HOOOOOOLLLLLLAAAAAA

Hello hello!

Wow, it has been a great week, and I have a ton to write about. But first off, Happy Thanksgiving to everybody :). Unfortunately, they dont celebrate this holiday here in Argentina. Oh well. You guys better eat a bunch of banana cream pie for me. haha Anyways, here we go!

1) Bread Salesman. A bunch of people sell stuff on the sides of the roads or from motorcycles here in Argentina. Most of them are pretty cool, and we buy food from them every once in a while to take a break from the exhaustive work. Most of them are just typical people, but we have this special guy who sells bread. He is this old man with a HUGE mustache. He rides by our apartment (we still haven´t moved by the way....) almost every morning on his wobbly bike with two huge baskets of bread. He makes like every kind and flavor possible. Anyways, the actual sales are pretty normal; it´s his chants that make him famous in my book. He reminds me of those beer or cotton candy salesman at Minute Maid Park baseball games. He has a gut and comes cruising by our house shouting, "Yo tengo pan para comer!!!" which basically means "I have bread for the eating." His voice is deep and bellowy. Basically, he is just really funny, and I think that is what helps him be so successful :).

2) Heat. Houston, we have a problem. We have set a new temperature record inside Rory´s apartment: 89 degrees F! Yeah, this only happened one day, but I just about died. At least we have our huge commercial fans to help us cope with the massive heat wave. :)

3) Pants Rip. Dont worry, it wasn´t my pants, but it´s still a story worth telling though! Alright, so I am still living with Elder Artunduaga, a great missionary from Uruguay. Just to brief you with some details, he has gained 30 kilos on his mission, which is about 65 lbs, más or menos. So, as you might have guessed, his pants are a little tight around just about everything haha. So here is the story. He was doing service with a family in his neighborhood with a few other missionaries. They had to move a fridge and a handful of boxes and tables to another room. Moving fast--probably a little too fast--Elder Artunduaga bent down and heaved to lift up his side of the fridge. A huge ripping sound shot through the air and his facial expression changed almost instantly. His pants had ripped straight down his seam. It was really funny. He sewed them up that night, but then they ripped the next day! haha. So...he sewed them again the day after. He is wearing them today. We´ll have to see if they last. If not, he is just going to buy some new ones, some nice hefty ones haha.

4) Language. Todavía, no voy a mentir, estoy luchando un poco con el idioma, pero me encanta el castillano. Las personas hablan rápido y yo hablo más despacio, pero podemos comunicarnos! Cada semana aprendo un poco más del idioma, y las personas me ayudan un monton! The language is coming, and it´s coming fast. I´m still definitely not considered fluent yet, but I can carry a conversation without elder birky now. Sometimes it is still pretty rough, and it depends on the vocab. It truly is amazing how much you learn here. I really enjoy talking to the people. Learning a new language has really changed my perspective of communication, and I have actually learned a lot about English just by studying spanish. I´ll dedicate more time to this topic in another email cuz I have more stuff to say :)

5) Special Lesson. Alright, so Elder Birky and I were tracting one evening and just doing the normal routine b/c we had a few hours before our official appointment later that night. It was my turn to do the contact, and this lady let us in to her house. We talked a little bit, and then I looked to Elder Birky cuz that´s usually when he takes the lead and I chip in a few remarks here and there during the lesson. Guess what? Elder Birky just looked at me and winked. That punk! haha. I´m glad he did it, though. So I actually did the small talk, and she understood me, even though I had to repeat myself every once in a while. Then I asked to start with a prayer, after which I taught the whole first lesson. Then I did a little small talk at the end and wrote down some information so we could visit her again. I wasn´t expecting it at all, and Elder Birky surprised me pretty darn well. It actually went pretty great for me. I´m definitely not as good as my trainer, but it was rewarding just to see that she understood me :). She was a sweetheart, an old widow of about 85 years.

6) Magoli (Ma--ga--lee) is one of our prime investigators right now. She came to church with us this last Sunday and absolutely loved it. She came to all three meetings and had a lot of questions for us. Of course, being missionaries, we love to answer questions :). We have almost finished teaching her all of the fundamental stuff, and her baptism is scheduled in about a week and a half if she feels ready. We visit her about 4 times a week, and usually we just chat a bit and then share a quick message. One day we were talking about food, and she gave me a special recipe to make a pizza. It was awesome. We are also going to her house this week to make empanadas and maybe some other Argentine food. She is going to teach us. She is awesome, is 21 years old, and her mom is really cool too.

And that´s about all for this week. I love you guys. The mission is pretty hard some days, but overall it´s pretty great. I really hope that we move soon. Living out of suitcases on the the floor in the kitchen is really starting to bug me. I have been living on the floor with nothing but a mattress and my suitcases for 8 weeks now. Other than that, everything is good though. :) I can´t believe you guys are having Thanksgiving this week. I´ll be out knocking on doors why you guys eat pie and watch football haha.

Love you guys.

Elder Jones