August 30, 2010 with Elder Draper in Treinta y Tres

Hey all,

I'm emailing early today because we had to travel into Montevideo. I'm now in the Ciber in Tres Cruces Terminal where we do changes. Me and all of the others from my group had to come in today to sign a paper for inmigration. I'm companions with Elder Lancaster today because he's now in my zone. We're spending all day here in Montevideo and going to take advantage of Tienda Inglesa that has all of the American stuff and the really nice, cheap ties.

Sounds like everything is rolling pretty well there in the states that you all live in now. Hope things keep going well. I imagine school's starting up and everything, so I hope that's going well. Here, the weather feels like spring already. They keep telling this Santa Rosa(not Lucia, I mix up my saints sometimes.) is coming, but there's no sign of it. Everyone swears it hasn't failed inthe last 45 years and it is always in august, but...not much time left and there was a perfectly blue sky yesterday.

Yes, Uruguay has a Halloween equivalent. They fairly recently picked up ours. It's the same day and it's basically identical from what I hear. You watch enough movies about a holiday, and you're gonna pick it up. It'll be interesting to see how it is after hearing about it.

So yeah, the work here is still going well, except for a bit of an incident that happened yesterday at church. Our recent baptism has caused a considerable increase to the Primary, going from around 10 to 13, plus the friends who have now started listening. A mom, Lorelei, who lives really close to the Caraballo, and is friends with Vanessa came to church yesterday. She and her oldest daughter Marìa, are really interested, or were. They also have 2 more younger daughters and no padre in the house, so it's difficult to drag all the kids to church, and...the youngest is...pure evil. On top of that the caraballo kids were acting up a little bit in sacrament meeting....on top of that, so was my companion a little bit. ON top of that, the Primary Presidenta is...not a people person and doesn't know how to manage stuff like this. She said some really mean stuff to the kids and to Lorelei, so we're trying to smooth things over now. It was pretty frustrating, but we're pressing forward. We recently found a melchizedek priesthood holder, which is hard to come by around here. He went inactive a long time ago, and he stopped us in the street and asked if he could start up again and bring his wife. They didn't come yesterday, but I've got high hopes for the wife. We had a really good charla with her and the guy is really cool. He'll probably need to quit smoking, but he's really got the ganas to start up again.

I'm still loving my area and if I finished the mission there, I'd be fine.