April 13, 2010

O Familia Mía,

So it sounds like you all had a pretty exciting week. That is pretty sweet with the rattle snake. It was really lucky that mark and all the little kids weren’t there playing outside. It was a pretty cool picture. Do you remember when we caught that little rattle snake and had it in our room. What were we thinking? From the picture it looks that it is a medium size rattle snake or was it pretty big? That is cool and scary though. I haven’t found anything cool like that in the mission yet. I have seen one little water snake in a ditch. Nothing big. They just have dogs and horses everywhere. That is something different about Argentina is that the horses are just our like dogs eating in the streets. It is pretty funny. Horses just walking around like dogs in the street. I love it. At first it was way weird and now it is just normal. I just don’t get how they don’t get stolen. That is one of the few things a lot of argentines are honest with it whose horse is whose. Random thought. So, a while ago meat was really cheap. Really cheap I could buy a kilo of hand burger meat for like a dollar. When meat was cheap I never saw cows. Ever. I don’t think I saw a cow in like the first year of my mission. I would always hear all this stuff about the argentine cow and have never seen one. Well a little while ago the meat prices went through the roof. Now I see cows all over the place. I don’t know why but they are just everywhere now. They need to start butchering more cows for more meat. It is hard on the argentines. Meat is in every one of their meals. They just can’t buy a lot of meat right now. We actually have a less active that we are reactivating that works in a meat factory and his job isn’t looking to well right now. Not to mention that the teachers have been on strike for that past month and a half so they haven’t started school yet. The people are not happy with the country right now. It is really sad. I am so glad to live where I live right now.

I love the idea from president ostler. I am going to start using that one with members here. It is so true too. The family that we are working with right now is just like that. They became stagnant and they got spiritually sick. They haven’t been to church in ten years. They are finally starting to go back. It is really sad. They always are talking about the blessings that they could have received if they would have stayed in the church and not become stagnant. They are a really cool family. The Family Valle. They treat us so well and they are gaining an actually testimony right now their kids didn’t really know anything about the church. This is good, because we teach their kids and refresh the gospel in their ears too. We watched the new Joseph smith movie (some missionary has it and I have no idea how he got it but I love it). Anyway we watched it with them and they loved it. They felt the spirit so strongly and really learned a lot. A lot of people do not realize how hard it actually was for him to do what he did. He would not do all that for a lie. I sure hope this family progresses well. We are trying to teach the little girl and help the dad be worthy to baptize her. That is our goal right now. He is so excited. Just have to been praying and working with them.

I am really glad you got the suburban sold. That is awesome. They can get more use out if then we were. I cant wait to get to know all the Mexicans our there on the farm. I need to be all buddy buddy with them so they can cook me some good Mexican food. J Here in san Luis there are two zones. The other zone leader is a Chicano. Or a Mexican from the states. He is teaching me some of the Mexican Spanish. It is a little different. I am not too excited about that when I get home. I am too used to argentine stuff. Oh well, it should be fun. Chase can help me out too.

That is funny about Barrie lindahl. Sister Lindahl gives us sugar like once a month. That is it. Every time I have eaten at her house it is always with a fruit bowl and water. She is trying to keep us healthy. She sometimes checks people’s refrigerators to see how they are eating. It is hard here in Villa Mercedes just because the fruit is so expensive. A kilo of peaches was 8 pesos and 50 cents. That is crazy. You get like 2 or 3 peaches for that. ¡ESTÁ LOCO! So it is pretty pricy to buy a lot of fruit. I just rely(I don’t know how to spell that) on the members. They usually give us fruit.

Ya I know that Barrie lindahl drives nice cars. When president drove us to the bus station he was talking about cars. Elder Vazquez asked him about Porsches. President said, I have had a couple, they are really nice cars. Ha ha. A couple. I guess with his sons they just love cars. That is their hobby. I guess he had some really really nice cars before the mission. He also liked sailing and has his own sail boat. In my interview yesterday he was talking to me about his career. He was telling me about the little details. He hates doing the little thing. But he told me we all just have to get through them. He had to do it and I will to. Then once you do the little detailed things you get higher and then you are the boss. He told me he higher a guy to do the little details of his work and this guy saved 1 million dollars in two years. WOW!!!! He did really well in his career. He supplies the medical stuff to hospitals. He supplies to like 6,000 hospitals. He is always talking about his career in comparison to his mission. He told us that if it wasn’t for his mission he would have been able to do it. He learned how to talk to people in the mission. It was a really good interview. At the end, he told me, ¨Elder Smith, I am going to tell you one more time so it sticks in your head. You look so much better now than when you came. If you go home a put on that weight again I will hunt you down and kill you!!!!! Go home, get a gym membership, tone up those muscles and get some good clothes!!!!! I will hunt you down if you don’t.¨ it was pretty funny but pretty true. Every time someone looks at my pictures they always tell me. This last two weeks we have been running every morning and I just have to keep doing it. I want to go home even skinnier. I only have 5 months to get skinny. I have to do it.

Yesterday we had zone conference. It was an excellent conference. Sister Lindahl talked about doing things because you know you have to do them, without know that you will be able to finish. She talked about the temples that the pioneers built when the church was starting. They left temples that they barely had finished. It must have been hard. Then she talked about how a lot had a hard time building the temple in salt lake. She talked about how when things are hard and they seem impossible we just have to do it because the lord told us to do it. Like talk with a 141 people a week and talk about baptism, all those things. It was a really good.

President Lindahl talked about how much time are we feeling the spirit? We feel the spirit more when we are more obedient. If we are not obedient we won’t feel the spirit like we should be. It was really good. He really showed his love for each one of us. He has such a hard job and he does it with such a good spirit. He is such a good person. He helps us out so much.

We had another really good week. We are teaching Rosa and silvana still. They are progressing little by little. The zone is doing really well also. We have one companionship that is having a hard time. We are just going to have to be doing a lot of divisions. I love problems. Haha. I am doing really well here. Everything is going well. Elder Mendoza and I are having a fun time. I am making fun of his Spanish and is doing the same with me. He may have a good accent but does not follow the rules in Spanish. I love it. He says the word feet pieses, it should be pies. Just little things like that I just laugh a lot with him. I hope you all have a good week. I hope I do to. Today we are going to play soccer with the san Luis zone. Hope we win. I love you all. Thanks grandma for the letter. I hope everything goes well with the garden and the cabin. Espero que terminen con todo antes que me vaya a la casa, así que yo no tengo que hacerlo. J You will just have to figure out what that was. Just a little joke. I love you all. Hope you don’t see any more rattle snakes. Be safe, say hi to everyone. Les quiero muchísimo.

Élder Smith

Ps. Mom so you know I would love to get the conference talks because a lot of time we don’t get it here in the mission or it takes a lot time to get them. It would be nice in both English and Spanish. Also thanks for telling me when school started. If it started after I got home I wanted to sign up but it doesn’t. I don’t want to finish my mission early to go to school. Thanks mom I love you a lot. Chau chau.