September 3, 2012

This week was real good. The winter is just starting to turn into winter and I like it a lot. Almost every day this week was real sunny and would have been perfect if it had not been for absurd amounts of humidity. But way good anyway. Elder Villalba is so funny. He has different ways of speaking. He is so proper and refined when he talks to adults, the bishop, and so on. But when we talk to our little thug buddies on the corners, he transforms. He sounds just like any other villa boy and breaks out his ghetto vocabulary. It's so funny. I only wish I could keep up. I am at the point in my Spanish where I can speak almost perfectly in a formal situation, but when I try to speak in ghetto-speak, I am just another white boy rubio. Maybe someday....But the point is that we are having lots of success with all the villa folk. 

This coming week will be a little wild. On Wednesday I have the Zone Leader counsel all day. On Thursday, we have a zone meeting that Elder Villalba and I have to teach. On Friday, we have a special fireside with President Eyering, Ballard, and Chistopherson with the North and West missions. There will be 600+missionaries there. On Saturday, we have the cultural event that will be in the soccer stadium of the team Independiente. All the missionaries will enter the stadium singing "Called to Serve". On Sunday we have the temple re-dedication. I don't really know what happens in a temple re-dedication, but I am excited to find out. I feel like this week is kind of holiday week for the missionaries.

This week was really busy. Elder Villalba and I were running all over the place trying to find new investigators. We are kind of short on investigators right now, so that will be the theme of the next few coming weeks also. I love the feeling of working hard. In my little missionary quote book, I found a quote that said, " One of the most satisfactory feelings is to lose ones self in ones work." It's true. The mission is one of the most stress free times there is. I have a very defined purpose, and I don't really have to worry about anything else. Its only the Mondays when I start feeling a little bit trunky...just for a few minutes.

Remember Malena? The daughter of the tango dancers? This week was supposed to be her baptism. But, we had a long talk with her and her parents, and they think it is best if she wits to be baptized until after her quinciñera. (15th bday party for girls-its a big deal in Latin America and the families save up for years and then spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it) We protested as much was appropriate, but in the end, unfortunately (joke), it is her choice. So, We will be postponing the baptism, once again, until the end of September. It will be great.

This week, we discovered this nasty nasty villa in our area that is probably the worst worst place in the world. The moment you enter the villa, a crowd of 6-13 year old boys who are high on crack with knives start asking you for money and poking you with the knives. I never leave the apartment without a pocketful of monedas to give to the little kids so they don't stab me in the kidney or something. The parent of the kids are all crack addicts too and aren't even conscious to the fact that they have a child. The kids don't even have a slight chance at good or even normal life. We walked down this passageway past two dead guys who had overdosed on crack a few days earlier, and no one had bothered to move them or anything. There is a new fad in the villas for the men to cover their women in alcohol and burn them to death if the woman cheats on them. And a lot of other bad things that I probably should not say in this email. In the villa, i talked to a 10 year old girl for a long time. As I talked to her, I just was filled with pity and angst. It made me think a lot. Why am I so lucky? Why are the kids who are born in this villa so unlucky? What chance does this little girl have at a good life? What is the difference between us? How can a happy/full life and a life like theirs exist in the same world at the same moment? Its just so bad. So depressing. But weirdly, it has bolstered my faith in God. There has got to be some equalizer after this world. His name is God.