Jan 4, 2010

uvia´s (grapes)

Argentine Asado (BBQ)

The scenery

The Godoy Cruz Zone w. the scarecrow

The bed i´ll never forget

Hello hello hello from the cyber cafe in Argentina. I´m sitting here waiting for the email that tells me if i´m leaving Trapiche or not. Hasn´t come yet and my time is running short, so you night not know till next monday! I´ll find out today but who knows when. I never thought i´d say this but i couldn´t be more relieved that the holliday season is over. It was so hard to work these last two weeks. For tons of reasons, 1 your a lil home sick thinking about family and what not, 2 we had days we couldn´t work (christmas, new years, plus the christmas party), 3 all of our investigators don´t really want to have appointments and what not because their all with their families from different parts of the country, 4 everyone is busy!!!! It will be really good to be able to just have a normal week where we can get things done. I´m really hoping to stay here in Trapiche another 6 weeks, we have 3 investigators that are set to be baptised in the next two weeks and i really really want to be there. If not that's ok and i know the lord will call me where he needs me to go.
I had a new years i will never forget for the rest of my life. Quite the adventure! We went out to an area about 25 minutes away from Trapiche to a family that invited all the missionaries in Godoy Cruz. This family is from Paraguay and didn´t have family to pass the holiday. Whats great is..... they own a vineyard and live on it. It was gorgeous, beautiful scenery. We got there and ate the famous Argentine Asado (argentine bbq) complete with all different cuts of steak, chicken, real sausages, and the nasty blood sausage (yes i ate it, so gross haha) but for the most part it was sooooooooo delicious. We spent 2-3 hours preparing the meal and bringing table and chairs from the chapel to the vineyard (of course on foot). The meal was ridiculously good. And it was just beautiful as we ate outside in the vineyard overlooking the ginormous mountains here. After we ate waited for the new year to come by making a big scarecrow, a missionary scare crow! Apparently its a tradition in Peru (we have 3 Peruvians in our zone) to dress up a scarecrow like yourself and at the strike of midnight light it on fire. Signifying a new birth and a new year. In any case we dressed up a scarecrow in a shirt and tie, and even made a fake plaque for him :). At the strike of midnight we lit it up, as well as TONS of other fireworks. The city just lit up, there was a constant sound of fireworks, and the sky was bright for 10 minutes straight it seemed. Fireworks are huge here, and they have the big ´legal´ ones. It was quite the scene i´ll tell you. They also have these things called GLOBO¨S, it´s basically a small hot air balloon that they send into the sky. So for hours there were these mini orbs all over the sky. Kinda cool. Anyways, on new years everything shuts down. The buses, the cab services, everything. Supposedly we had it arranged that a member family who had a car was going to come pick us up and we were all going to sleep in the closest apartment to the area we were in. They showed and picked up 5 elders, left, and......... never came back. We were stranded... haha. In a vineyard, in argentina, on new years eve. We waited and waited till 2 in the morning and realized that they weren´t coming. We all paniced a little, i mean imagine 10 elders in missionary clothing just stranded... we could do nothing, and knew we couldn´t walk because of the distance yes but more because the streets are just downright dangerous. So turns out 8 of us slept in the garage in the vineyard on 4 terribly old ruined twin mattresses, and the other 2 slept in the dirt under the starts! Woke up at 6 00 and took the first bus home! My body is just covered in mosquito bites haha, but it was quite the adventure, something i´ll never ever ever forget haha. Anyways i hope everything is good at home. I was going to ask one other thing. I´ve seen Obama on the tv´s down here a lot while passing restaurants and stuff, and saw an airplane blow up or something. Whats going on with that?? You´ll have to let me know. Love you all, stay safe and use your father in heaven. If your worried about something if you need help, you have a father in heaven that is waiting to help. Pray! Use him! Love you!

Elder Campbell