Whewwww.... I made it! Here I am in the lovely city of Posadas, Argentina! My area is called Lavalle and my companion is Callie Payne from Lehi... she is awesome! She is my ´entrenador´¨... my trainer, and we have lots of fun together and work hard! After a 4ish hour flight to Atlanta, a 10 hour flight to Buenos Aires, a 1 hour drive to another airport, a 1 and 1/2 hour flight to Resistencia, and a 5 hour busride to my area, I am finally here!! (if you want to add that up that´s over 20 hours of travel, plus the layovers and waiting etc... it took us about 2 days to get there) So let me tell you all about Argentina and my area! It is so awesome! Ok this is how I´m gonna do it... first a list of facts about my area, and then my usual awkwards and awesomes of the week! There are a lot. If you make it to the end of this letter, felicidades :). Bueno... primer..
- The city I´m in is called Posadas and the area is Lavalle. We live somewhat near downtown ish but we tract mostly in residency areas
- some of the streets here are paved and some are halfway paved with rocks, and then most are just dirt! The dirt here is red... so all of my shoes have turned red already, haha. It is awesome
- This area is really poor. I have actually seen probably only 1 or 2 houses that are near the ´nice-ness´of our apartment. Most of the houses are made with cement or some with brick and whatever else, but the insides are really low in quality. Many of the insides are kind of homemade I guess you could say... the walls are made with pieces of wood or scraps that they could find, and everything is really really messy and dirty. Most of them have flushing toilets but usually you can´t flush the toilet paper so you have to put it in a trash can
- our ward has about 40ish people in it I think... it´s so weird being in a chapel and only like 1/4th of it is full! Don´t worry though... we will change that :)
- so... our apartment. It is awesome. :) we have a working kitchen sink and bathroom sink, and they both have one temperature-cold. Luckily our shower does get warm/hot sometimes! But as you can see in the picture we have no shower curtain or anything... it is so great. When I first saw our bathroom I thought it was under construction or something haha! But nope... it´s normal! Our toilet seat is made out of plastic... and not like the normal toilet seat kind of plastic, but like the kind of plastic that shampoo bottles are made out of, haha. Our beds are decent, my mattress is probably like 4 inches tall but it does me justice :) aaaaand the stove and oven both work! They are gas though so we just have to light it with a lighter every time. We do laundry outside in the sink and buckets out there and then hang it up on the clothes line. It´s really poor and pretty ghetto here but in a different way than I thought! I hardly ever see homeless people, and they have all the same technology as we do but not many people can afford it (most people don´t have computers and usually they only have one phone... sometimes more. Most everyone has a tv though of course haha).
- a lot of places here are really dumpy... most of the homes just have tons of junk all over the place, and nothing is ever clean, but at the same time it is really pretty here. Posadas is in the providence Misiones so it is considered kind of the jungle. My area is all residencies and the houses are all close together in communities but there are still tons of trees around and it is really beautiful! I haven´t taken any pictures of the area yet because we never bring cameras around with us in case we get robbed... but I will take some and send them!
- the people here are very interesting... some are so humble and sweet but many are very prideful. Well, not any more than Americans, hahaha. But everyone is christian, either Catholic or Evangelist... and most have a strong belief in Christ but they never go to church haha. They are usually pretty smart in their religion but they are still a very simple people... not very educated. Most of them have lived here all their lives and all of their kids will probably live here all their lives because they don´t really have a huge opportunity to advance. Most of them just own kioscos or little shops in their homes where they sell food and random things from their windows
- alll of the houses have fences so instead of knocking on doors we clap in front of the fence... so awesome! Also all of the windows have like fence things over them so most people just open their window and talk to us through their fences, haha. They´re very hesitant to talk to us or invite us in at first but once we introduce ourselves they are very willing to invite us in and everything
- there are a million dogs here. everywhere. every home has at like one or two dogs, but most have more... sometimes 5, 10, or 100 I swear haha and every dog barks then you come up to the fence, so we are always basically shouting over the dogs to talk to the people inside hahah it´s so great
- since they speak castellano here and not spanish, haha, it is really hard to understand. Well actually it´s not just because of them but because they are natives so they speak really fast and they mumble everything! But I am starting to learn to understand them! I actually don´t really have a hard time speaking it´s just understanding their responses, and it´s getting better every day!
ok... awkwards and awesomes real quick!
AWKWARDS INCOMODOS Y CHISTOSOS
- the bathrooms here! ohhh... so many great experiences :). first of all, we tract for like 7 or 8 hours at a time and of course we need water but we never have any bathrooms to use because the stores don´t have bathrooms and it´s kind of weird to ask people to use their bathrooms. Either way, when you do ask.. their bathrooms are super super dirty! What´s especially great is when you wake up early in the morning and use the bathroom and forget that you can´t put the toilet paper in the toilet so you have to pull it out.... yeah.............. I might have done that one time... hahaha
- awkward situations happen everytime we talk to someone, because I say something and then they say something back and I don´t understand so I just look at my companion, hahaha. Don´t worry though... I am learning to understand more each day!
- walking home at night and walking down the ´calle de prostitutas´... if you can´t figure out what that means you can google translate it. So great. :)
- we were at a member´s house and their dog freaked out and attacked my companion. twice. Luckily she had her backpack to defend her! But seriously.. I am surprised I have already made it almost a week without getting bitten by a dog!
- another great dog story... right as we pulled into our area in the taxi the first thing I see is 4 dogs in the middle of the road, 2 of which may or may not have been mating. Bienvenidos a Pasados to me right?! hahaha
- yesterday in reunion sacramental they had me lead the music... first of all, they have a piano but no one can play except me, and I couldn´t play those hymns on spot so I just lead instead. So I started singing, and I swear I was the only one singing! I could hardly hear anyone, and eventually it got better and people were singing so I started singing alto and it totally fell apart! Hahahah. Apparently everyone pays attention to the leader. Also, nobody here can sing. It is so sad but so hilarious. I have to keep myself from laughing everytime we sing with people!
AWESOMES
- only 2 quick stories because I don´t have any more time but we have a baptism this week (hopefully). His name is Matias and he is 14 and he is golden! He is so awesome... he is so willing to follow the commandments and he is just such an awesome kid. So that is the awesome part. Here is the sad part... his mom is totally against the church and she is saying no, and he needs both of his parents´permission (his dad wants to be baptized too but he and his wife aren´t married so he can´t). So we are praying and fasting this week that she will have a change of heart... we would really appreciate all of your prayers for him!
- second story... so on Saturday we were having a charla (aka chat or lesson) with a lady named Estela. She has 2 little boys and they are the cutest things ever! And he ´husband´(nobody here is married) and her have a really bad relationship. Anyway... the missionaries have been working with her for over a month but she still hasn´t read or attended church, and she has a lot of doubts about the book of mormon. Usually during the lessons I kind of just stay quiet and my comp will look at me when she knows I know how to say something, or randomly I will give my testimony. So we had been talking to her for awhile and my comp was basically telling her why it´s so important to go to church and to read to recieve an answer if it´s true or not and she was still really uneasy and didn´t want to go to church. Anyway, we were getting ready to wrap up and I felt like I should say something. So I bore my testimony to her and just told her that there are a lot of religions out there, we know, and we know that we are young, and I know that it is a sacrifice to go to church, but it´s ¨vale la pena¨... worth the pain. I told her that my comp and I are here in Argentina, way far away from the US, for a year and half, because of this church, and that even though I am young this is something that I am sure of, and that I can´t even say how much it has blessed my life and how much it means to me. Anyway... I didn´t really know where it all came from and I probably didn´t make a whole lot of sense haha but she understood it and felt different afterwords. She said the closing prayer and it was really sincere, and I felt the spirit really strongly. The next day... she came to church! :) and she really liked it. I can´t say much in Spanish right now to people and I definitely can´t understand much, but what I can always do is follow the spirit and give my testimony, and sometimes that is what it takes.
Ok familia no more time but all is well and honestly I absolutely love it here! It´s poor and simple but I love it... I love living this way and not worrying about anything else but the work of the Lord. It has been very humbling so far and very strengthening. Thanks for all your support! Love you all!
Hermana Hunt
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