Mr. Incredible

1/13/14

Hello everybody!  Well this week was a good one. On Monday I met my new companion.  His name is Elder Rubens Santos and his dad and his sister are converts to the church so it is always cool to hear his stories.  My comp is super easy to get along with and we are only speaking Spanish so its doubly great. We went to our area called Ezieza and it is a whole new world.  For example, we needed to pull some money out of the bank and the closest one the church tells us to avoid because they have been known to give fake bills out to people. (haha sneaky argentines.) 

1.) So we went to a bank that was 5 minutes away. 

We only had one bank in Guernica.

2.) We were riding on a huge street that was paved. 

Close to all the streets were dirt.

3.) We pulled up to a mall with a bowling alley, a movie theater, McDonalds, and an elevator.

We didn’t have a supermarket in Guernica.

Things like this that are just blowing my mind.  There are a lot of super super pretty houses here that I am loving and the more I am liking architecture.  

Our bikes are super super old and kinda crappy here so they brake a lot. For example, mine broke less than an hour ago with the mud guard stabbing into the tire and now I have to buy a new tire and mud guard... dang.

But the good news is that we have pegs.  I have never ridden pegs in my life, but this week we have been riding pegs close to everyday.  (Pegs are the little things on the back of bikes that people can stand on so you can have 2 people riding)

The bad news we look kinda dorky with our helmets on.

The good news, we look kinda cool with the pegs so it all cancels out.

The bad news, with pegs you have to pedal for 2 people and I am bigger than my companion so usually I am biking for 2 people at least 5 miles everyday.

The good news, my legs are getting ripped.

My companion is a Brazilian. He is from a family of 4 and is the only active one in his family.  He knows a tiny bit of English but only speaks it when we are in serious situations.  He will look at me in the middle of a super serious lesson and say "What do we do?" but in the most robotic voice I have ever heard. And it’s super super tempting to just bust out laughing but then at the same time it is so serious that I have to think of something super sad so that I don’t laugh.

Another thing that’s super funny is that he says ouch.  He will say it before he thinks that something is going to hurt and then if it hurts, he will say it again like 3 times.  So for example, we will be riding on the bike and he will see a bump, say ouch and then we will go over the bump and he will say ouch 4 more times.
 

This week was New Years!  We had to be in the pension at 6 so we went home and talked and watched the fireworks and played some cards and I was the first person to jump and do a 360 in this year! 

The members here are super super cool.  I do miss Guernica but the members here are super sweet.  We go to a recent convert’s house 2 times a week for lunch and if they don’t have dessert ready they will pack it up for us and then give it to us that night. 

One day they didn’t have the strawberry pie ready for us so they packed it up and gave it to us later that night.  My companion downed his part and then I, like usual, and slowly ate my parts over the next few days.  My comp kept asking me if he could have some and I said he’d already ate his half.  So one morning it was just too much for him and he told me that he would give me cereal for the rest of my pie.  I told him that it is gonna take a little bit more than that for my pie and then he told me "ok ok I will give you a liter of milk and also all of my cereal for your 2 pieces of pie."  Haha I thought it was super funny that he wanted the pie THAT bad to give me a weeks worth of food.

Also I don’t know why but everybody here LOVES soap operas.  Every single house that we go to everybody is watching it. At lunch we talk about them. Before lessons we talk about them.  I am starting to learn which is which haha.  

This week when we were teaching a lesson we heard the investigators kitty meowing like crazy.  We went to go look for it and we found it stuck in the tree way high and shaking. Poor little guy. So I had to climb up in the tree in my church clothes and fetch the little thing.  When I got close I tried to grab it but then it got scared and ran away from my hand so I had to go higher into the tree and try and grab it again.  Finally quick as a cricket I grabbed the little kitty and as it frantically tried escaping my grasp I gently tossed it to my comp.  I felt like a fireman, or Mr. incredible.

Anyways I love you all and would love to hear from you all. Good luck with this week. Love,

Andy