COMODORO RIVADAVIO, ARGENTINA

Hi! it´s so great to read english, haha. i have a good deal of time on the internet, close to an hour so email away. so here is my story and my keyboard doesn´t have a good shift key so i just won´t use it.

i left utah at eight on monday and we got to buenos aires at around 930 our time so 630 your time on tuesday. we spent that day flying to neuquen and meeting the president and stuff. we spent the night in a building next to the missoin home and the next moring, we met our new companions. mine is elder whitaker from pleasant view utah, and weér pretty similar. he loves a bunch of sports and his favorite team is the saints so he was mad when they won the super bouwl becuase he was out here. but yeah, we did some door contacts on wednesday until our bus left at 10 at night. we rode the bus for 16 hours to my new area, comodoro. so in all, it took 4 days and 3 hours, calculating in all of the time changes, before i got to my first area. But yeah, go look up comodoro on a map or on google earth, im right by the coast so its always windy and freezing cold. luckily there is no snow but its a desert so the sand is constantly blowing in your face. the wind is unlike anything we have back in utah, i can literally let it hold me up if i lean into it.

when i first got here, i couldn´t understand a word that was said to me, they all talk to fast and have an an argentinian accent, but i´m starting to pick up on words and stuff. i just exchanged all of my dollars to pesos, 120 dollars worth to 460 pesos. sweet exchange i would say, but i don´t really know...when we´re done here, we´re going to go grocery shopping and stuff. the meals aren´t quite like how i heard they would be. i heard you never stop eating but that isn´t true. we eat breakfast at the pension and then eat a big luch with a member and that´s it. we have to eat when we get back to our pension at night. but it´s all good, we have plenty of food and stuff, just around 830, you start getting really hungry because your body is used to more food at that time.

the dogs here are insane. a couple are nice and just follow us around for a block or so, being scratched and stuff. the others try to attack us and we have to bend down to pick up a rock, which they all understand means ´¨run away¨. the other day though, i just had to carry a rock with me to keep them back. the nice ones follow you and bump your leg with their noses and it´s kind of a weird experience because your heart always jumps because you think it is another dog tring to bite you.

i had my first sunday yesterday and the members were all really nice. a lot of them call me ¨the baby¨ because i look so young. I had to bare my testimony in sacrament, the bishop asked us to because no one was coming up, haha, but everyone says i can talk pretty well, but i can understand next to nothing. it´s true too, i have to ask people to repeat themselves over and over until i pick up on one word that i can kind of know what they´re talking about. it´s a lot of fun though.

i really need the prayers because people aren´t that receptive down here so keep praying that we´ll be guided to those who have been prepared. especially when the world cup starts, no one is going to open their doors, it´s going to be tough.

don´t worry about me though, i´m warm and safe

love, elder newey

ps. it would be kind of bad if someone broke into our pension so maybe you should pray that that doesn´t happen either.