Ghosts in the apartment!

Hellos agains!

Well, this week was pretty normal, nothing too out of the ordinary. We lost an investigator to work. That was sad. But my companion bought me a delicious ice cream birthday cake. There is a picture. Yes, the flame on that candle is very tiny, but it was a very drippy candle, and I didn’t want the hot wax melting through the cake.

I’ve also sent a few other pictures. One is a sunrise from a few days ago. The other is what we have dubbed the “Haunted Mansion Picture.” So, we get kinda bored during the siesta. We have started entertaining ourselves by taking pictures with the manual setting on my camera. The result: ghosts. We want to take a picture of us street contacting a ghost and title it “Redeeming the Dead.”

Um… Sorry I’m not so chatty today. There really isn’t that much to say. The work continues. We have a baptismal date for the 9th of March. I hope it sticks this time.

Well, that’s about it. I hope you enjoy the pics.

Love,
Will

“Maipú is better than yours”

Hello again!

Yes, I did buy a new camera. It is a Samsung S860, I think . Something like that. 8.1 GB. I have started carrying the little camera with me because it is discreet and I won’t care too much if someone robs it. The new one is more bulky and harder to hide. So, forgive the lovely sunset, it would’ve been better with the other camera. You can just make it small, it looks okay small. I took another of the sun setting behind Aconcagua, but it turned out worse.

Well, the other pictures are 1) me standing under the street signs of where San Luis crosses San Juan, because I’ve been to both of those provinces; and 2) La Taberna de Moe. Yup, the Argentines like The Simpsons so much that I have found Moe’s Tavern here in San Martín.

We are teaching a guy here named Manuel. He’s old and can’t read. So, I’m downloading the Book of Mormon on MP3 for him right now. This computer’s really slow at doing it, though. At first he was skeptical as to whether he would like the Church. He kept saying that he didn’t like it when the Pastor touched people and they fell down. The woman he lives with kept saying that this Church isn’t like that, but he always answered with “We’ll see on Sunday.” We talked with him yesterday and he told us that he’d “maybe like to do that thing, you know, with the water where they baptize.” This is good for us because it means that he wants to be baptized. Huzzah!

Oh, we’re making shirts for the Zone (the Maipú Zone) that say “Maipú is better than yours”. If anyone wants this unique souvenir from Argentina, let me know and I’ll get you one.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for this week. Thanks for all your birthday wishes.

Love,
Will

¡Felices Pascuas!

¡Felices Pascuas!

Don’t really know why it’s plural, but it is. It’s kind of really annoying that they use the same word for Easter and Passover. It makes things kinda complicated when I try to explain things. I have to say “la Pascua de los Judíos.” Good Friday was a really big deal here, but after that nothing. Nobody seemed to care about Resurrection Sunday. Sad. Also sad was that we didn’t even sing any of the two Easter hymns in Spanish. Easter was barely even mentioned by anyone in the testimony meeting. It’s weird to me, though that they can go without even thinking of Easter, but on Good Friday they will still not eat meat. We found one member who still believes in the Virgin. We were talking about the crucifixion and resurrection with her and she started talking about how Mary just cleaned up the blood behind Christ and it was hard, but she let him suffer so that mankind could be saved. Sometimes I would like to know how some of these traditional beliefs came about.

Hope everyone had a happy Easter.

In our daily ritual of doing Abrir La Boca (Open the Mouth) I asked people what they thought the importance of la Pascua was. One woman said “Well, it’s a party. A Jesus Party. Right?” Another man said “It’s a tradition that isn’t based in anything real.” And a third hit the mark closest with “It’s when we remember the suffering and crucifixion of Christ ... and the resurrection.” It was interesting to see people's answers.

Speaking of a Jesus Party, Elder Gardner showed me a pamphlet that a friend of his serving in NYC sent him. It talked about a great party in Heaven that Jesus was hosting. And you’re invited! Woo hoo! There wasn’t a church or anything attached, you just had to say a little prayer that was inside and you accepted the invitation. But there was a website on the back. I believe it was www.thefamily.org/family. Maybe I’ll go check it out when I get back.

Other than that, nothing new. I think I’ll probably get a new camera in the coming weeks.

Till next week.

Will

Conferences, Penches, and Rock Concerts

Hellos again!

So, this week I’ve got a treat for you. Pictures! I’m sending some pictures of our apartment. It’s kinda messy because there are four of us and none of us is completely unpacked yet. Still. We sleep in the loft, as you will see.

So, this has been quite the week. Very busy what with General Conference and also Zone Conference. Um… I can’t really remember what happened this week. I was going to tell you. Hm… Oh! Do you remember that Superman and Zorro stuff I sent a few weeks ago? Well it has been revealed in a video at Zone Conference what it is. I wish I had that video, it was really great. A couple missionaries started their companionship study and some guys dressed in black started hitting them in the face so that they would fight. Then they get beat up by the guys in black and call for help. Zorro breaks in and starts fighting the blackites. But they’re too much for him! Where will help come from?! Suddenly, a conversation among the baddies. “What’s that in the sky?” “It’s a bird.” “It’s a plane.” “It’s SUPERMAN!!! Oh No!” Fun dun da daaaa da da da dun dun dum! Superman flies in and saves Zorro. Then they work together and save the day. Huzzah!

Pretty much it’s a program that has made the Utah Provo mission the highest baptizing mission in the world. But our numbers are now way low. It makes having a lesson that we can count exciting!

So, we went to Conference. It was great. Elder Perry told the members what we have been trying to tell them since the Creation. We need their help.

After Conference, on the way home, we decided to go to a rock concert. We were invited into an Evangelical church. In part we wanted to hear what the guest pastor had to say. He was visiting from Springfield Missouri. I think he might be a reorg. I’m pretty sure they were at least in the same evangelical group association thing as the reorgs.

The band was pretty good, though. The lead guitar was a guy about 26 and very evangelical. He had a nice Les Paul imitation. The rest of them were less enthusiastic. The backup guitarist was about 17 and not too happy to be there. The bassist was a 16 year-old girl who really did not want to be there. The best one, though, was the drummer. He was a kid of about 11 years of age. He was just happy to play the drums. And he was really good.

Don’t remember what I was going to say now, so until next week.

Will

[Here are a few shots Will sent in a separate e-mail]