Word of the Week: caminar (to walk)

Hi family and friends, I hope this letter finds you all well and enjoying the summer! Hope everyone had a fun Fourth of July! We actually had our lunch appointment with a brother and his family. The brother speaks PERFECT english! When i met him for the first time, I actually thought he was American. Hahaha....It's really nice because he asks us to talk in English so he can practice. Yay! Last Monday for Pday we walked around San Luis and looked in all the fun little shops. There's lots of cool things around here! We were admiring all the neat leather gaucho stuff (Argentine cowboy)...hats, belts, metal bracelets, etc...Unfortunately one of the other Hermanas was sick, so Hna. Sybrowsky and I walked around together and just had a blast! The majority of the week was spent looking for a new apartment. Unfortunately our apartment started growing mold on the walls. The mission president and his wife didn't like this, so we've been feverishly working to find somewhere else to live. One day, we had about 10 minutes before an appointment with a renting business (not sure what to call it) and right next to the office is this park with a walkway that's covered in cool hanging vines/branches. We walked in a were taking a few pictures when a man came in behind us and started talking to my companion. I thought maybe we were supposed to pay to go in or something. He was so excited and welcomed us in and showed us around. It turned out to be something similiar to a reception hall in the states. there was a pool (empty mind you) with dinosaur scultpures around the pool (we of course took pictures with the dinosaurs...they were just too hilariously random). After talked for about 15 minutes, he invited us to come back a few days later to have lunch and to answer his questions about religion. His name is Aldo, he's 69 and he owns this party hall now since he's retired from being a lawyer. When we went back a few days later, we had a delicious lunch with empanadas, chicken with a fresh tomato salad, and flan for dessert (and don't forget the Argentine bread!) It was incredibley delicious and on a much grander scale than we'd imagined. His newphew (must be at least 25) served us our food and made sure we had everything we needed as we talked with Aldo. All during lunch we sat and listened to him as he talked about his beliefs. I didn´t understand everything, but I picked up enough to tell how confused he really is about religion. at one point he was talking about Darwin and evolution, monkeys, and Egyptians...it was odd. After we'd finished eating, we started teaching him about the Plan of Salvation and that we are literal children of God and descendants of Adam and Eve. It was so cool to see him and we taught and bore testimony of the Plan. You could see the spirit testifying to him; where he was talkative and confused before talking about evolution and the purpose of life, he was quiet, would nod and agree, and just looked much more relaxed and comfortable. At the end, my zone leader had previously challenged me to commit him to baptism, so I did. I told him that we wanted to help him and prepare him through baptism to live in the Celestial Kingdom, (I forgot to mention that his nephew came to join us and also attentively listened to our message). He told us that he'd already been baptized, so I told him that we needed to be baptized by someone with the proper authority, following the example of Jesus Christ. Like Christ was baptized by John the Baptist, we too need to be baptized by someone with that authority and that we have that authority in our church. He had a few more questions about the Priesthood, so my companion elaborated. He got it, he realized that his baptism therefore wouldn´t be valid because the whole, perfect church like Christ established wasn´t on the earth until it was restored through Joseph Smith. We again committed him and Nicolas to be baptized when they knew this was the true church. They both said yes...when they knew. Today we went back and had lunch with them as a whole zone (12 of us). It was again equally delicious and fun. He dedicated songs to me and Hna. Sybrowsky (he played the guitar for us). My song was titled "ojos verdes" (green eyes). I've never been serenaded by a 69 year old man before in my life....hahahaha. Needless to say, it was a wonderful experience and we are excited to teach him more. The best part of the lesson was when he noted multiple times that his stomach felt weird, that he'd never felt like that before, that we were making him really happy. The nephew was a bit more quiet, but having been raised rather religiously, knew all the answers about who Jesus Christ was and why he is important in our lives. We're excited to see them progress and get baptized...hopefully! We're off to a good start with them though! In other news, I've discovered that we eat lunch with the members (that's the big meal of the day). Lunch takes a long time to eat because they give us so much and continue to feed us! We always have bread (like a French baguette) with every meal. We usually have spaghetti with meat sauce, rice, chicken, pollenta (sp?), and boiled veggies. Everything is absolutely delicious, but I always eat too much. I recently realized that if I just ate really really slow, I would finish at the same time as everyone else, this way they would't see my empty plate and say "hermana, please, eat more". No matter how much I took initially, they always say I need to eat more. I'm going to try this new eating really slow strategy this week and hopefully i'll work otherwise I'll be huge by the end of my mission, We eat so much at lunch that I´m normally not hungry until 8 am the following morning...and I'm not exaggerating! The other fun thing we did this week was play Contacting Bingo. Hna. Sybrowsky and I devised a BINGO game of different people we have to find to contact during the day. For example, we need to contact someone who is smoking, someone with red hair (really difficult to find here...everyone has brown hair and brown eyes), someone eating, someone who touches us as they say no to listening to our message---ie: the touch of rejection as we call it :) It's fun and we're going to get our whole zone to do it to so each day we can have a winner. Everyone thinks it's hilarious! We had permission from President Lindahl to watch the soccer games because the city literally shuts down and everyone goes inside to watch the games. we watched the game...our first and last since they lost 0-4 against Germany. It was fun to sit with our investigator and watch it though, even though they lost....horribly! Alright, I'm about out of time. Thanks for the emails! I love you all so much. Spanish is coming....ever so slowly. I went on divisions on Saturday night with one of our ward missionaries. she's a 20 year old girl who is very sweet. we had a good time, but it was so hard. I was so glad that we were only on divisions. it was nice to get a taste of what my next transfer will be like in 4 weeks. it's gonna be tough, but i can tell that I will learn a TON. Thanks for all the words of encouragement. As hard as this is, it´s an awesome experience. I can't wait to speak Spanish and really understand and be able to work more effectively. It's hard to sit in a lesson and have so many things I want to say, but don't have to words to say it. I have been sharing the spiritual thought with the members during lunch and we contact about 10-15 people on the streets every day, which is good practice. Everyone tells me I speak well, so I'm trying to keep that in mind...always....It's hard, but I know this is where the Lord wants me...I'm not sure why yet, but I'm definitely excited to find out! Love to you all! Sorry my letter was kinda scatter-brained...it's kinda how my life is right now :) Hermana Pelton :) Mom: I´m working on learning how to make empanadas like an Argentine. We also went to Wal-Mart this week and they have some cool foods that I'm excited to bring home to you! (Cool cooking tools too!!!!) Things I love about Argentina: -Alfajores (spellings???) layered cookie (dulce de leche in the middle) then dipped in chocolate. they have to have a million calories in each bite, but they are so so so delicious! -People in San Luis are really friendly and not very often flat out rude to us when we contact them in the streets. -It's always sunny! -My companion has a ton of "friends" so we get tons of random free things like baked goods or little souveniers....it's great!