Hello! Well, first off I want to say that it has been a pretty crazy week, chuck full of lessons and all of the normal good stuff. I still have about 45 minutes and thought that maybe a bullet list with smaller facts would be interesting for you guys.
Thomas Metcalf, my friend from Cy-Fair who played ultimate frisbee with me all of the time, has been writing me a bit too. Guess what? He is serving in Mexico City and started about 6 weeks ahead of me. He weighed himself this week and has gained 32 pounds!!! hahaha. He actually had the opportunity to skype for Christmas, and he said that his girlfriend and family laughed at him for a long time b/c his face was so fat :). He says we are going to have to play ultimate to lose our weight when we get back.
Speaking of weight, I have gained a little bit too. We haven´t found a scale that works yet, so I don´t know how much. Maybe that´s a good thing :). My pants still fit fine, and I guess that´s all that matters!
I am living with Elder Stephen Winert right now. We were talking one night, and guess what? He knows the Weavers and ran for Cedar Park cuz he lived in Austin. He grew up in Spring, though, and knows Mary Lyman, Anna Morris, all of the Weavers, and a handful of other members like Spencer Guerrero haha. O, and there is more. He lived in J hall at BYU for fall and winter term, he has slept in the Weaver´s house before, and he had the same dining plan as me at college. So we are living together now in our small apartment down here in Santa Fe in the Rosario mission. We had never met before but still know a lot of the same people, which is really funny. He says "hello" to spring, and especially to the Weaver family :).
Dog bite. A dog chased me and Elder Birky this week. It ran fast and caught up to us quickly, snarling loudly and biting Elder Birky´s leg. Luckily it didn´t puncture anything and wasn´t too terrible of a bite. It was funny though. There really are dogs everywhere here.
Hermana Rita. She is a member who we found through a reference. We have visited her, on average, about twice a week. She is really nice and lives in extremely humble circumstances. She has less than most people in my area, and I found out last week that my area is the poorest in the mission. One day last week we taught about how the gospel of Christ can help us during difficult times. She enjoyed the lesson and towards the end looked a little touched. As I was talking to her about the scriptures and the blessings of going to church, she began to cry. Tears rolling down her cheeks and with a smile crossing her face, she looked at us and said that she feels so uplifted in the church and during our visits. She is a really heavy smoker (almost three boxes a day) and really wants to make some changes in her life. I will keep you guys updated. She is a really sweet lady of about 50 years who stuggles to get to church b/c it is a two mile walk and she stuggles to even afford a bike. We are trying to help her.
Sloppy Joes. We found some American sloppy joe mix in one of the other missionary´s apartments. We asked around and nobody wanted to use it, so we took the contraband back to our kitchen. We had a special lunch appointment scheduled with an investigator the next day and decided to do something interesting: make them Sloppy Joes. That´s exactly what we did. After calling and telling them that we were going to cook for them, they couldn´t believe it. They did accept our offer though, and so the next day we traveled over there and cooked Sloppy Joes for them. They absolutely loved them, and it was really fun to watch them eat since it was completely foreign to them. :)
Electricity. We finally got electricity because the offices finished the contract and finally got it sent to us. So we went to Centro and talked to some of the employees of the business who later turned the electricity on in our apartment that night. So after three weeks of using an extension cord from our neighbors, we could finally unplug it and use our own electricity :)
Gas. We had an inspector come to our apartment to verify if we could have natural gas sent through our system. When we began renting, the contract said that the we could get gas once we obtained the contract. Since we didn´t pass the inspection (which was completely the fault of the last people who rented before us), we have to do buy some other saftey equipment and have the inspection done again. The people didn´t tell us this when we were looking for an apartment. They told us that it was ready to have gas sent to us, which we now unfortunately know was untrue. We were told that we will probably have to wait anywhere from 2 to 3 more weeks to get gas. So yep, cold showers and no real cooking for a while longer!! Gosh haha. At least we finally have our own electricity and a fridge. :)
Baby blessing. One of the members in my area has a baby who is currently really sick. They asked me to give it a priesthood blessing, and I did it for the first time in Spanish. They thanked me and I had a great experience helping others down here in Argentina :).
And I guess that´s about it. I hope my English makes sense. We always speak Spanglish or complete Spanish now, just because it helps during the lessons, and I didn´t ever think this would happen, but it is actually harder for me to say some stuff in complete English.
With love,
Elder Jones
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