A quick note about the week

In Elder Merrill's letter this week, he shares his thoughts on how fast time is going by and that he got to watch the Buenos Aires Temple Re-dedication and participate from a chapel (maybe the equivalent of a stake center?).

How are you all doing? I hope that things are normal as usual around the house. From what I hear though, with the tree and all that, things may be slightly different. [a crazy windstorm tried to knock down a tree in the front yard.] I know that 2 years can be a long time for things to change but I feel like I've barely been away for a month. Can you believe that the 14th is my 6 month mark? That's crazy! I hope the mission feels like it is going fast for you guys as well.  I know that there is work to be done here, so that makes it super fast to me. I just get into the mindset that I can find people to teach pretty much anywhere!  I went to a chapel on Sunday in another city to watch the re-dedication of the Buenos Aires Temple. It was so cool to do that in Spanish! I needed my temple recommend and a white handkerchief for it. It was a cool experience.

He also answers some questions about his area:

The area that I go tracting in is small. Bolivar is a small city on the edge of the universe, so there's really not many places to go. It's easy to get around. There are miles and miles and miles of fields surrounding the city that we work in sometimes and then there is the city that we work in most of the time. The branch here is small, that comes with a small town I guess.  There are about 100 members in this city but only about 25 come to church. That's a whole lot of less actives.
My spanish is coming along great.  I can speak it pretty well and now it's becoming easier to understand people.  The food that I eat the most here is pizza, empanadas, chicken, bread, spanish cereal, fruit and eggs.  I like the food here, it's good. I hope you all have an awesome week, I love you all!!


Here is a photo of the Buenos Aires Temple after it was dedicated and some interesting facts about the temple:








Located just a few miles from the international airport, the temple's native granite walls and six sentinel spires are a welcome landmark for all who travel to Buenos Aires.  During the new construction period, 2 wings were added to the original building, dramatically increasing its size.  The renovated temple is encircled by gardens, benches and walking paths. Fountains can be found at both ends.  Prominent throughout its exterior walls are vertical stained glass windows that feature the familiar blue and white colors of the Argentine flag. Patriotic gardens have also captured that same color pattern in many of the flower designs bordering the edifice. (this excerpt was taken from an article by Jason Swenson, Church News staff writer).

Suggestions for Mailing stuff to Argentina

It's another superb Monday with our next email from Elder Merrill. He talks about the passing of time and foreign keyboards:

Hi ya. How is everyone doing? Whenever I think of something to write home about, I put it in my planner, which I have open in front of me right now. I am always excited to hear you guys.  I have found a surprising switch here with time. I have really fast days but really slow weeks. It feels like forever since I wrote you, but the days themselves have been so rapid. I know that seems strange, you'd think with fast days would come fast weeks, but that's not how it is right now. Well, maybe that's just because I'm new at the moment...I have a feeling that the weeks will feel faster as I go along here.  It's funny, as I'm typing, the computer spell-check is on and so every word I type has a red squiggle line under it to show that I've spelled it wrong, because none of these words exist in espanol.

He also gives us some warnings and advice about mailing items to Argentina:

If you ever want to send me a package for something like Christmas, my year mark or I don't know...my birthday or something (cough)...I have some instructions for you. When you send packages here, there's a danger of 2 things happening. The package gets lost or some of the contents get stolen by the people in the post office.  There's nothing to do if it gets lost but if you want to get a package to me around the time of a special date, you may want to send it about a month in advance. Now, to prevent it from being stolen, wrap the package in tape nice and tight, to make it too hard to try and open it. The final thing is to put 2 pictures on the package and make sure they won't fall off. Put a picture of Jesus Christ and a picture of the Virgin Mary. That may seem a little weird but the Spanish people don't want to get on the wrong side of the virgin and stealing from missionaries that might (or might not) be from her church would probably look bad.

He talks a little bit about the local culture:

I have to take a bus to another city every week for a meeting and the buses are all double-deckers. It's so fun riding them! You would think, being in Argentina, that this place would be more hispanic-like but a lot of people (and I agree) have told me that this place is a lot more like Europe instead.  Dogs litter the streets like cacti do back home in Arizona.  Not a day goes by without me seeing more than 30 different dogs. Naturally I like animals but the problem is that a lot of them don't have any homes, so they are wild, and wild they are nice to humans and make me want to pet them, they probably have fleas and mites and ticks, so I'll have to refrain from touching them at all. Not a whole lot of cats here.

Then it's a few words about the weather before he signs off:

September is when spring should start, so things should start warming up a bit.  I'm not thrilled to be going through another summer, but that's all good really.  I made it through South Carolina walking all around there and that place was so  humid, I could feel the water particles on the air as I walked around.  We had a lightening storm here a couple of nights back and boy was it LOUD! It felt like the storm was right above our heads and then moved off...I wonder if we'll be in store for any more? The stars here are awesome by the way. I bet I see a couple of different constellations then you do in Arizona, makes me wish I'd paid more attention to what constellations there are in the night sky.  Don't worry about food here. It's all good. I just wish they had a bit more variety. I eat pretty much the same things for dinner every week, but like I said, it's all good, so I can't complain.

What a great letter this was from our dear son this week. We are glad he is doing well and he sounds like he is adjusting nicely to Bolivar.  Keep up the good work Elder, we are keeping you in our hearts and prayers!

Saying hi from Bolivar

It's August 20, 2012 and our next email from Elder Merrill has arrived! Moms all over of course worry about their kids eating right and that perhaps gets multiplied exponentially when they go off to a foreign country but Elder Merrill puts our mind at ease about that and other areas of responsibilities:

Nothing new this week really, I am just doing work and continuing with the training. I haven´t caught anything bad, in fact, I feel fine really. Thankfully, it hasn´t been too much of a climate change, more from really hot to pleasantly cool. Although I don´t have peanut butter, they do have alot of other really good things here. And I´m keeping a well balanced diet of fruit and bread and meat and all that stuff. I also created a budget with the money that I automatically receive each month too, so I shouldn´t run into any problems during the month or have to borrow money from home to survive. I live in an odd place really, where everything is really nice or really run down. No real ´´middle ground´´ to the living conditions really. I live in a city surrounded by fields, so when I´m working in the city, I forget that I´m in the middle of nowhere, and when I´m in the fields, I forget that there´s a city right next to me.

 He gives a little insight into traffic over there:

P-day is just finishing up now. Nothing much to do around here for fun really... Nothing fun that´s missionary appropriate anyway. We just stayed in our apartment and took a nap. Not that that´s a bad thing really, after all the walking that we do, we´re glad to have a day to sleep a little and rest. It´s been a hectic week for us, we had to go to a missionary conference and then we had to work in some other areas, all of which required taking buses. I don´t know about the rest of the foreign countries, but traffic outside of the U.S. seems to be pretty crazy. Stop signs don´t exist here, and stoplights only appear in the very center of town. Funny enough though, there haven´t been any crashes or anything. I guess that they want to keep the car in a best condition as possible, as it´s costly to replace and they really don´t have much money in the first place.

Elder Merrill finishes up with some comments about his work and the weather:

I just got back from an appointment with an investigator who said he was going to read the Book of Mormon, and asked if we could come back. Naturally we did, and he told us that we were pretty much like every other religion and that he wasn´t interested. Man, things get tough sometimes, but the important thing is to keep on trying and enduring to the end, right? This town is small, so a lot of people have talked with the missionaries before, but we find a bunch of new investigators anyway, so we´re kept pretty busy for the moment.

I hope that the heat hasn´t been too bad over there, I know that it can be rough; walking around in South Carolina was no picnic, but at least you guys get some rain right? It´s pretty much the end of winter here, just beginning to turn into spring for us. It´s not to terribly cold at all, I think that we just missed that part here. It´ll be weird listening to Christmas music during the middle of a hot afternoon in December. I hope that I get to Skype home to you guys then. 

 Yes Elder Merrill, that would be pretty awesome if you could Skype home! Guess we will find out in a few months.