June 9, 2011

June 6, 2011

Hey everyone!! 

So good to see the pictures! The house looks great! Spanish is coming along fine, it is much easier to understand now, and I´m beginning to take more of a lead in the lessons now. Thanks to E. Slaugh, I´ve really gotten off on the right track. Thank you so much for the recipes... They´re going to make our mornings so happy! And thank you so much for the package! It´ll probably be here in like a month.. Haha! Also, I want to find a way to listen to music. Can´t listen to much stuff other than Motab of course, but my piano music and stuff like that, I´m trying to think of how I can do this.. I´ll think about it and let you guys know. Don´t know if an MP3 player would be better than a CD player. CD player would be less expensive, which is definitely the more important thing. We can talk about this later. For the moment, I am completely content. :)

Every Pday now we go to a gym for two hours. Lifting with E. Slaugh is so fun because we both love to work out. It costs twenty pesos, which is 5 dollars for 2 hours which is an incredible deal... Hello Argentina! Haha. We also found a place that sells flats of 30 eggs for 15 pesos. About 3.50! We buy 30 eggs per person every week, and use every one. 

We had divisions this last week. There are two Elders in Trevelin, a town about 45 minutes away that are in our district. We traded companions for two days. E. Slaugh went to Trevelin, and I stayed in Esquel with E. Barton. A kid who refers to himself as a nerd, and one who likes nothing I like. He loved to complain about things, but although I´m new, I´m in no way Trucho, a word that here means a lazy person. I laughed that day that we got done working. I worked him till he was dead. We walked the entire length of the city, our feet were killing, and he thought he was going to die. Some things he said were You and E. Slaugh are like machines! How do you do the numbers you do?? It´s all good though, you learn a lot from every companion, I learned more what NOT to do from E. Barton. 

My left foot is beginning to hurt, kind of like a stress fracture, I´m ignoring it for now, but we´ll see where it goes. It´s probably nothing. We gave English lessons to this girl named Evelyn. She´s 18 yrs old and has a brother named Esteban who is 23. We´re trying to teach them about the church, but she´s more interested in the English lessons, and Esteban is never around. We gave them a BoM and hope they read it. That is something I woke up one morning knowing we need to focus more on, is the BoM. If people just open it up and read a page... They can know and understand and GAIN a testimony that it´s true. After that, the work is easy, because they´ll be willing to do the things that follow. 

I´ve had a couple people that talk to us in English. In the lessons with Evelyn, she asked me to say the closing prayer in English for her to hear. I haven´t prayed in English for... 3 months! It was very difficult. Even saying In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen was difficult! We contacted a lady in her house who was speaking to us in broken English, we began our contact in English and it was almost impossible for us to say what we wanted in English. It´s so funny! I´m hoping I won´t have too hard a time when I come home picking English back up, we´ll see what happens. 

We had one of the most incredible lessons with this one family this last week. Familia Vilte let us in about 3 weeks ago, just because we were going to play the piano for them. We played some songs on their very needed-to-be-tuned piano, and talked about music for the remainder of the time. Visiting them a few more times, we finally got them interested in hearing our message. We taught the first discussion with Joseph Smith, BoM, Holy Ghost and how they can know. It was such a good lesson. I really hope they read and try these things out.

Saw a pitbull two nights ago. Pretty inspiring sight, honestly. I´m glad it was caged up, hahaha! Also saw a dog get is leg ran over by a car, that was NOT an inspiring sight. Never heard such a scream of pain from anything that badly. Sad, sad sight. The volcano in Chile? Did you guys hear about it? A volcano, really close to the border, I think 100km away exploded. We´re scheduled to get ash here today, but we´ll see what happens. If we do, we´re stuck inside the pension... Boring. The lady who calls herself my mamacita, she came up to me after Sacrament meeting yesterday and said: Usted es un capo! Usted es Ken! This was the most hilarious thing ever to hear. Capo means stud, and guess who this Ken guy she was talking about? The flippin barbie... :/ Haha. She´s very nice, but in all reality... Nope, don´t look a thing like any of that. Another member has said I look like a Richard Gere, don´t know who that is.. Oh well. 

Today I´m going to buy some weights, we´re going to the gym, we found a place that sells WAFFLES!! LIke the U.S.!!!! HOLY COW! We said, Yeah, we´re going there no matter what! P-Days are really fun, but I would like to get back to working. No baptisms yet, we´re working extremely hard. We´re pulling out numbers a lot of people are surprised about. The zone leaders called us yesterday and asked what we were doing. All we can say is that we´re following the Spirit and doing the things that missionaries should do. This is the key to missionary work... Following the Spirit. It really is forgetting yourself, and going to work. I never understood the true significance of that statement until I got out here. Never do you think about yourself. I came here thinking that I´d be thinking of home all the time and wondering what´s up with everyone, but honestly.. I don´t ever think about anything but the mission. I hope this is what the father of Gordon B. Hinckley meant by forgetting yourself and getting to work. I know I´m still only a month out, which makes me excited for the things that will come in a year or so. 

I love you all, you are all in my prayers. I love the house, it´s looking great. Jared, WRITE ME. I need to talk to you, bud! :) Thank you for the letters, just so all you know, I still receive DearElders if you want to reach me that way, I´m not completely isolated! Haha! Have a great week everyone, I will talk to you in a week.

E. Cuthbert 

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