¡Hola Todos!
Respuestas para toda de la familia:Yes, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the music, thank you. Nice work with the Big Mac Jason. I remember my first one was given to me by Sis. Briggs during my 7th grade year. I was a little nervous, but I eventually ate it all. You made me laugh when you mentioned learning how to multiply with fractions because of two reasons: I love math :) but also I recently taught a lesson in the house of a math teacher here and she had a white board with all sorts of multiplication rules, including multiply with fractions! My Spanish understanding and speaking abilities are getting better and better everyday—the key is slowly but surely. I’ve been teaching entire lessons to people so I can at least get the message across ok. I’m just working on learning a lifetime of vocab in a few months plus a few phrases here and there that are unique to Spanish. The hardest part really is trying to understand the people speak the language because they speak very fast for what I can understand. But it will come!
You mentioned the Christmas tree—I’d like to mention what Christmas trees are like here. Since everest-type trees don’t exist down here, every Christmas tree is plastic and ranges from 3-5 feet here—just a wee bit different, but it still works! Congratulations Dad on your poster! Glad things turned out well with it. Congrats on having fun with swing dancing too! I’m ok at it, but if you want to see someone that’s good at it, go watch Matt Birch—he’s amazing. I remember Cameron Latimer very well. He’s a good bass singer. That’s great to hear that he’s getting involved in the programs and school. I never was a stage manager actually so he’s taking my spot as well as Jenny & Whitney. The only thing he’s missing is the piano ability ;) Congrats on losing the herbst appliance Jason! Have fun with that because the braces bring a whole new kind of pain ;) I can access your blog...I’m probably not allowed to though, so don’t expect me to go and look. Send Brandon my congratulations with PSU!!! (And a verbal smacking porque él me prometió escribir para que pueda practicar su español…y ¡no he recibido NADA!) Pity points to you, Drew: I remember getting burned out from all the college apps I did…it’s worth it. As for me calling home, every companionship down here has a cellphone, so I’ll be using a calling card (not sure if I can use yours, mom, but they’re cheap down here so I’ll buy a couple and then try yours first) and using our companionship cellphone to call you. I will actually be calling you Monday, the 21st of December around 10:00ish-10:45 my time (I’ll let you determine what time that makes it at home) so that we can set up a time on Friday, the 25th (not sure why, but everyone else does it here, so yeah!) We’ll roughly be calling mid-afternoon here on the 25th so keep the morning sorta free (not too hard, I’m sure ;) )
Alright, on to my past week! Here’s the quote I told you about last week: “At this Christmas season we ought to remember that no gift we have ever received or could ever receive will surpass the wondrous gift of the Atonement. Our joy can be exquisite and sweet, and we have a promise of being in the presence of God. What greater gift in all the world could we hope for? In return, we ought to determine to give all we can to the Savior of all mankind—our total heart and soul, even our very being.” –Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone.I walked into a lunch appointment this week and all of a sudden the father asked me to offer the prayer in English. I was a little shocked, and kinda sad too, because since day 3 in the MTC, I haven’t offered a prayer in English at all! So I broke my pattern this week. It felt a little funky praying in English, I’ll admit, but it shouldn’t be a problem in 21 months when I get back. I’ve started a list of funny excuses that I, and other missionaries, get at doors because they can’t/don’t want to talk to us: “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ” (I noticed she had a nice CHRISTmas tree behind her); “My mom says she’s sleeping” (So what is she doing now...?); (I say..) “We’re looking for [this person]” “She left and I don’t know when she’s coming back!” “Oh, well [this guy] sent us here.” “Oh, that’s my uncle!...(a little later in the discussion) yeah, she’s at work until late tonight.”; “¡No hay nadie!” (and you are....?).I found out my MTC comp is going to be companions with Elder Young’s MTC comp—go figure!More on Argentine culture: you remember how Dad can’t go anywhere without seeing one of his patients? Multiply his problem by like 20 and you have my problem with dogs here—especially the stray street-rat kind! They’re everywhere!!! Luckily it’s mostly the ones that are inside the house fences that bark at us, hopefully it stays like that. The kids all got out of school (as in like school terminated this week, not Christmas break). Another funny thing about this part of Argentina: all of the lawns/grass patches here are small enough that they just use weed whackers as their lawn mowers!I had a little Peruvian moment yesterday (and this story also relates into a fun little challenge for you if you get bored). We were carrying these two 10-kilo bags of flour (not sure what that is in pounds, it felt like 15-20 pounds) to these 2 people for the bishop’s wife (we walked a distance pretty close to our house to Ferris going down regal, and then walking to the Finn’s after that (We only touched about 1/3 to 1/2 of our area too)). My arms were getting sweating from carrying it low and my shoulders were hurting a little too, so I tried it on my head. By far it was so much easier! Of course, my head was completely soaked afterwards from sweat!I tried my first blood sausage yesterday...yeah it wasn’t too bad if I just mashed it all in with my rice :P
We had this random boy stop us in the street last night as we were walking home. He was 15 and was asking all sorts of questions about who we were, what we were doing, and about the church as well. It turns out his family is all staunch-Catholics, but he doesn’t like nor agree with the religion at all. He even brought up possibly wanting to be baptized in some other religion—we were happy to get his phone number so that we could meet with him this week in the chapel (with a member present of course ;) )!!!Well, that’s all I jotted down to write home this week! Hope all is well at home and that things are winding down for the big day!
Love,
Elder Powell
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