drewsmissiontoargentina: I'M HERE! LOVE IT!

¡Familia Ludwig!
So.....I'm here! haha. Sorry is has taken so long to write, our P day is Wednesday but last Tuesday was ours because it was transfers. My area is Vucetich, and it is an hour from the mission home. By the time we got here we had to eat and a couple other things, we tried to email but every internet place was full and we couldn’t wait any longer because we had appointments to get to. When we got to Argentina, we landed in the "country" part, it wasn’t in the city. We got our luggage and everything and met President, we then drove to the temple and met the native missionaries at the MTC and just talked at the temple for a little bit. We then drove to the mission home where we had interviews, lunch, and just went over rules and all that fun stuff. I was dead tired, though, as you saw from my picture. lol. The plane ride was so long but at the same time it went quick. I didn’t sleep that much until Lima to Argentina. The stewardesses and everyone on the plane spoke Spanish, or Costellano, I don’t know if that’s how you spell it but they don’t call it Español here, its better than that! lol It was crazy. I couldn’t really understand anything but it was fun. The plane was nice, and had tons of free music and movies and TV shows to watch, very tempting! lol But anyways after that we met our companions or trainers. Mine is elder Steed (Jordan), from Idaho. He is cool and has helped me a lot so far, he has been in this area for 7 months – that’s so long! He likes a lot of the same things I do so we get along great. He only has 6 months left in his mission, and he said he doesn’t want to go home and that it’s gone by way too fast. Vucetich is a pretty beat down place. It has dirt streets and it’s just crazy how much different it is from the U.S. It reminds me of the area Cameron described he was in. They burn their garbage in the streets and there is trash in every street. The people have hardly anything, it’s a pretty poor area. The members are awesome, though, they help so much and give everything to us, especially when we eat in their homes, they treat us like kings even though they have nothing. Its sad, though, because they don’t have much but it just makes us want to help them more. Our apartment is tiny, it was so dirty when we got here, I think my comp and his last comp forgot to clean for awhile lol so today we cleaned it all out so it looks a lot better. They gave me a blanket and I use my sheets. But we do have beds - so that’s good. Its so much different living here, I thought SVU dorms were bad, haha, now I’ve seen worse. But I love it here already, it doesn’t really bother me living in this type of place, at least for now because the Lord is just blessing us with people and that’s all that matters, and plus we are hardly in our place anyways. We are always walking and taking the collectivo (bus) around. It’s tiring some times but that’s probably a good thing. We don’t really knock on doors here, first because we clap when we are at a house to see if they are there. It’s funny but cool, too! And second we get most of our references from the members which is good. Oh and we don’t have a ward just a branch and it was raining Sunday so there was only like 20 people at church, they don’t like to travel when its raining because they have to walk. I also bore my testimony because it was my first time there, hope they understood! Language is coming alright. I can understand a little more everyday so as long as I’m progressing that’s good. I still can’t say many things. I need to learn a lot more words and grammar but for the most part they can understand me - but they speak so fast! Oh and we had my first baptism Wednesday! We weren’t prepared very well. Someone else was supposed to baptize the guy but didn’t show up. The ward mission leader didn’t come with our plans, my comp baptized him but forgot his clothes. I had mine but didn’t know the prayer yet so he used my pants and they were a little big for him! haha. And also the water heater wasn’t working so it was freezing water until like 10 minutes before we started. Warmed up a little but it was still crazy! Pretty good experience for my first baptism, huh? We will have a lot more though, we are trying to double last year’s baptisms in this area and this month we should pass last year’s number. So we have a lot of work to do. President Argyle is awesome. He talked a lot about obedience. He does have 3 kids here with him. Yeah so it is so weird living in a new country where nobody speaks English! But I love it. It just makes me want to learn the language more, and I love being in a new culture and seeing how other people live. It’s soooo different, though! One member had a car and we drove with him to an appointment to teach, and the cars are tiny! So when we were getting in to leave it was too small for me to get in and my pocket caught on something and ripped my pants! I don’t have time to write everyone personally today, but I’ll try next week. We still have to go to the store and buy food. And check this out, for lunch we went to a pizza buffet and it was 17 pesos which is around 6 U.S. dollars. I had like 14 pieces, haha, what a steal huh? They have some crazy pizzas, though, had some with hard boiled eggs, only onions, french fries, all sorts of stuff, they were all so good though, The food is amazing here! I love it! But anyways I will talk to you next week I hope everyone is doing good, I loved receiving your emails, sounds like everything is going good for you. I love you all so much, tell everyone hello for me! Til next week. Talk to you later. Con Amor, Elder Ludwig (and they can’t pronounce my name! it’s great!).
LOVE AND MISS YOU!!!