Hey fam - December 12th

Hola familia,

How is everything going back at home? Well it looks like I am back to writing while I wait for my emails to load up. The only problem is I don´t really know what to write about right now. I guess I should think about my week a bit…well how about we start out with today?

This morning we went and played soccer with a bunch of youth from around Jardín America. We had two young men from the church too, Roberto Mora, who is a really great youth and only active member of his family, and Roberto Benites, the oldest child of the golden family we are teaching right now. We had a lot of fun. Those kids can really play well too. Luckily I am a huge fan of soccer and have some skills myself. I am loving the people in this area so much. Good thing too because we are the only two missionaries even close to this part.

The family Benites is doing way great. They are so close to getting married I think and so ready to be members of the church. They really practically are members because everyone has friends in the church (that is right every single member of the family has been befriended!) and are always in the activities and helping out with things. They just need to be baptized. I have really enjoyed spending the time with them that we have so far. We recently did a service project in their house and painted their walls white (good thing I have practiced quite a bit with our house). The hna. Benites also has some talents in construction and she has built a little bookshelf for all their church books and some dressers for some clothes. We helped Roberto finish his dresser for his room and I talked quite a bit with Fer (Fernando) and Nancy. They are some smart kids for 9 and 12 and 14 (Roberto). I am really impressed with this family. I would love to just spend a ton of time with them all the time, but we have to work with other people too.

We haven´t really found any other investigators that are really progressing. We do have a couple that are potential baptisms in the future, but it is hard to get them to church. Julian and Yamilla (younger brothers of a recent convert Rosa) are a bit afraid to go to church because they don´t know anyone and it is all new so we are trying to help them out with all of this. One thing is for sure and that is that we don´t want to baptize someone who will be an inactive member of the church. This branch needs some strong people to help it grow. The good thing is that I really think the family Benites will be that kind of people.

Well, I have been trying to add a lot of strange and more interesting, unusual things in my journal lately. Unfortunately you will have to wait to hear a lot of things, but I always try to tell you the good stuff. This week we saw the strangest bug ever. It is a big fat old thing and is rather alien like. I know we have fireflys and those are cool, they are here too, but this bug has eyes that glow green. I am talking bright green here, it was so weird. I guess in the summer a lot of those are going to start leaving and we will be seeing quite a few. There is also a bug that makes a really loud ugly sound and they are going to start leaving now too. It really sounds bad with one, I can´t wait until there are a ton.

Well it finally looks like we are going to be moving to a new pension too. It is a good thing because we have taken a lot of time and effort on this thing. Still, nothing is final yet, we will have to wait and see about that tomorrow. I have learned a lot in the whole process though. One thing is for sure and that is that I never thought that I would be doing something quite like this in the mission. If all goes well we will settle everything tomorrow and move to our new clean place on Saturday.

As far as my companion Elder Gustafson, he and I are having a ton of fun here in Jardín together. He is quite the character I must say. I don´t know if I ever really told you where he is from & stuff though. He is from Virginia, but his family moved to North Carolina a little bit before his mission. He was born in Miami. We get along really well, better than any companion I have had on the mission thus far. He has 6 people in his family and is the oldest of 2 sisters and one other brother. He went to BYU for a semester or two before the mission and it sounds like a really fun place. I am thinking I definitely have to go study there for a couple years. But yeah like I said, a really great Elder and we are having a blast together. I just hope we have two transfers together. Still, what needs to happen needs to happen.

Christmas Celebrations here in Argentina are a little different I guess. I was surprised in this past week or so to see lights going up like at home. Someone asked me what the Christmas lights are for and I had to tell them that I honestly had no idea. They are beautiful I guess and that is about it. They also have a bunch of other decorations around which seems weird without snow. They go really big on fireworks here and the mission has permission to watch the fireworks from the pench until 1230 at night on Christmas and on new years. We have to stay inside on the morning after though because everyone here gets drunk. . Still, the branch is going to have a couple of dinners that we can attend as well. Other than that I don´t think that much is going to happen.

Thank you for sending the cookie recipes. We are going to have to try something special. Unfortunately I don´t have peanut butter but they do have a cheap kind of peanut butter type stuff here. Maybe it will work. I think I should be able to manage with the rest of the stuff I need too. We are eating about 1 or 2 meals with members every week which is OK. I hated doing it every day. Love the members but love some extra time in the afternoon to do the things I need to too.

Well family, I need to get going now.

Love You all,

Elder Aaron McDonald