Return with Honor: Greetings from the snowy wonderland of Rivadavia

Hi Family!

Alrighty. Wow, I loved that picture!!!!!!! That is awesome. I zoomed in on all those little cute faces. I just wanted to pinch all your little cheeks! Even the big bad Harrison. Wow you are dating. Sweet sweet. That's awesome!

(This is the picture Jackson is talking about, I sent it to him in his email.)

Yay, the phone call. Shout hooray. I am excited. I am really not sure what is going to happen. . . I can talk for 1 hour. I might call Christmas Eve, late, like 12 Argentina time (we have permission to be out that late) so just be home at that time. But the organization and relay of information in this mission is not good. So we have no idea what we are doing Christmas day. We will see! And I am excited. If you don't hear from me before Saturday, call me at 3pm my time. You can talk to Amanda alone for awhile if you all want, (that's my Elder Owens Texan accent coming out) but yeah, just call whenever. I got an hour!

A nice picture of a great lunch I made myself one day. Just full of flavor!!

I do have a package for 77 pesos waiting for me. I will get it Wednesday! We are having a mission Christmas party, split into 2 parts. And I am going Wednesday and both Elder Allen and Huntington are going the other day. NO!!!!!!! That makes me a bit sad. But it's OK.

That snowman was fantastic bytheway!!!!! I loved that picture so much. I'm excited to receive a cd with Jonny Vance!!!! Thank you for all you do for me and all the prayers and everything.

The toe picture is for mom. Just so you can worry about me some more. In truth, I didn't feel anything, it was just some dead skin that I had to take off at the end of a good day. Working Hard!

Ok, I'll tell of my week and some experiences I've had. But first, Saydi's home. Fantastic. I'm excited for the family to finally be reunited at 3pm this Saturday. It just brings tears to my eyes. I hope you don't feel bad because I just made fun of you mom :)

The phone call with the Fernandez family was incredible. It helped pull me out of a really crappy Thursday morning I was having. It was just a low moment of the week. But the 15 minute phone call was the highlight of the week. And the baptism. It was such a sweet sweet taste of home (sweeter than the watery syrup Elder Hyer made and shared this morning). It was so cool to talk with the Grandma of all the Fernandez kids, in Spanish. It is. . . . . like I can't describe it. I was just so happy talking to all of them. I talked to the man who speaks English, the Mother of Emmanuel Fernandez and some other lady, his sister maybe. Way cool.

Baptismo!! Elvis, he is a child of Rosa, decided to get baptized this week.

This morning we were all sick of the disgusting pench, so we deep cleaned some parts of it. I was the water boiler, dish washer. I don't know why I still boil water because we have hot water now. Anyway, the pench is doing way better. The rest of the pday plan is to head to San Martin and do a futbol pday with the zone, get some food, and then have the district meeting.

The kitchen, freshly cleaned with all the dishes drying.

Elder Hyre is good. I like him and he is a good elder. Elder Owens is doing good! He, the way he talks and words he uses, reminds me 100% of the Eppich twins! It's not like he is girly or anything, I think it is so funny. He is so much better than me as a newbie! We, for some reason, have a special little bond. He is a music guy, kinda has the same style as Jeffrey and is so fun. We went running this morning. Then there is my companion. We are doing good, don't have any major problems at all. Yesterday, he greatly enjoyed the tale of the Huntington, Ostler, Allen airport escapade.

The rama we are in rocks! I could go on and on about the branch presidency and the newly called mission leader RM awesome guy Lucas.

A sweet experience. We were walking down this street opening the mouth for a little bit before the dinner with Rosa. This lady, cleaning outside with her kid, looked up and exclaimed, ELDER! They invited us in, told us of how they were baptized 3 years ago by sisters but had since fallen away. They were fantastic. They told us their 25-year-old son was not a member. They called him in and we had an awesome baptism lesson with him. After I opened the little lesson with a testimony (in Spanish of course) he stopped me and said, "Find me a scripture of no more than 3 lines that will acercar we with Dios. Basically, you got to find me a short scripture that will help me believe in God. Wow! I took 10 seconds and opened to 2 Nephi 31: 10, 11, I think. About baptism. It was so so cool. He read the 10 lines, then kept reading. It was neat. His name is Emilliano. I have hopes for that kid.

At another lesson with Rosa, she pulled out her LDM and opened up to 2 Nephi and started asking us Isaiah questions, ones I probably couldn't answer in English! But Friday we did have a great cena

One day eating lunch in the pench, a swarm of fly's came in the pench. It was incredible how many flys came in the pench. I'm sure you will get the picture and video, but we went to some pretty drastic measures to combat the flys. The missionaries won!!!

I feel like this is not to great of an email . . . . . how do I feel like now. I feel hungry, excited for the phone call, and I don't know, just like I don't have much to say. And looking at my watch, it's been an hour and three minutes, so have a great day, in all that cold. Because weather here is perfect. Bytheway, I washed all of my clothes in our sweet washing machine this morning. It was a chore!