March 19, 2012

This week was really wild. If I had to compare it to a certain plate of food, it would for sure be stir fry. We did a lot of traveling. This week, we had Capacitation for leaders in the mission offices, and it was the longest thing everrrrrrr. The mission offices are about two hours in bus and train and then bus again. We had to do that trip twice a day for three days. It was so hot and sweaty and humid in the buses and even worse in the trains. If anyone ever wants to have a truly Argentina experience, you need to hop on a bus in the middle of summer (100%humidity) that is so full of nearly naked, sweaty people that you have to contort yourself into a small ball and have your nose in a large Bolivian woman's unshaven armpit to be able to fit on the bus. I complain about it now, but I will miss it so bad in about a year from now. And the trains are even better. In the capacitation, President and the assistants talked about every mission problem there can be. At one point we argued about at what point in sacrament meeting it was okay to take off your suit jacket. Gooooooo. So that is how I spent the majority of my week.


Speaking of missing Argentina in a year or so, I recently talked to President and he approved my request to extend my mission an extra 32 days. Wooooo! All I have to do is find someone else who is scheduled to go home in February and convince them to extend there mission too. I don't think it will be too hard. So, most likely that I will be seeing you all in late March/Early April of next year. I just realized that by extending my mission. I will be missing my third march madness in a row. Rethinking..... haha

My new area is real good. I am actually doing ANOTHER whitewash because Solano used to be two areas and it was just made one when I got here. It's a super good area and the members are super nice from what I have seen so far. This area is pretty villa. All of the streets are so narrow that if you take one step off the path in either direction, you are inside of someones villa house. It's wild. There is lots of robbing that happens all around, but luckily Elder Ramos is friends with all the robbers and they leave us alone. When they want to rob us my comp just says, "No man! We are goin' to church!" For some reason, that convinces them to leave us alone. 

Things are sweet with Elder Ramos. I love Peruvians, especially short ones. In other words, I love all Peruvians. They are always so jolly and love to cook you food and love practical jokes.  He is teaching me how to be a zone leader, and I listen intently. Basically as a Zone Leader, you have to go to the hospital whenever one of the members of your zone goes to the hospital and stay there till they get out, talk a lot with President about everything that is happening in your zone. You also have lots of meeting with the Stake President. He told me that to be a zone leader is like being a mini mission president over 20 or so missionaries. It's cool thought. I kind of fell like I'm being trained again. This is the first time that I have a companion older than me in about 7 months. It's real good to be taken care of and not the other way around for a little bit. 

Today I had to accompany Elder Ramos to Capital to do some paperwork for his visa. It was exciting to go to Capital again. It was good to be out of the villa and into a city for a little bit. We went to capital with a group of other missionaries who had to do paperwork too. One of them was a pair of sister missionaries. I asked one of them where she was from and she told me Nicaragua. I told her that Rick is in Nicaragua and she freaked out and was like, "Elder Millett!!!!!???" Then I kind of freaked out and shouted and danced and peed a little. I showed her the picture of Matt, Rick, Kyle, Akash and I that I always carry around with me. Confirmed. It turns out that she was in one of Ricks wards and knew him really well. It was really exciting and we talked about Rick the rest of the trip. I can't believe my buddies are coming home in the next 4 months. Can't believe it.

The other day we went over to one of the members in our wards houses to have dinner and a family home evening. We got to the house and found out that we would be sharing dinner (an asado) with an Elder who was going home and his family who had just come from the states to pick him up. The family's name is Schmitt. They are from Texas. I cannot tell you how weird it was to speak English with adults from the United States again. It was so good and so funny to watch them try to eat asado. They were really grossed out, but ate blood sausage anyways. (P.S. I'm starting to get a taste for blood sausage. It pretty good once you forget what you are eating....) I acted as the translator because they didn't speak any Spanish whatsoever. They were so nice.

This week we are baptizing a lady named Lidia. She is 60ish years old and real good. She was a Jehovah's Witness and is now getting excommunicated for getting baptized in our church. She is such a boss with so much faith. This baptism is a little strange for me because I have never baptized someone that I have not found personally. I don't know her all that well because i just got here, but I love her tons nonetheless.