Fwd: Foto

week nine

Feliz Navidad Folks,

 Well it has been quite a week with the Holidays and everything. We had a Christmas conference with one half of the mission on tuesday and that was really cool. I am not really even sure what all happened this week because time kind of flies by and gets all mixed together so I will pay more attention for next week. It has been interesting to have my first Christmas in the summer season. I kind of miss cool weather, but the warmth definitely opens some new possibilities for celebration. So in Uruguay Christmas eve is the big holiday where everyone celebrates, and Élder Lockhart knew that it would not be possible to get a set lesson with anyone, so what he did was bake a bunch of sugar cookies and we took them around to everyone we know to use as an excuse to get into there house and talk about Christ with them and share cookies. It was a really good Idea, and the cookies weren't half bad either. In fact I would only say that they were about 10% bad, and 90% good. Also I don't really spend very mush money in this area, so I have saved up a ton already, so I decided to treat myself by dropping 1,000 pesos uruguayos on a Christmas eve feast. I got three bags of milk and a bag of chocolate milk, and a bag of chocolate powder, and a bunch of alfahors, and a kilo of dulce de leche,and these uruguayo pie things called frolas. It was pretty great. Speaking of that my super market just had a whole piglet for sale in the carnecería. I couldn't afford it though and it wouldn't fit in my oven anyway. We had permission to stay out untill ten thirty with a memeber that night so we went to our recent convert Victors house. He and his wife are Chilenos so the made us food from Chile which is a lot like food from Uruguay, just with some different ingredients and made in a different way. Any way I didn't have room after to eat all the stuff I bought. We also had permission to stay up until midnight thirty to watch the fire works. What we did is that Elder Lockhart climbed up on our roof and I handed him our chairs and things and those of you who have climbed onto the roofs of things with me before know that I am not very good at climbing so I kind of pulled myself up there and flopped onto the roof, and then we just sat up there and ate alfahors and drank yerba. At 12:00 the fire works started. It was amazing and way better than the fourth of july. It was like all at once the entire country, at least where there are peoples and not cowtles, started erupting with mortars. Definitely the most exuberant celebration in honor of the birth of Christ I have ever seen. It was like everyone made a pact that they would be seen from Mars or expend all of their amunition trying. A floating lantern landed in the tree in front of our house and we thought it was going to burn down but it didn't.

On Christmas we only had church for one hour, and it rained really hard. We ate lunch with the Cardoso family, who have a son on a mission in Brazil. It was a really great meal of meat and beets and things. After that I got to skype my family. My skype account miraculously worked and it was really great to see them. The time went by too fast though, and I got a little teary eyed when I had to press to off button, so I had to sit there for a minute and be melancholy, then I got up and went back to work. Later that night when my comp was doing his skype I got a lot of quiet time to just sit in the chapel and think about the birth of Christ. It was cool to be able to feel really close to him and I am gratefull that we all take the effort to celebrate him.

Also my friend Reid Honeycutt turned 19 this week so if you see him wish him happinesses.

 1: Captain crunch from America for breakfast

2: my pile of junk food

3: A woodpecker

4: Me drinking mate on the roof

week 8

Hey Everyone,

Life here is good and normal. I am getting pretty excited for Christmas because it will be a great celebration. I have been trying to wear my santa hat every night but it is not totally weather appropriate. As far as stuff that happened this week, well we were walking down the nameless street known to missionaries as calle de sangre (long story) and I looke ddown and I saw a wallet in the grass. It belonged to someone named carlos and it was full of cash, so we found his phone number and called him and returned it, so that was pretty cool. I got to break down a wall with a crow bar. I finally got myself a mate, bombilla, thermos and bag of yerba which is everything I need to become a true Uruguayo. The mate is made of a piece of a cattle which is pretty great. I drank some with like a liter of hot water saturday morning and I felt normal all day but then I couldn't fall asleep until 2 that night so I may have to get more acustomed. We were walking yesterday and somebody had tied some horses up in the brush, and apparently people here don't like it when you touch their horses but there didn't seem to be anybody aroun so I touched one and it looked pretty confused, but it made me feel like I was back home so that was cool. ¿What do you call crocidilians that work with stocks and meet regularly with the LDS missionaries? ¡Invest-a-gators! For reasons unknown the hot water tank in our shower stopped functioning so I have been taking cold showers to toughen up my body and become more of a hard core kind of person. It is really not so bad once you get completely wet. Also I had to go to Montevideo today to sign some residency papers, so I am now officially a permanent resident of The Oriental Republic of the Uruguay. Yup.

1: My cow horn mate.

week seven

Queridos Hermanos y Hermanas,

It was another week of hard work. We were actually hindered a bit because we ended up having to go to Montivideo three times for Elder Lockhart but he should be fixed and we still got good stuff done. One cool thing that happened this week was that we were walking down the street we live on and we saw a couple of guys in their driveway trying to move this giant cabinet, armoir thing. We asked if they needed heop and they said yes! I was super excited because people never let us help them with stuff off the street, so we ran over there and put our sculpted musculature to work moving what was definitely the most humongous piece of furniture I have ever move. Then we shared a message with them and they agreeed to let us come back and they were super cool. I would like to thank my dad for training me my whole life for this moment by making me move all that furniture with him. If you see him give him a pat on the back and tell him good hob for effective fathering. I would also like to thank my Grandpa Christensen for advising me to serve in any capacity I can. Definitely some of the best advice I've ever been given.

In further news ¡I got bit by a dog for the first time this week! It was a big angry german shepard that jumped up and nicked my elbow as I was leaning over a gat. It only broke the skin a little bit and didn't break my shirt fabric, which is pretty cool because now I can say that happend to me on my mission and also probably won't get an infection, so don't worry mom. Any way the guy we were contacting was super interested in our Christmas campaign so ¡ vale la pena!

A thought: a few weeks ago my cousin Carrie, who is serving como misionera en Málaga Spain, said that in spain they don't feed you until you are full just untill you have had enough. Well in Uruguay they feed you untill you are full and then they kepp feeding you and feeding you, and then they give you a bunch of coke, which is a beverage I used to hate but the mission changes you. It works for the Uruguayos though because Breakfast and dinner aren't really a thing here, just lunch and snacks.

A chiste: So there was an ice sculpting contest, and the theme of this contest was to see who could create the best and most detailed replica of any South American country. A pair of sculptors were working together and one of them was appropriately bundled up, but the other was only wearing shorts and sandals, nothing else. The first sculptor thought this was a little strange so he said to his partener "aren't you cold" the second sculptor thought about it and said "well, I guess it is a little Chile".

Also my brother Seth's Birthday will probably be this week, most likely on wednesday the 14th, which is the day it usually comes on, so if you see him that day, and it actually ends up being his birth day, wish him happiness.

I did some mathematicals and figured out that in the last six weeks if we walked a conservative 2 miles a day we would have walked something like 84 miles total, but we probably did way more than that so it could be like 200 which is cool to think about.

Also another elder was handing me off my camera and it kind of dropped and got a little messed up, so most of my pictures might be kind of psychedelic untill I figure out what to do about that.

1: Me, Élder Diaz, and the viejito

2: you know physics is broken when this happens to your face

3: A bird that turned out not too bad

Week six

Fellow travelers through time and space,

Well preparation day is on tuesday this week because it gives everybody who is changing areas this week a day to get ready to leave on wednesday. Speaking of which, I made itt through my first change in the field!  It seems like it went by way faster than the same amount of thime in the CCM. In fact this whole year went by faster than any ever before. I will probably wake up one day soon and realize that I am 120 years old and my whole life has gone by. Anyway me and Elder Lockhart are staying here in Lomas.

So I was studying my scriptures, especially Isaiah 53, and I noticed how the scriptures always talk about the Savior being despised and rejected of men, being cast down and trodden down and so forth. The scriptures also talk a lot about the Savior carrying things for us like our griefs, our sorows, the chastisement of our peace, and many other things. So it seems to me that the atonement, in large part, is about Him who is great and strong descending down low so He could lift the rest of us, who are weak, up to where He is. I don't know I just really like that imagery.

It suddenly got really hot this week, like the kind of heat that makes you want to lie down and fall asleep and never half to wake up again, but I here it gets way hotter than this and I am sure that in winter we will be begging for the heat so that should be pretty fun.

We also got to go to downtown Montevideo in the other mission yesterday so Elder Lockhart could get an ingrown toenail taken care of so I included a picture( of the city not the toenail).

 1 an oven bird. They are pretty fascinating. you should look into them.

2 some cool clouds over the Giannatasio where I live

3 some buildings

4 some uruguayo churros

5 My friend and zone leader Elder Slimming is going back home to chile this week so I included a tribute of him with his homemade fishing rig