Argentina Week 2

Elder Hamilton and Elder Petersen at the MTC.

Elder Vance, Elder Jarvis,  Elder Petersen and his companion Elder Nunez.

AT the Cyber Cafe.......

Hello family and friends! I am sorry for my short email last week and hope to make up for it this week! To start off I want to talk about Argentina for  a little bit! I absolutely love it here!! It isn´t necesarilly the prettiest place and it doesn´t smell very good either but it´s perfect to me! It smells bad for lots of reasons. 1. Everyone smokes here! 2. Everyone puts their trash wherever they want to. 3. There is dog poop all over the place! Yes, there are stray dogs and just random dogs everyehere we go! They often run in little packs trying to find food or just lay down in the shade, but they usually leave us alone and we have no problems with them. I love the food here! We have milanesa a lot which is like chicken parmesean kind of but it is super good! I heard you get sick of it with how much we eat it here but we will see! They eat a ton of meat and bread here! I am going to get fat... Good thing we get to work out every morning or it would not be good! The members here are so generous and we always have meals! We have lunch here because that is their big meal here and sometimes we have dinners. Everyone after lunch takes their siestas so it is really hard to work from about 2-5 because everyone is asleep and no one is in the streets, it´s weird! Milk here is in bags which is a little weird to get used to but I still love it! How can you not love milk?! They also drink a lot of soda here! We always have soda or juice because we can´t really drink the water. It is kinda hard to get used to because I rarely had soda back home. My area is pretty far away from our apartment so we have to take a colectivo (bus) everyday to get to our area. The roads here are CRAZY! Motorcycles just weave inbetween traffic and everyone drives super fast until they have to slam on their brakes. I have already gotten used to it and am pretty comfortable walking on the bus while we are moving without holding on to anything! Which is a pretty big feat because the first few times I almost fell over! Although it is a lot different than the States and has been a little difficult to get used to, I love it here and there is no other place I would rather be!

  Now a little about my companion, Elder Núñez. He is from Peru and is 26 years old. He really is an amazing missionary and I am very lucky to have him as my first companion! He is a great example to me of charity, leadership, among many others! I hope to one day be as good of a misisonary as he is now! He also is a very good cook and has made lots of good meals and has taught me a little bit too. He is super funny and we are always laughing! It has been super good for my spanish to have him as my first companion!

  There are also two other Elders in our apartment with us, Elders Vance and Jarvis. Elder Jarvis is from Nampa so it has been super fun to talk about Idaho a little bit! Especially for him because this is his last transfer and he leaves in like four weeks! They are both super cool and I am so glad we share an apartment with them because it is nice to be able to talk in a little bit of english throughout the day!

  In just two weeks here Elder Núñez and I have three baptismal dates!! Yesica, Camila, and Selina. Yesica is amazing and understands so much already but she needed to get married before she could get baptized. Her boyfriend, Eduardo, is the son of a member in our ward but he is a less active. Because of Yesica´s interest in the church he also has started coming back to church and it is awesome! A miracle happened with them and getting married this week! We went with Yesica to the place to get the papers to be able to get married and they told here the only months they do that is in January or February. We were disappointed but waiting would be fine. She called Eduardo and decided to go back in. She came back out about ten minutes later and said that they could get married the first week of November!! We went back with her this morning to finalize and the date has been set for November 4th!!! This was so amazing! When we have faith in the Lord and sallign our will with His, He will provide for us! She is going to be baptized on the 7th of November and I couldn´t be more excited! We also have another baptism that day with Camila. Cami is 9 years old and is in a less active family. They all came to church yesterday for the first time in a long time and it was awesome! I sat with their family in church because Luisanna (Lu) who is 4 loves me! She doesn´t ever leave me alone and it is really hard to focus during lessons but we have a lot of fun! Hopefully Cami will be my first baptism because we are pretty close. Last lesson she gave me a little flower, it was super cute! As you can see I still love kids just as much as ever and love talking with the children here and getting to know them even though they laugh at my spanish haha! Our last is Selina. She is 15 and is the neice of an active member of our ward. He has a daughter who is the same age as Selina and they go to seminary together which is great! She has wanted to be baptized for a while now but her dad would not let her. He still has not for sure said yes but I think his heart is softening! I have seen so many miracles already and am so grateful for this time I have to be a representative of Jesus Christ! I hope you are all doing great! I love and miss you all! Until next week!

Love,

Elder Petersen