August 2, 2010 Argentine Cuisine

[To Jordan]

Okay, first of all it´s Buenos Aires (not Ares). Second, I can´t even remember the days when I stayed awake until 1 AM. Yes, we wake up at 6:30 everyday and are in bed by 10:30 every night. I still can´t believe that you are going to college in 3 1/2 weeks.... 25 or 26 of August? And then onto your mission a year after that, and then maybe I´ll see you sometime afterwards.

Yup, the food here is amazing. We eat a lot of similar foods that we eat in the United States, except the meat here is ten times better. For instance, I ate at a members house two days ago and we had asado, which translates to barbequed sausage links, ribs, and the best tasting steak I have ever had. Let´s just say the steak was cooked for almost 2 hours and was better than at the Brazilian steak house. We also eat a lot of pasta, which is delicious, and usually with some sort of meat. I have also eaten a dish which best resembles orange grits with chili cheese on it. I have had pizza, which is more like the Italian pizza than the American type, and it was delicious. Oh yeah, empanadas, wow. You don´t know what you are missing out on in the United States. There´s no description. And bread, lots and lots of amazing bread. It´s not like bread there, the closest I can describe it is like a French roll.... maybe. For dessert we sometimes have fruit with dulce de leche, flan, some kind of cake, pasta frola which is a pie with a layer of that membrillo jam on it, facturas which are bread with sugar and other sweet condoments, malta which is like a hot toffee drink, hot chocolate, and sometimes just fried bread with dulce de leche. Oh yeah, we eat a lot of milanese, which is very similar to country fried steak. So no, there´s not a whole lot of new and weird foods here.

My favorite missionary experience so far has been when I taught a lesson to a cousin of a boy who was being interviewed by my companion to get baptized. It was very basic and terrible (I still can hardly speak and don´t understand anybody) but the spirit was so strong that he accepted the invitation to be baptized as well in that first lesson. You could see the spirit in his eyes as he knew that the Gospel would bless his life.

That´s a bummer to hear about the Japanese classes being full, but don´t worry, if you have a Japanese speaking mission you will learn more Japanese in the first week in the MTC than probably in a semester. I learned more Spanish in 4 weeks at the MTC than in my 4 1/2 years in high school. Also, before you go make sure to go to one mission prep class with brother Greiner and pick up his list of memorized scriptures. It is front and back and everybody that has seen it on my mission has wanted a copy, because it is golden for studying the scriptures.

Good luck in school and keep writing. I don´t think I´ll be sending too many letters because there is less time to write here and it is kind of difficult to send them, so we will see. Oh yeah, congratulations on the laptop too!