This week has been good! I don't know if I'm having culture shock but I have experienced some things that I've NEVER experienced before! I hope you get a good laugh out it. :) We email from a local cyber (like a gaming facility) for about an hour. Loading pictures are really slow so I don't know how many I will send.
My companion is seriously hilarious! All we do is joke around with each other. He is pretty trunky, but we still work hard and he only says trunky things at night which helps! haha
To answer your question about Villa Angela - well, we only have about 25 people that come to church and they're mostly women. The living conditions are generally ok. The people that live in our area pretty much only have dirt floors and sometimes they don't have roofs on their homes. It's considered the "dangerous" part but don't worry I'm bigger than pretty much everyone. And I'm not intimidated by a bunch of 13 year old boys who like to shoot rocks at us with their wrist rockets!
There are a ton of dogs here but most of them have been beaten their whole lives (which is so sad) so they usually don't give us much trouble. Every once in awhile we find an angry dog, but you just have to yell at it to go away, stomp your foot, or pick up a rock and it will run off.
Here's some pics of my home. Sometimes the power goes out or our water doesn't work (like this morning) so we just rough it until it comes back on. We shower with our flip flops on and without a shower curtain. We don't have a microwave but we do have an air conditioner at night so we only sweat about 90% of the time so I can't complain too much! Our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom are about as bid as my bedroom back home.
I still don't understand much of the language but I'm trying my best. They speak complete gibberish sometimes and I don't understand a single word. Church is especially difficult to stay awake. It's hot, I don't understand anything and then BAM. I'm out. Two weeks in a row now. Trust me, the branch loves me.
The member have fed us 4 times and usually we eat some type of pasta smothered in oil with some type of meat. We haven't eaten anything too weird yet. They cook all their meat with the bones in it which is so weird to me so I'm always picking away the bones. We also had pizza once and trust me if definitely wasn't Dominos! haha
Fruit here is dirt cheap so we eat a bunch of fruit. The juice here is LEGIT and we drink lots of Coke too because it's cheaper than water. Literally 1/2 the price.
So for this week:
Monday: P-day was super chill. We cooked up some tacos and then spent the rest of the day talking, listening to music and reading our scriptures. It was pretty laid back. We also did our laundry and then hung it out to dry. Luckily our neighbors own a washing machine!
Tuesday: We had district meeting with the hermanas. Then we went for a walk and found a bunch of people to teach. While trying to be guided by the spirit we decided to pick up 2 rocks, choose a side, and say a prayer for where we should go during siesta (worst time ever). When we ended our prayer we pretty much played spin the bottle on where to go. Both of our rocks landed in the same direction so we, like Lehi, took that as revelation from the Lord and went that way.
We ended up finding like 8 new investigators.
Later that night we met this lady who had recently broken her foot and has 11 children. I don't know what it is, but this woman has something special about her. She knows that I don't understand a word she says, but she has this spirit about her that I can't describe. I keep thinking about her and just can't put my finger on what it is but we'll see how things turn out.
There is another lady named Norma that I met and her two children that are just the best. They fed us dinner last night and I was in shock about how much of a sacrifice it must have been to feel us. I'll tell you more about them later.
I'm going to jump to Friday: We got an unexpected call that saying that we had to go to Las Brenas for a baptismal interview so we jumped on a collective and went with the Zone Leaders. I went with Elder Taylor for the day and oh my gosh, it was the BEST EXCHANGE EVER! He's just one of those guys that has 110% energy 120% of the time. He's just the happiest guy ever - no joke! So while we were out, we sat down to teach this guy that was a referral. He had is wife or daughter with him, I'm not sure which, and she was holding a baby. You know, it was pretty natural - but for some reason I started thinking about Mason Smith's letter a few months ago about how women just breast feed in public. Not a minute later I was like "AH NO WAY! She's not gonna . . . " I thought wrong. No joke, she just pulled her boob right out and let the baby go to town. And yes, Elder Taylor and I were just sitting there like keep the spirit, keep the spirit . . . !
We worked our tails off that night and taught like 5 families before we went back to their pench. It was super legit by the way and I walked in to use the bathroom and I noticed that there was 2 toilets. So I asked him, "Why do you have 2 toilets in here?" He told me it was a beday (I didn't know what it was, how to use it or how to spell it!) Apparently he didn't either because he twisted a knob and got shot in the face with water by the beday!!! Oh my goodness, we didn't stop laughing for like 20 minutes!!
Another weird thing about Argentina is that they LOVE American music. They don't understand a word, but they LOVE it Who knows . . . .
So another good story. When we were leaving Las Brenas the next morning we got on this bus and there wasn't enough seats so we had to stand. It wasn't a big deal, but long story short, I was looking out one of the window and saw this lady who was holding a baby. I started thinking and hoping that she wasn't going to feed that kid and yup! It happened again!!! I think there is a conspiracy where they all think "Look! There's an American! Time to breast feed?" I hope I get used to this soon.
Our days are pretty much the same. I start off by doing push ups on a blanket since our floor is pretty nasty. We study, go eat lunch with a member or cook for ourselves and then we walk 5-10 miles visiting with people. It's generally pretty hot and I sweat a lot. I just have a big smile on my face so that the kids don't throw rocks at me. I try to say HOLA to everyone I see and some people are caught off guard but it's alright.
Elder Humphries and I have picked up a new hobby of skipping rocks. There is this little pond we walk past a few times throughout the day so we stop and have a little competition each day and I'm undefeated. No biggie.
Love you guys!
Keep the Faith
Elder Harris
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