So it has been a pretty crazy week and a half so I hope I can remember everything I want to say.
Last Saturday we went proselyting and it went so much better than I was expecting. Us noobs got paired up with a companion that has been here 3 weeks longer than us, to help us out a little bit. My companion for the day was Elder Johnson. We all got on buses and drove for a little over an hour, then me and Elder Johnson got dropped off in the middle of this ghetto neighborhood at about 10 o'clock and were told that we would be picked up at 5 pm. It was a pretty scary feeling to suddenly be by ourselves in a foreign country and we'd have to try and talk to these people in Spanish. Luckily Elder Johnson had already done this once so he had a little experience.
So almost right off the bat, we came across this old man as he was walking out his "door". We stopped and talked with him in front of his house for at least 45 minutes. He was a really nice man, but in those 45 minutes, I probably understood about 5% of what he said. Elder Johnson did most of the talking, and basically all we understood from what he was saying was that he was 80 something years old, his wife had died about 30 years ago, and he insisted that God hadn't answered his prayers or given him any help. I couldn't understand much but I think mainly he was asking where God was now, and why wasn't He here. We felt really bad that we couldn't understand everything he said and couldn't answer his questions very well. We got his contact information so hopefully missionaries that actually speak Spanish can help him. We wanted to give him a book of mormon but he had cataracts and couldn't see very well, so we just gave him a plan of salvation packet that had pictures and stuff.
We talked to this one girl that I think was about our age while we were walking down the street. We explained a little about the BoM, read a few verses, and then gave her a BoM. As we said goodbye, she did the goodbye kiss on the cheek thing that I guess is pretty common here. We didn't really now what to do so we just awkwardly accepted it.
We stopped and talked to this security guard that was on the street. He only had about 3 teeth in total so it was pretty hard to understand, but I think some of the stuff he said was that he was Catholic, but had never been to church. And he had never read the bible because I think he couldn't afford one. We talked to him about the book of mormon and invited him to read 3 Nefi 11. When he realized that we were actually giving him the book he seemed genuinely happy. It was probably the first scriptures he had ever had for himself.
We talked to a lot more people but I don't think I'll have time to talk about them all. A lot of people would start reaching for money when we were talking or when we gave them a BoM or pamphlet, because I guess they thought we were expecting to get paid. We had to explain several times that we didn't want money and that everything was free, we are here to serve you.
At about 4:45, before the bus came to get us, Elder Johnson and I found this tiny little candy store and decided to buy some. These things called Alfajores are all the rage here, at least for the people in the CCM. I don't really know how to describe them but they're kinda like cake with cookies in them and they're shaped like Ding Dongs. Anyway this guy was selling them really cheep so Elder Johnson decided to buy like 30 of them. I brought 12 of them for 40 pesos (1 US dollar is about 19 pesos right now) so they were really cheep. We pretty much returned as legends because we had brought back more alfajores than anyone else.
The tie trade here (or the Cambiar Game as we call it) is intense. Every night before bed a ton of people get out there ties for display and people go from room to room saying ¿Cambiar? trying to trade for the best ties. This one tie pretty much has become a legend, called Big Pinkie. Its this huge tie that looks like it was made out of an entire prom dress or something. It was highly coveted and my companion was able to trade one of his best ties for it, so he is now the proud owner of Big Pinkie.
The word on the street is that Utah State beat BYU. I was happy to hear that, although I feel pretty bad for BYU, they're having a rough year. Speaking of BYU, there's an Elder here who is going to be playing for the BYU volleyball team when he gets home. Needless to say, he dominates every time we play volleyball.
Two or three nights ago, we woke up in the middle of the night to crazy horns being blown and tons of people screaming and going crazy somewhere aways away. We were pretty confused until our teacher explained the next day that Argentina one a soccer game that qualified them for the World Cup. They won 3-0, Messi got the Hat Trick.
There was a scale last night at dinner, and we all weighed ourselves for fun. It said I was 90 kg, which I think is about 197 pounds or something like that. So either I've gained like 15 pounds or the scale reads high. I don't feel like I've gained that much, but maybe I have, I do eat a lot.
A lot of people can't wait to get out of here, but I don't mind it. We spend nearly every waking moment in our tiny little District room, with the ten people in our district, either studying or having class. It doesn't sound fun, and a lot of people think it sucks, but I like it and think it's fun. My district is awesome. It's amazing how close you can get to others in only about 3 weeks when you're spending your entire day with them. We all joke with each other and sometimes distract each other a little bit too much. We sing a lot, whatever comes to mind. Me and Elder Scoresby asked our teacher if she could play some Les Mis for us, but she wasn't sure if it was allowed. We tried to argue that many of the apostles liked it so it must be allowed haha. Speaking of Les Mis, one morning when we were all showering we all started singing Red and Black from our showers. Not sure how it started, but it was pretty hilarious. Everyday me and my comp teach at least one lesson a day in spanish, many days two. Some of them are kinda rough. Either we don't know what the investigator says when we ask questions or we don't know how to say the things we want... sometimes both. We're getting better though.
Wednesday we got to go into the city again. We went to some government building and did some paperwork for Visas. I'm not really sure exactly what we did, but we showed our passports and they took our fingerprints, and had to sign some stuff.
Today we got to go to the temple, except this time both sessions were in Castejano(no idea how to spell that) which is just Spanish but with the Argentine accent. Argentines insist it is a different language though haha. It was pretty tough to know everything that was going on during the session, but we made it through.
All the English speakers that came 3 weeks before us, and all the Latinos that came with us, are leaving this Monday. Which means I only have 3 more weeks here, which is scary. So from Monday to Thursday, there's only going to be 20 of us here until the new people show up.
A lot has happened since the last time I wrote and I'm sure there's a ton I'm forgetting, but hopefully I got most of it. I hope everything is going good back home, I'm loving it here.
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