¡Feliz Cumple Villa Mercedes!

Hello again!

Happy Mercedes Day!!! Yup. Today is Villa Mercedes’ 152nd anniversary. So, I really don’t know what working tonight will be like.

This past week Elder Opheikens and I got a special visit from one of the four Assistants to the President. That’s right, we have four of them. And they all have companions who are not Assistants. Weird. It’s mostly because President Lindahll has a bad back and can’t travel that much, so they have to do all the traveling for him. It was a good time working with them. We worked extremely hard. Found some new people, taught some older people, baptized someone. It was great.

The baptism was a bit of an adventure. Everything went pretty well. Until the font was mostly full. Then both of the water tanks at the Chapel went dry. But we still had enough water for the baptism. And the water was back by the end of the day.

Not much other news. Zone Conference this week. I got some letters this past week. One of them was in a fun plastic sleeve with a note from the Argentine postal service telling me to get upset at the USPS instead of them for bashing up my letter.

I am going to go ahead and get myself an early Christmas present today of an electric shaver. I’m out of razor blades, and they don’t sell my razor here. And an electric one will make traveling for things like Zone Conference much easier.

Love,

Elder Budge

Baptismbaptismbaptismbaptismbaptismbaptism!!!!!

Hello! Greetings from Argentina!!!

Big news this week: Another Baptism!!!! WOOOOOO!!!!

Her name is Yamila (Jamilla, pronounced the same too) and she’s 14 years-old. Her mother is an inactive member who just wanted us to teach her the discussions as a support for this difficult teenage time of life. But it really worked out for everybody in the end. Yamila loves the church and comes to all the meetings and activities on her own. Well, I don’t know about mutual, but she comes to our “Chapel Night”. And she is excited to go on a mission of her own. So, that’s really cool. The not so cool part is that her mother has never come to Church or anything with Yamila, not even her baptismal interview. Sigh. Oh well.

We didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving, but that’s fine. I’m very excited for Christmas, though. Can’t wait. I love Christmas. But it’s gonna be really weird. Especially in the likely event that I get transfered next transfer because transfers are on Christmas Eve. Oh well, it’d give me time to get settled into my new pench.

As for missionary friends, I haven’t written a single one. The reason: I don’t have any addresses. If I had addresses I probably would. A letter to India or Mongolia would no doubt be cheaper than a letter to the EEUU (Estados Unidos). Seriously, a letter home costs at least 5 pesos. And I know that it’s cheaper to send letters to Canada.

Twilight seems to be a rediculously huge phenomenon among the pre-teen+ female set in the US. Especially among mormons. No doubt due to the author being LDS herself. I really don’t know what the appeal is. Granted, I’ve never read it.

The general opinions of Argentines on United Statesians (Everybody in the Western Hemisphere is technically an “American”) is there’s really only one horrible one, and that is George W Bush. So, pretty much they don’t know anything of anything outside Argentina. But we did run into one man. The dialogue went something like this:

Missionaries: Hi, we’re missionaries...
Guy: No. Not to me you’re not.
M: Oh? What are we to you?
G: North American spies.
M: We’re not spies.
G: Yes you are. You’re just here so that you can see how horrible our living conditions are and go back and laugh about it.
M: Um... Living conditions are about the same in many parts of the Unites States.
G: You people are horrible! You make needless war so that you can just make money off of killing people!

So, that conversation was very useless, but I guess there really are some people who think that we’re spies.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week. More to come! Baptismal pictures too!

Love,
Elder Will Budge

Another Email From Villa Mercedes

Hey all!

I love hearing from you, so keep writing!

News! Actually this should’ve been in last week’s entry, but I forgot...

We have new hours for the summer!!! Ahem...

07:30AM: Arise
08:00AM: Shower/Breakfast
09:00AM: Personal Study
10:00AM: Companionship Study
10:30AM: Leave and Work
13:00PM: Lunch
14:00PM: Study at the chapel, in a park, with members, work
15:30PM: Work
22:30PM: Plan for the next day
23:30PM: Sleep

So, there it is. I must say, waking up at 7:30 agrees much more with me than getting up at 6:30. Not sure why because it’s the same amount of sleep, but it does. And it means that we can talk with more people because everybody says “Come by after 8:30.”

I’m sure you’re all eager to hear about transfers, so here it goes:
Elder Neibaur se fue. But now I’m three for three with comps. Every single one of them is from Idaho. First Shelley, then Paul, now Rigby. By new companion is Elder Opheikens (Oh-pie-kins). He’s from Rigby, Idaho and is a real cowboy’s cowboy. Even as a missionary he looks like a cowboy, well as much as a missionary can. He’s cool, and works hard, but doesn’t stress out about anything.

We have a new baptismal date for a girl named Yamila. She’s the adopted daughter of a less-active member. She’s very excited about the Church, and even kinda wants to go on a mission. Only time will tell.

Well, that’s about all the news from Villa Mercedes right now.

Ciao,
Elder Budge

Last Email From Villa Mercedes???

Hello all!

Well, here it is, the middle of November. Well, the beginning of the double-digits of November. Either way, it’s starting to get really hot. Seems like the middle to me because I was filling out dates through the 24th of December this morning. I’m sorry if I confused anyone, transfers are this week, so we find out tomorrow at District Meeting and whoever goes goes on Wednesday. The transfer ends just before Christmas, so that’s rough for whoever moves next time.

A funny story that I’ve been forgetting for the last few weeks:

We were meeting with a family and the eight-year-old daughter was looking through one of those DK visual encyclopedias, “The Human Body” to be exact. On the page with babies she looked at the picture of a human embryo and said, “Look! Before babies are babies they’re empanadas!” So, apparently human embryos, and pretty much any other embryo, are empanadas. I bet they don’t taste like empanadas, though.

I heard the news of the election this week. Everybody has been talking about it here, which I think is weird. We don’t usually talk about everybody’s new president. But Argentines are all very excited about Obama and glad that Bush is out. I’m pretty sure they have no idea how our system works. Theirs is very corrupt. I heard that Obama won by over 100 electors. If that’s true, wow. I can’t remember an election like that. Of course all the elections that I’ve paid any attention to are those with Bush.

One TV station even said (I think this is common belief among all Argentines) that Bush was possibly the worst president in the history of the United States. Clearly they don’t know very much about US history.

Argentine moment of the day: the stop lights turn yellow before they turn green. A practice that I think should be adopted in the US.

News: President Lindahl has authorized emails from friends and extended family. But only as short messages attached at the end of my parent’s email. [the.budges@verizon.net] So, if you have something important to tell me like “I got into such-and-such a school!”, or “I’m getting married!” (hard for me to believe that I’m at that point where friends may start getting married), or “Such-and-such a friend is getting baptized!!!” send it to my parents and I’ll get it through the free Parental Censorship Board. Any of the last one are especially welcome. I would love to hear about any friends, or even friends of friends who are getting baptized.

That’s all for this week. More to come!

Elder Budge

Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax, of Cabbages and Kings! ... Okay, Just of Shoes.

Hello again and happy November!

Well, I got some new shoes last Monday. Hurray! Now I have comfy, keep my feet try, Argentine shoes. I hope they hold up.

I also finally got all my letters sent off, so some of you should be getting letters from Argentina in the next week. Fun story, it was the first time that I was paid to send mail. I was mailing (with the more expensive shipping for my absentee ballot) 58 pesos-worth of mail. Somewhere in the exchange of money and letters the teller got confused. He ended up giving me my 100 peso bill back with four extra pesos. Elder Neibaur and I argued with him for about ten minutes and the people in line started to get irate. Finally we just left. We were walking along and decided to write a note, put the note and the money in an envelope, and leave it in a suggestion box. About six blocks later we heard somebody yelling, we turn and the teller was running after us. He caught up and said that we were right. I gave him the money, but he only had a pocket full of 100s, so we went back to the post office. So, that’s my fun story of the week.

We have started having a Family Home Evening with the ward on Thursday nights. Last week we acted out some of the miracles of Jesus. Sadly, Elder Neibaur and I were unable to attend due to an emergency trip to Mendoza. But we’ll be there this week for a great activity about scripture study and baking cookies.

Well, that’s really about all I have for this week. I’ll have more to talk about later.

Elder Budge

Dragons! Wait, dragons?

Hello again.

I will start off this week with what it actually was that I forgot last week. The topic: Emus.

So, last week we visited a less active family. The dad was in the back working on a broken motorbike. We went back there, I looked in a tree and the first thought I had was, “Dragon feet!” There were two scaly, three-toed feet up to the knee up in the tree. I then came to be rational and realized that they were, in fact, bird feet. But what kind of bird, I did not know.

It turns out that they were emu feet. I had forgotten that hunting emus is a popular passtime in Argentina. Apparently they hunt them with dogs. Well, and then there are all those fun pictures of gauchos hunting them with those three-ball stringy things.

So, there it is, emus.

Other than that, not too much to report. Transfers are coming up in two weeks and either Elder Neibaur or I are going. We’ve been together for two transfers now, and companionships don’t generally last longer than that. I suspect that it is I that will go. We have a bunch of families investigating, but they all need to get married, and none of them really want to yet. Whenever Elder Neibaur leaves an area there are tons of baptisms. These families need more time, so Elder Neibaur will get them ready to be married, then he’ll be transfered and whoever’s here will get about 12 baptisms. But we’ll see, there are still two weeks.

Speaking of Elder Neibaur, if you want something fun to do look up “Neibaur” under authors in the hymnbook. You’ll find a song that his great-something grandfather wrote. I forget his name, but he was the first Jew in the Church. Fun stuff.

Well, that’s it for now.

Until next week,
Elder Budge

¡Feliz Día de la Madre!

Happy Mother’s Day!!!!!

Yup, in Argentina Mother’s Day is the 3rd Sunday in October. So, needless to say with the Argentines looking for any excuse to drink and there being a River and Boca (the two biggest soccer teams in Argentina, I am yet unaligned. I may come home with a jersy for both) game, we had very little success finding people to talk to. Much less sober people to talk to. Oh, Boca won by the way.

So, this week was Zone Conference. That meant another long, arduous journey to Mendoza. But the conference was a great one. Our zone (San Luis) with only 12 missionaries, the smallest in the mission, had the most baptisms in October. Yay! Our Zone about doubled in size this conference as we were melded with the assistants and the office elders. Now we are the Zone “San Luis + Assistaff.” Kinda fun to say, huh?

Now, let me tell some about the journey to Mendoza. Our District Leader talked Elder Neibaur and I to go to the Conference on a higher class bus. Last time we went “semi-cama” and I couldn’t sleep, so I was all for the idea of going “cama”. Cama means bed. So, we got the more expensive tickets.

Last time Elder Neibaur and I were left without food, so we thought we’d be prepared. We decided that we would take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with us. Fortunately for us one of the few places in Argentina that sells peanut butter is in our area. But they were out. So, we substituted Crema de Bon O Bon. Or Bon O Bon cream. I haven’t really seen Bon O Bons in the US, so I’ll explain what they are. They are chocolate covered wafer balls filled with a sugary peanut butter. And we were using the filling for our sandwiches. With such a sweet filling, we set out to find a less sweet jelly. We ended up traveling with six Crema de Bon O Bon and Grapefruit Jelly sandwiches. The first couple bites were rough, but after that it was really quite good.

The travel was just like last time. Go to San Luis, sleep there until 3, ride the bus for four and a half more hours. Except that we had to go to San Luis early because our District leader had to do a baptismal interview. So, he did the interview and we opened our mouths in front of the Chapel. Well, most of the other Elders did that. Elder Neibaur and I just sang in front of the Chapel for an hour and a half straight. It was a great time. One Elder, Elder Manqui (Mankey, like the pokémon) stopped a motorcycle. It was a cop. They talked for a little while. When the cop left, he climbed into the cab of a truck and talked with the driver.

When it came time to catch the bus to Mendoza, we all went and met up with the Hermanas at the terminal. The semi-cama bus came, and everybody but the four of us with cama tickets left. Fifteen minutes later the cama bus came. It was much nicer. Leather seats and all sorts of fancy stuff. It was great when the seat reclined. And then kept reclining. Unfortunately for me the cama seats don’t go all the way flat, so I still couldn’t sleep. Oh well, next time I’ll have to try 1st class.

At Zone conference I got permission to vote online. But I also got my ballot. So, I just voted this morning. I feel like an upstanding citizen. I just need to get it mailed now.

I thought that there was something else I was going to tell you, but I forgot what it was. Oh yeah, Argentina moment. Um... Yeah, I can’t think of anything right now, so I’ll leave Mother’s Day as the Argentina Moment.

Now I remember! A warning to all future missionaries!!! Do NOT buy Deer Stags. They will fall apart the first month in the field. The soles crack, the window falls out, then the whole sole starts to fall off. This is happening to my shoes. It has happened to other missionaries in my District. BEWARE DEER STAGS! That is all.

Until next week,
Elder Budge