Dear Fam:
What with our Conference with the President Monday, P day Tuesday, Zone conference Friday, and Service Project all day Saturday, la obra misional was a little slow this week in San Rafael. So now that I´ve taken a few weeks to get my bearings here in Argentina, I thought I´d take this time, to give you the low down on my area, and answer all the cliches so many love to ask. :)
So San Rafael! How to describe... Firstly, the weather. Right now we´re just coming out of winter and heading into spring, so although most of the trees are still barren, the popcorn is beginning it´s popping, if you know what I mean. (Primary, anyone?) We´ve been getting a few little sprinklings of rain, but nothing too heavy or hindering besides the fact that you have to be sure your laundry isn´t drying outside during the storm. Not fun.
The food! We eat lunch with the members basically every day, which is great. I would describe the food here as basically anything you´d eat in the states, just with less flavor, less sugar, and less fat. We eat a lot of pasta, potatoes, and salad. Rice too, but not as often as you´d think. Their salads typically have lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and for dressing usually just oil and salt, or lemon juice. Ranch doesn´t exist here. Also, Argenines tend to have obsessions with random things. Like mayonaise. It´s basically gold here. And soda. Every meal they´ll bring out a liter of soda. It´s more common than water. Which I guess is a good thing seeing as I can´t drink the water here unless it´s bottled, and luckily there´s a brand of soda here without sugar that lots of people buy, so that´s been great.
And the empanadas! They say empanadas are very common here, and I guess they are, but I´ve only had them once. Basically it´s a tortilla thingy with meat (somtimes eggs and olives too, or other random things) inside, then it´s folded in half, press down the edges like a pie, and bake it in the oven for a while. A member family fed us empanadas the other day and we both ate like ten or something. It was kind of disgusting in a very delicious and succulent way.
I wouldn´t describe the area as poor, more just well used. Anything you see around here has wear in it. If it can go for another year, it does. Let´s just say garbage day means a few grocery bags of stuff.
Let´s see, what else. There are bikes and motercycles everywhere. Any time of day. Everyone has them, and uses them, all types of people. You´ll see guys in suits riding their bikes to work, women riding around with a little kid in a baby seat attached to the back, and all kinds of people hauling different things around like groceries, wheels, boxes, random stuff.
Oh, how could I forget. We´ve got the Siesta here. It´s definitely a thing. After lunch, the biggest meal of the day, everything shuts down. All the tiendas, gas stations, schools, everything. Everyone locks themselves in their houses and takes a little nap. AKA, no coming to the door for missionaries. So, we take this time to study. We have a half hour in the morning for personal study, and then study our other half hour during the siesta, plus our hour of companion and hour of language study. Normally missionaries don´t have as much study time, but I´m in training so they give us that extra time.
Anyway, there´s a little bit about Argentina for you. As for the people, generally we´ll talk to them on the street, give them a little tarjetita, and take down their address to visit them later. If they didn´t lie to us about where they live, which happens quite often, they´ll usually let us in for one or two visits before they lose interest. Let´s just say we´ve got lesson one down, backward and forward. A lot of people are Catholic or Evangelical, so after a visit or two either they´ll tell us they appreciate the visit, but really have no interest, or they´ll just kind of hint at it by giving you excuses or not opening the door. But, we keep searching. Somewhere under some Argentine stone there´s someone with a heart prepared to hear this message. We´ll find them.
Meanwhile, we visit a lot of the less active members. As President Goates says, reactivating a member is just as important as a baptism. Strengthening the ward is just as important as finding new investigators. So, we´ve been doing a lot of that, and the work moves forward.
Well, that´s about all for this week folks. Thanks for the letters and prayers. I´m so grateful to be here bringing people closer to christ, whether they be members, less actives, or that random guy over there. The church is true, and I know it.
Hermana Cannon
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