Family!
For starters, I miss you and I love you! ...Secondly, I miss English. This week has been a VERY BIG week.
My new address is
Misión Argentina Resistencia
Entre Rios 435
Resistencia, Chaco CP 3500
ARGENTINA
I will begin...
Monday morning, at 3am, I left the MTC, for good. I cried a little. I loved place so very much. Yes, it is small, but I learned and grew so much there. It will always have a place in my heart. My trip then commenced with my 6am flight out of Salt Lake City. We then went via Dallas/Fort Worth, New York, and finally Buenos Aires. When we arrived to Buenos Aires, we took a 2 hour bus ride to the other side of the city, to their Domestic Airport. When we got there, there wasn´t much activity going on. Weird. We found out that due to a mini volcanic issue in Chile, all flights had been canceled. Meaning, we now had a 13 hour bus ride to Resistencia on our hands. We were lucky, though, this bus was to be extremely comfortable. It was an event just getting to the Bus Station. 15 of us ran to a local bus stop (with all of our suitcases. Oh, and don´t let's forget to mention that one of my wheels was broken off in flight. I had to carry that 50lb sucker everywhere!) We then found the brother that was helping us (who spoke little English--aka none). But in order to get the rest of our things we had to ¨literally¨ sprint to his car to retrieve the other things. Man, we were sweating badly! Luck was with us, due to a demonstration in the city, our bus arrived a little late. We made it.
We arrived at the Bus Station in Resistencia at approx. 11am. I was SO excited to see President and Sister Heyman and the APs. Our trip to Resistencia took nearly 53 hours! Wednesday and Thursday morning were very nice. We were able to eat and even pair up with another Elder in the mission to go out and teach. Kind of scary. Luckily, the Elder I went with knows English, naturally, considering he hails from Salt Lake.
Now to Thursday... Meeting our Trainer.
Like many of you know, we sat on opposite sides of the chapel. They started with Elder G, I think. It would happen that I was the last Elder called. Oh well, that made it easy for me to see who was going to be my trainer.
Drum roll please...... Elder Escobedo! From the great nation of Chile. His Spanish is very fast and his English is nearly non-existent. Can you say FUN?? haha It´s interesting I can tell you that. Needless to say, he is very spunky and very new at training. I am his first. He has been out since January, I think. It´s a little difficult communicating, but we manage.
We left the Mission Office around 5pm. We arrived in Posadas, the capitol of Misiónes at 10:30pm. Unfortunately, our bus didn´t leave until 3:30am. More FUN. We finally made it to..... San Vicente! (in the Province of Misiónes) at 8 in the morning, Friday. Making it a grand total of 4 days from the time I left the MTC, to when I made it to my final destination. Crazy, huh? Just like the old days, I guess.
San Vicente is fairly small. Lots of poverty. But really friendly people. The people speak a language I´ve never heard before. I´m told it´s Spanish. :) Some people, when they find out I am new, like to throw in Portuguese; to help me out, of course. The branch has around 25 or 30 members that come; when it doesn´t rain. Sunday? It rained. We had a total of 12 counting us, missionaries. The Branch President is amazing. President Talquenca. Apparently, he served in the Resistencia Mission like 5 or 6 years ago. I guess he liked it enough to live here. Surprisingly, it does get a little cold here. Lots of rain, too. Other than that and the language, who could complain?!
It´s interesting to note that we do our laundry by hand. Yep, that´s right, no machines. I´m excited!!! Also, to get hot water in the shower, it´s basically a trickle. I love it!
If you are having a hard time with something, read D&C 98:1-3. It will help, a lot. Trust me.
I love you all!
Elder McMurray
So very proud of you!
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