Alooooooooha!

I love the mountains, I love the great big sky, I love big bridges, I love when great whites fly. I love the whole world and all craziness. Boom de yadah boom de yada boom de yada boom de yada...
I love the villa, I love mullet hair cuts, love funny accents, I love the alfajors. I love Argentina and all its sights and sounds. Boom de yada...

This week in Argentina: Fun food, mental institutions, and baptismal interviews.

I just was eating in a Peruvian restaurant (mmmm mmm good) and their was a hair in my soup! And attached to that hair was pig skin. Yes, it was all put in the bown intentionally. Hey, I don´t make the cultural rules, I just eat.
Furthermore, this week Hermana Delgado and I were walking and musing over how incredibly unsanitary the gutter is (and when I say ¨gutter¨ it refers to the mini, street-lining rivers filled with any manner of disease and pestilence....and barbie dolls) when we noticed some kids playing in said gutter a ways down the road. As we came closer we saw that they had some sort of snake-like creature squirming about in their arms. We asked what it was. They informed us it was an eel. Yes, an eel. They had fished it out of the gutter. And what good is fishing if not to feed the family? That was the plan, it turns out. But when they realized the foreigner had interest, they quickly offered to put it in my backpack or cut it up for us to take home and cook ourselves. Now see here! If you´re ever going to try and sell me fresh eel from the sewage gutter, you´d better think twice. Or at least offer to throw in a couple of street rats in the offer. I mean, come on!

We´ve been visiting a mental institution of late. Well, a rehab center of sorts. The man we visit is stable, but it´s interesting to see how many different situations and challenges people can have. There is so much good to be done in the world, and so many who need it done now.

You know, with all the work we do daily encouraging people to take steps toward Christ through scripture study and prayer, one of the absolutely most rewarding moments is when we arrive at church and someone has taken the step of attendance of their own initiative. There´s a man named José who we´ve been working with who is one of the ¨humble seekers of happiness¨ that I´ve met here (Alma 27:18). He works in a parking garage of sorts and has had many a trial in his day. As we teach him of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, it´s clear that He desires the happiness that comes with aligning our lives with the will of God. However, we didn´t think he was going to be in church yesterday, however when we arrived, there he was smiling in his Sunday suit and eager to learn more. And this when just recently he´d not been able to attend at all because of his work schedule. The Lord worked His miracles and gave José Sunday mornings free from work. Yay! José is going to be baptized within the next couple of weeks.
We also have some other people who are very eager to be baptized and will be seeing that dream come true within the next couple of weeks as well. So, we spent Saturday running around with the District leader and his companion so that they could interview a few of these folk. I´m so excited for them all. The Church is true and it blesses the lives of everyone - members, soon-to-be-members, and nonmembers alike.

Keep the faith and Keep on smilin´!

I love you!

Hermana Lindquist