Can you believe I´ve been in Argentina for a whole month, this week?! What have I done with my life?! Remember last week how I said that I thought the cold weather was behind us? Yeah, well I lied. Starting around Thursday or Friday, it started to rain; and boy did it rain. Remember how I also mentioned the large amounts of orange mud? Well put those two together and you have quite a sight to behold. Streams and rivers were popping up everywhere! I took a picture of this street that, I kid you not, had 2 to 3 inches of water covering nearly all of it, as well as raging rapids on the sides in the ditches.
You begin to develop a different feeling towards cleanliness here. It´s hard to describe, but in essence, you don´t really worry about the three pounds of mud attached to your once-beautiful-looking Rockports.
Along with that rain came the cold. Who knew the Pulsiphers' basement would prepare me so well? :) I was a little more prepared for it this time. I even whipped out dad´s old coat from his mission that he gave me. AND yes, I made 1980 look stylish. My companion and I laughed the entire way down the street after a couple of teenage girls tried to suppress laughs as they passed my amazing coat. I´m not exactly sure why.. :) Needless to say, that bad boy kept me nice and toasty.
Speaking of toasty, I made French Toast this morning. I had been waiting all week to do so. It went perfectly with our freezing apartment. With a little dulce de leche, they were a big success with my companion. I might have just started a new food trend in Chile..
I´ve developed an addiction since arriving in San Vicente. Panaderías. The bread and pastries here are amazing! And extremely accessible. So... I have to attempt to control myself from time to time.
I feel I must address the issue of maté.(make sure you pronounce that one right.. :) ) What is maté, you ask? Maté is more common in Argentine households than Santa Claus is on the night of Christmas Eve. It usually consists of yerba (an herb...which is grown in my area.) and hot water. They throw the yerba in their maté cup and, with their straw that has a filter on the bottom, they sit around and relax. This herb is not caffeinated, but due to the large amount of time that people waste when sitting around drinking it, missionaries are not allowed to drink it. This always raises eyebrows when we say ¨no¨ to their maté.
The language. I´m beginning to hear every word, more or less, fairly clearly, now. But I´m still having issues processing it in the right order. This provides me with a little bit of entertainment, though. Certain phrases just kind of jump out at me at random times. For example, we were teaching this man and his family (but mainly he did all the talking). He was a chatter box, and always moving during the conversation. We´d be talking, and out of no where he´d do stuff like read my companion´s name out loud, ¨Elder Escobedo.¨ But my personal favorite, random phrase that I got from him was, ¨well then God lied.¨ Excuse me? Did I just hear him correctly? Yep, I did. Not sure what happened there. Halfway through the lesson I noticed a big machete next to the door.(you´d think I would have caught a hint..) Needless to say he wasn´t the most receptive person, but he did calm down a bit when he lit up his cigarette. :)
In my personal studies I finished reading ¨Our Heritage.¨ It´s an exciting read that will get you pumped up about missionary work. It does a really good job on briefly summarizing the entire history of our Church. I´ve also been reading most of Mosiah, in the Book of Mormon, this week. It´s amazing to see a people like King Limhi´s(son of the wicked King Noah) turn from wickedness to a realization of the truth. And when the people were united in the cause, the Lord heard their pleas to be released from bondage from the Lamanites. If we put our trust in the Lord, he can help us with our challenges in our life.
From ¨all things considered¨ in San Vicente, Misiones,
Elder McMurray
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