Week 13: ¡Feliz Navidad!

¡¡Hola a todos!!

This week was incredibly awesome, and different, and about everything that you could imagine! It's incredible! Argentina is the best!! We started out on Tuesday, we had a kind of big Christmas activity, our president came and stopped by our zone and gave all of us some alfajores and some American candy, it was delicious, and then we kind of chilled for a few hours, played some ping pong, cooked a full (a ton) of rice, made some of it into fried rice, and then we ate a ton, and it was great. I heard that the last years Christmas activity was a lot bigger and better, but it was good. I was happy eating a ton of fried rice.

As well we had a service activity the next day, we helped a member in our ward, to paint her door, and also to cut back some bushes and stuff that were attacking her car as she drove by. So we fought back the bushes and disentangled some of them from her fence, painted her door, got sun burned, saved the day and the princess. No big deal. It was fun, and she gave us almuerzo (Lunch) afterwards. 

The biggest part of the week, was Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! To all of you! It was probably one of the most different Christmas's that I'll ever have. The best part, I got to skype my family!!! Yah! They are all so awesome! If you haven't talked with them in a while, well they're all changing. It was slightly awkward as well though, because I was trying to talk English again. I can talk like one sentence at a time right now, and I can think and write just fine in English, but when I try and talk, I'm so used to talking to everyone in Español that it was a bit weird. And I tried to explain a few of the things that are going on here, it's kind of crazy. I can write this letter every week, as well I write to them separately. But they can't really understand what I'm feeling and all the things that I'm seeing. I just want to bring all of them here to see it all with me!

Other than that it was awesome to see my family. Here the Christmas traditions are a little bit different. The majority of the Christmas celebration is done at midnight. Everyone stays up until 12 the 24th and eat a ton of food and open all their presents at 12 and also they launch off a ton of fireworks. It's like world war III, it's pretty crazy. We went out up on the micro deck thing that these other elders have attached to their pension and we could see and here just fireworks everywhere. And they have massive firecrackers as well that just explode and are gigantic like bombs it's pretty crazy. All of the mission had permission to be out of the pension until 6 and then we had permission to be in the house of a member if they had a car to bring us home until 10:30, then we had to return to our or another elders in our districts pension. Where we could stay up, because it's Christmas and we don't work on the 24th or 25th. So we ate dinner with a family in our ward, all of the 6 elders in our district, together. And they fed us a ton. We ate asado, which is barbeque here but 10000 times better. And we were stuffed full. Literally, and they fed us some of the best ice cream that I have eaten here and all of the food was just amazing! 

The actual Christmas day was way different, I woke up and no one else was awake, so I studied in preach my gospel for 3ish hours, then everyone else was awake, and then Elder Tolentino and I went and visited some of the families in our ward and then skyped. Then we played some Magic ( Yes, Ethan, the card game) with our ward mission leader, in which I died a miserable death and lost -52 to 11. Then we went to the church where we played some fútbol (soccer) at which I am no where near as good as any of the young men who came to play with us.

But the week was great, we've got a great progressing investigator right now. Her name is Camila and we're teaching her and she is really interested, but now she just needs to have the faith to come to church with us, and she can receive so many blessings if she does! It's all good. I hope your New years goes well. As well I've learned a little bit of Guaraní here. It's the language of paraguay, and spanish, but.

Avani pa pejasafa año peajú? Which means with who are you going to pass your new years? (spelling is probably wrong, that's the Spanish sounding out though)

Tengan una buena semana!

Chau!

Week 12: Christmas is coming, and it's not snowing.

WOW!

It's Christmas already?? What is this? There is nothing like snow here. I'm slightly sad that we will not have snow for Christmas, but it's alright.

It keeps getting hotter and hotter here in Argentina, we've been working a ton this last week. Elder Tolentino and I are trying to improve a lot of things in the way we work, there is so much that I want to improve on. But in the heat, it gets really hard the days that we have appointments that fall through, I've been bringing 2 water bottles with me throughout the day to keep from getting dehydrated. It's really really nice now in our pension that we have air conditioning, makes it so nice when we go to bed not to be covered in sweat. 

This last week has been really great. It started out the first day in our new pension, we wake up in the morning to no electricity or water. That's alright, we were able to talk to the renter and we could bathe in another empty apartment. We got power back that night, but we haven't been able to cook very much all week until literally last night/this morning, I was able to continue to make a smoothie some of the days though, so that was really nice. 

We had another Capilla Abierta the other day, it went smoothly, it was for another area in our zone, so we went in the morning to help out to invite a lot of the old investigators or less active members, as well as anyone we could talk to in the street. It was really good, and then that night we had the ward Christmas party. It was really different than what I was used to, but it was good. The food they had a was a little under planned, so not everyone ate as much as they wanted, but the food that they had was amazingly delicious. As well, the missionaries of our ward along with the young men and young women. We sang in front of everyone, in case you didn't know, latins... can't really sing. They are pretty much tone deaf. Haha! But it was great, all of us tried to sing, and we just sung it out loud and it went well(ish). 

As well Elder Tolentino and I, we did a Family Home Evening in the church this last week. It was really good. We talked about Christmas time and all the traditions that we have as families and as friends, and also some people talked about how they don't like Christmas because we are expected to be with our families, but hey that's alright, they can have their opinions as well. But we talked about how it is really important, that not only that we not only remember the Christmas season, but that we also remember that Christ was born. That he came to this earth, lived, died, and was resurrected for us. And if we can just remember Him everyday, at least for a minute, we will have more joy in our lives. It's great that we remember Him now during this time of the year, but also we should be thinking about Him for the rest of the year as well. 

They've got a few different traditions here in Argentina, on the night of the 24th, everyone stays up until midnight, then they open presents and eat a huge dinner, then they sleep until around 3 in the afternoon. Also, they always eat asado!!! The meat here is the best thing ever. We eat a lot of chicken too, but if someone makes us asado for lunch, it is the best!

But anyways, I hope all of you have a great holiday! Christmas and New years! All is well, all is happy! We've been sharing this message with everyone as well. To help us remember why we celebrate Christmas, and why we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, if you go to www.christmas.mormon.org you can find a video that explains it all. And you should all do it right now! Because you are on your computer! It's only 2 minutes! Do it!

Chau!

Elder Slack

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Merry Christmas!

Suspenders!

Here we are singing!