Hola everyone!!!
These last 10 days have been crazy. My pday changed when I got in the field so I will now be writing on Monday´s for the next two years instead of on Thursdays. The flight over was super long and uncomfortable since I was in between two giant people for 13 hours, but I made it here!
First off I want to say two things. First, the computers are in spanish so the spell check says that every single word is misspelled so I am sorry if I don´t catch a few words while I am writing. Second, I only have an hour every Monday so I won´t have as much time to write because I also have to do other tasks with the internet in the hour they give me. I got to Argentina and I realized that the people are half what you expect and then the other half are white and they could live in the US and you would think they knew English, it´s crazy.
We got to Buenos Aires on Tuesday then flew to Resistencia that night where we stayed in a "nice" hotel. It was considered nice because it had tile floors, the cockroaches were smaller than normal, they had A/C, and free breakfast. The only problem was that all the tiles were broken, the A/C didn´t even turn on, there were still cockroaches, and the breakfast was only small rolls. The only good thing was that the rolls were the best bread I have ever had in my life. The bread here is better than any homemade or fancy bread in the states. That´s why they have it with every meal.
MY trainers name is Elder Burnham and we will be in Saenz Peña for the next three months. This is one of the hottest areas in the mission and we are about to start the summer months in December since the seasons are reversed here. The only place that is hotter is Formosa so I´m glad I´m not there right now. And the heat isn´t even that big of a problem, it´s just the fact that it is so humid that it´s just like you are walking through water. You are ALWAYS sweating. It doesn´t matter if you are sitting, walking, sleeping or anything else, you are always sweating. And we also walk everywhere so it is hard with the heat but it is worth it when we teach others and they accept what we have to say. The people here are super humble. Only the really nice houses have walls on the inside. Most just have curtains for the doors and to separate the kitchen and bedroom. They also wash their clothes by hand and then dry them outside. We are lucky enough to have a member that washes our clothes. She is Super nice!! I understand a lot of what they are saying if they don´t talk too fast. My goal is to be basically fluent by Christmas which I think is possible with the amount of Spanish I hear and say everyday.
I don´t have time to tell everyone all the stories I want to so that will have to wait for after my mission and you will have to come to my coming home party haha. I will tell one story though. This last Saturday we went to the house of a young boy that was supposed to be baptized this week. His mom is an inactive member and he has a younger brother who isn´t old enough to be baptized. But, her boyfriend is abusive and evangelical and hates the missionaries and prays to God for the demons to leave every time we come over and then beats her and the kids after we leave, but she still invites us over because she knows how important it is for her son to be baptized. But on Saturday he made them all hide in the house while he stayed outside, he wouldn´t really talk to us and we were just trying to get the mom and sons to come talk to us to see if we convince her to move back to her Aunt´s house. Then, one of the neighbors that is a friend of the boyfriend came over. He had a tattoo of san de la muerte which basically meant that he worships satan and trades the lives of others in exchange for earthly items. He started shouting that we come to that barrio (or town) too much and started swearing at us and said that we had to leave and if he ever saw us there again then "mataré" meaning that he would kill us. We normally wouldn´t care but we was waving his machete at us and if we hadn´t kept backing up and left it would´ve hit us. So we aren´t going to go there for awhile which is really sad because Ezequiel was so close to his baptism. I don´t know why people hate us so much; we are always super calm and polite (even in this situation).
Thanks for all the support I get from home! I couldn´t figure out pictures this week with the computer and I have so many that I couldn´t even send them all, but I will figure that out before next week. I will have the address to write to in about a week but I won´t be able to write back a lot because it is expensive. Emailing is better. If there are questions just let me know, I know I didn´t get everything into this email and it is a lot easier to remember what to write if you ask me questions directly so I can answer you. Once again, thank you for all the support and I can´t wait to hear from everyone.
Love,
Elder Joshua Clarine
