the first meal for dinner that I want is hamburgers preferably home grilled, french fries, gold fish, granola bars, corn, and a chocolate cake with lot’s of fondant. That day will come sooner than anyone thinks. Especially since the days blend together so much here.
My pension is small but it is big enough for Elder Mercado and I. The bathroom is a little different. Especially since you wash your behind every time you go to the bathroom. The shower head has wires connecting it to the wall so that you can have hot water. The water heats up as it falls on your head. And it just falls. All of the water here is powered solely by gravity. It makes it very difficult to shower because there is no spread. Those wires I told you about, they have a pretty good electric current running through them. I got shocked pretty good when I touched the shower head. And every time I turn of the shower to since the spiny thing is metal too. Our toilet is one of the old fashioned pull this chord to flush toilets. That took me a minute to find. The sink in the kitchen leaked and sprayed when you turned it on, so we had a plumber come and fix it. One day a traco or something drove by the house and the entire pension shook. We were having like a little earthquake. Our pension is above an old bar, and in the stairways, there is a low door frame. I have to remember that I am taller than just about everyone else here. Until you run into other missionaries and the occasional tall Argentine. In the doorway, which is made out of concrete and tile, I hit my head when I don’t duck and it hurts. In the collectivo too. We always sit on the top and I have to hunch over so that I don’t smash my head against the ceiling.
We got something like eight new investigators last week. All of them were nice people and they seemed interested in a message that would help the world be a better place it seems. We went to an old investigator that Elder Mercado taught the last time he was in the mission, and we managed to get her to commit to baptism. We’ll see if it actually happens. Hopefully. I pray every night for that. Hopefully we can get the other investigators we have to do the same.
Apparently pointing is offensive here, or it just offends my companion. It makes it really difficult to ask questions. I was asking which resto bar was better. This one or that one and I couldn’t point. Mercado had no idea which ones I was talking about. The cities are set up in the smartest way possible. Every road, including the dirt ones, are set up on a grid. And I mean a better grid than they have in Utah. All of the roads are basically perfectly straight and the houses are set up in cuadras, or squares. The only problem is more than like ninety percent of the houses don’t have addresses. And most of the streets are not marked at all, unless you are looking at a map. We ask for peoples addresses so that we can come back and they say “I don’t know.” And you ask what street this is and they say, “I think it’s blank, but I don’t know.” And you ask someone else and they say, “I think it’s different blank.” It is really ridiculous at how hard it is to get some of this stuff out of people.
On Pday after Pday ends, we have a district meeting. So we leave on Sunday night to go two hours North to a pueblo called Ibarreta. And we do Pday there with the other missionaries in our district. It is a little weird but a welcome change to out daily routine. So I’m emailing from Ibarreta right now. I’ll try and do it later next time so that we can talk back and forth. Just know that later here will still mean early back home.
I love you guys and miss you. Say hello to everyone for me. Think of me in Argentina and know that I am praying for you guys.
With love from your missionary friend,
