Feb. 14, 2011 with Elder Bush Rio Blanco Uruguay

Hey all,

Big changes this week! I'm now living in Rio Branco and loving it! Everything is pretty much perfect out here. Sounds like I'm cleaning up from a pretty frustrating last change, but the area's really not in that bad of shape. It's really nice and tranquilo. It reminds me a lot of Treinta y Tres, but even more people speak Portuñol. Elder Bush and I are studying Portugues about every other day so we can understand. We have the goal of being able to read and pronounce portuguese perfectly before we leave. It's pretty easy to understand it. We have a couple named Cyntia(Pronounced Sin-Chia) and Jorge(Pronounced...Jorge in spanish) Cyntia is Brazileira and Jorge is Uruguayo, so the charlas are really interesting with them. She doesn't read in spanish very well, so she has O Livro de Mòrmon to read and he has El Libro de Mormòn.

Christian and Marcia is another couple that's really golden, but they need to get married. They say they're gonna get married in April. We actually went to Christian's work at the Free Shop today when we went shopping. We had a charla where we watched Together Forever and I felt like we needed to leave the disc there when we left, so I just didn't mention it. Apparently last night, they got in a fight and decided to kneel in prayer together to work it out and...then they went and watched Together Forever, so..that was really cool. They weren't able to go to church yesterday,but it sounds like from next week they will be able to.

Comp: Elder Bush is awesome. I was wondering when I'd finally get a comp who loves Lost. We're having a great time out here. We're both really excited to get this area up and running and get some people baptized. Everyone was telling me he was a really good worker and really friendly and all the rumors are true. It's so much fun this week. I hope I get to stay here 2 changes with him. We're already calculating our chances of it. it's about 85...ish percent chance at this chance according to our...guessing. Also, fun fact: He's my first comp that is younger than me (literally, in life age) and he's my first gringo that was planning on going on a mission his whole youth. It'ss...a nice change.

Area: I'm kinda riding a bike. The bikes aren't in very good condition and we've actually found it's about as effective on foot as long as we plan well our days. We travel into Melo for district meetings every week, which I have to prepare now, which is pretty different.um..Still have a good area for lunches, like always. I still haven't hit an area with out lunch every day. The ward is basically a nearly-dead-and-newlywed ward...except there are about...2 newlywed couples. There's an attendance of about 40-50 people every week and those that go are there...always. It seems like a really solid ward. There's one guy who came up to us in church and said, "All the gringos like cologne" and came and sprayed us down. He's really funny. His Mate Thermos is covered in pictures of the Salt Lake Temple. Also, he's not the weirdest member there.

Fun fact: I met Grandpa Parry's home teaching comp's grandson, Elder Griffiths. He's in 33 and we rode together in the bus out here. He told me his grandpa made the connection and told him, so that's pretty interesting.

Hope all goes well with the wedding this week. I can't believe it's already this week. Today is the one year anniversary of my farewell talk and also, it's Valentine's day. Weird.. Hope everyone back home has a good Valentine's day. I think it exists here, but...you wouldn't notice it if you live in Rio Branco.

Have a nice week. See you on the other side.

P.s. if you have any questions about those pictures, see Bush's blog or ask me next week or...just imagine what's going on in the picture.
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