3 WEEKS IN ARGENTINA!

ok so yesterday was father´s day so we almost couldn´t find a place open to email. apparently, the day after a holiday, everyone has the day off of work and everything is shut down. it´s weird.

first off one story. It´s been raining here like crazy so it is ridiculously cold. we were knocking doors the other day in the rain and this huge german shepherd jumped up on his fence and sprayed us with mud from his feet, then when we started walking away, he jumped the fence somehow and started charging at us. my companion bent down quickly to get a rock, but all we had were little pebbles and mud and he was coming to kill us. Luckily, he thought we had a big rock and ran away. we were breathing hard for a little after that haha. oh yeah i don´t think i ever told you that we clap at the doors. almost everyone has fences so to "knock" doors, we stand outside the fence and clap really loud. its kind of cool.

We were in an investigator´s house this week and we saw a news report about Bariloche, the area i wanted to go to first, it´s like a skiing town, just beautiful, but anyway, the news report said they were having huge civil unrest there. the police apparetnly killed a 14 year old boy and the whole city is in protest, throwing rocks at police and smashing stuff. the police have already killed 3 more, in the report, it had a video of a police man firing a shotgun into a huge crowd, so i´m sure more than just 3 are dead. i´m sure the missionaries there can´t even leave their houses! i´m a little glad i´m not there now, but it would be exciting.

Oh happy father´s day dad! and yes, i have been getting your emails, they´ve helped a lot. I haven´t had time to read all of them from this week because like i said, we barely found a place to email and we´re short on time today. we had a zone activity earlier where we ate pizza an elder made and played some soccer. i´m so bad at soccer it´s not even funny. but yeah we we´re playing and an elder got hit in the mouth by another elder´s shoulder when they jumped for the ball and it almost knocked out one of the his teeth. it was one of his front ones too and it was barely hanging on. he went to go find a place that could fix it but as he said, i wouldn´t want to go under the knife here in argentina. he´ll probably lose the tooth, but at least he´ll fit in here. i swear everyone here is mission most if not all of their teeth.

We run into a lot of testigos de jehovah down here, what´s that in english, witnesses of jehovah? i already can´t remember some english haha. but anyway, one thing i found out, most people outside the church believe jehovah is god the father and jesus christ is just jesus christ. I had no idea! i just grew up learning jehovah was jesus christ and i didn´t know anyone thought differently. But when we talk to them, that´s the main reason they won´t let us in, because we say jehovah is jesus.

I tried a little piece of heaven here this week. I got a churro. now that doesn´t sound that good, but imagine the most delicious, warm, soft, and sugary churro you´ve ever had and then mix in the fact that they fill the inside of the churro with dulce de leche. oh man they´re so good and they´re only 1 peso which is about 25 cents in the us. i could eat them all day.

We have some good progressing investigators. one is named patricia, she´s 17 and from peru. She lives with her dad here but her mom in up in peru still and she keeps telling her not to go to church and to quit listening to us. The good thing is that she keeps coming to church, she´s reading the book of mormon a lot and she keeps listening to us. We extended the baptismal committment to her yesterday and she said yes which made me so happy but then we remembered she is only 17 and needs her mom´s permission before she can get baptized. We´re going to teach her about the law of the fast this week so she can fast that her mom´s heart wil be softened and she´ll give permission to let her be baptized. We´re not supposed to have our families fast for investigators here otherwise, i´d ask you to as well, but yeah, as it is, i think we´ll get the whole ward to fast for her.

We also have an investigator named Blanca (yeah like from street fighters, kaleb and kessa). she´s about 45 and she´s progressing a lot. she´s smoking though, and she´s trying to stop but she has to completely stop before she can get baptized. we actually set a baptismal date with her because she is old enough to choose for herself so we´re working towards the 10th of july as her baptism. we have some other people who are getting close to a baptismal date as well.

Hey can you ask Holli if she knew anyone with the last name Cox in high school? There´s an elder here with that name who graduated from AF in 2009 and he played football. He´s in my zone, so it´s pretty cool that we ended up so close to each other. He lives just a little ways away from the mt. timp temple and could have been in our stake for all i know. but yeah, just check to see if she knows him.

Some things i need though. Kaleb, and dad, i love the sports updates you give me, keep them coming. no one ever knows what happened in the US soccer game because they only really care about argentina. hopefullly the us never plays them or that could be trouble. oh and my companion and i were talking about football this last week and i thought i remembered you telling me that brandon marshall left denver, but if that happened, where did he go? are there any other major changes in the nfl teams that i don´t know about? besides tim tebow, what happended in the draft, and who has the best upside in the nfl this year?


I´m glad to here from everyone, kaleb, i really liked your email about the priest´s camp. Holli, i´m really sorry, i haven´t read your email yet, so i cant respond to anything in this. don´t worry though, i´ll read it before i go. Dad, i´m really grateful for your emails, i really hope you can go to that spanish class at work, that would be cool. mom and kess, your emails are always good, thanks so much, wish me luck!
Love, elder newey