Email August 17, 2015 - Ike

Email August 17, 2015 – Elder Isaac Burton

Hola Argentina!!!

So I guess I´ll just start at the beginning. We left the mtc on monday morning. We took the front runner the the <salt lake airport where we got to call family which was super nice. The people in Utah are so good to missionaries, a radom guy bought me and one of my companions Cafe Rio which totally made our day. From Salt lake we flew to Atlanta where we were delayed in landing because of a storm, luckily we were able to land though. But ooce we landed we found out that our flight was delayed and hour to 11:00pm. Then a bit later to 2:00am and then eventually to 7:30am the next morning. SO we had the awesome advinture of being able to spend the nght at the airpot because of the 10 hour layerover! And it was aweome! there was no wher to sleep really so we only got like two hours of sleep. We just kinda hng out and ate lots of food because the airline gave us all these free food vouchers to use anywhere at the airport. So we all went and got like $30 worth of food each from mckdnalds for breakfast haha. Not the best meal to have vefore a 10 hour plane ride but it was fun. Finally we got on the plane durning which we all slept practically the whole time. So that was our fun travel experience. Just ate and talked and slept pretty much.  When we landed we all met up with missionaries from our missions except there werent any missionaries from my mission. <just this guy with a peirced eyebrow and ears who said he was gonna take us to our presidents house. It seemed a little sketchy to me but we didnt have anything else to do so me and the three other guys going to my mission went with him. We got is this drove off into the city. There was one point during the drive when I pulled out my camera to take pictures of the city but then the driver turned around and told us to put our cameras away cause we would get shot if someone outside saw it...so yeah that kinda scared us a little. We told our mission mom about that and she said the guy wasn´t joking and theat we should hardly ever use are cameras while in argentina. She said we´d probably get robbed if anyone saw them. So thats why I´m not sending to many pictures, sorry mom. I did get some still though, theyre just with members and my companions though. 

We did get dropped off at our presidents house though which was good. Our president is awesome! He orriented us and gave us our companions and then sent us off to our areas with some emanadas to eat on the way to our apartments. My companion is Elder Bahena. He´s from mexico but I found ot that when he was around 10 he lived in ogden for three years. So he speaks english pretty well because of that. He´s awesome, I like him a lot. He´s been out for 8 months. Our pench (apartment) is pretty run down but it´s not bad. We have hot water which is nice but the shower is just in the middle of the bathrrom and the whole bathroom is the shower which is kinda wierd. It works though. Bodais are wierd, I´m still not sure what I think of them.

The rest of the week I´ve been getting to know the area and argentina. It´s a pretty crazy place. A lot of the streets are just dirt and since it´s been raining lately they are all just mud pits. All my pants and shoes are super dirty. Definitlry differnet than I expected. My area is very poor. Most of the areas in my mission are. My companion told me that we have the poorest mission in Argentina. It´s cool though because the people are really humble. THere are dogs everywhere. Literally. Even on the roofs. I dont even know how they get up their. Most of them dont bother us though. There have only been a few who have tried to attack us but we´re pretty good at scaring them off. For the first three days we had milanesa for lunch. It´s basically like country fried steak and its prety good. And it´s super common. All the missionaries hate it becasue they have to eat is so much. I can see why that would happen. We get fed so much for lunch that we usually dont even eat dinner unless an invesitgoator gives us some. Yesterday I had my first asado! Thats basically an argentine bbq and it was aweome. The meat here is delicious. I dont think I´ve ever had so much meet in one sitting before. I flt pretty gross afterward. It was good though. It constisted of ribs, sausage, stuffed cow intestines, and blood sausage. It was all super good except for the blood sausage. Was weird. It´s basically fried cow blood and little peices of intestine stuffed into and intestine. Not super delicious I decided. But it is a lot better than I expected. I can eat it if I need to. We also got ice cream which was amazing. The ice crea, here is way beter the in the states. Also, best dessert I´ve had so far is peches whith dulce de leche on top. It´s amazing. You all need to try it. I´ve had more coke this week than I´ve had in my whole life. Every house gives you coke or another soda.

I still cant understand anything really. That´ll come soon though. We are having thre baptisms this onth and just two days ago I commited someone to being baptized next month which felt super cool! IT made me so happy. The people here definitley need the gospel. I´m pretty much out of time so I´ll write mor next week. It´s ben awesome, I love this crazy place already! I hope you all have a great week! Love you all!

love Elder Burton