Week 8 & 9

¡Hola Familia y Amigos! 

        Dang Germany, beating my country. Apparently it was a pretty good game, although I wouldnt know, I couldn´t watch it. Argentine people are nuts. Anytime Argentina scores a goal or gets scored on, you know. The entire city rumbles with screaming, car horns, and drums. After Argentina beat the netherlands in the semi-finals. the town went nuts. The entire town ran, biked, drove, and probably drunkenly stumbled to the center of town to rabidly scream at each other in beautiful chaotic harmony. Man, I love these people.

            My spanish is going very well. They say I speak very well for the amount of time I´ve been here, which is super awesome. Unfortunately it is a gift and a curse because when they think I can speak well, they think I can understand well, which I most certainly cannot. I still just hear "Shama shavar esha shamalama shim-sham-flam-wam shamtastic shimy sham" (trying saying that out loud.) I am fairly certain that these people go out of their way to find words with the "sh" sound in it. The sad thing is that I can understand the native missionaries from other countries, just not the one I'm in. Oh well, I'll get it eventually. 

            Right now we have 4 really promising investigators. A 24 year old girl named Yohanna (pronounced SHow-ana, I know, I don't understand either) and this awesome family. I helped teach a bunch in lessons and in contacting but I rarely understand what they say back to me, unless it is a short sentance. 

             Here, they don't love Americans a ton, they call us Shonkies (Yankies.) The mentality here is that America just goes around and bomb stuff we don't like, which isn´t entirely false, I guess. Luckily for me, nobody thinks I'm from the states. I've been asked if I'm from the netherlands, belguim and a couple days ago, after the semi-finals game, some people drove by and started yelling "down with england!" at me in spanish, so that's pretty funny. They really hate England, because of the whole falkland war thing. Yesterday after the game, people kept saying "son alemanies?" (are you germans?) and then we´d wave our blue ties and say no. That was fun. 

           My zone is pretty cool but I'm not really a huge fan of the zone leaders. They're kind of over enthusiastic. For whatever reason, the Elders in my zone find it necessary to constantly put their arms around  me. Everytime I walk in to a meeting within seconds some Elder has got their arm around me saying "Elder! Coma Esta!? Todo Bien!?" like I'm a five year old. We're even all pretty much the same age. I think I'm going to put a tazer on my shoulder. Then it will be "Oh elder, coma estahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!" then I will laugh triumphantly but say nothing because I still can't speak spanish.

            Every thing is good here. I like it but it sure is ugly.

Mom and Dad:

Foods good, but not that good

I still can´t speak spanish

Packages go to the main office in Bahia

I can't really send pictures because I dont have enough time to load them.

The wards super nice and I like them all

I also might spend a little bit of money soon to buy me an argentine jersey

Could you get megan to get Mr. Mason's email for me?

Jackets fine

Love

Elder Evans

I can't remember if I told you but I got head-butted by a blind dog trying to bite me the other day. It was super funny.

Love

Me

Dear Familia,

        Another week in the beautiful paradise that is Santa Rosa. I saw a bunch of adorable puppies eating half of a cat yesterday. It doesn't get much better than this! It's been a weird week, they've sent me on divisions with everyone and their mother. I've been with both of the zone leaders, one I love to death and the other I can't stand, then some chiliaen from my district and a Elder Chandler from Las Vegas. My divisions with the zone leader I'm not a huge fan of, felt like forever. He believes the only reason that I can't speak spanish yet is because I'm not trying hard enoguh. So in lessons, he kept putting me in super weird positions without any kind of warning and then he wouldn't help get out of them. Luckily, I prayed for relief and Heavenly Father sent some in the form of hidden cheese (he is lactose intolerant). We were eating lunch with some members and I thought the noodles had butter all over them but it was tons of cheese, so needless to say I died. However, I didn't have to work with Elder Rodriguez for the rest of the day because I was dying. I regret nothing.

         One of the other Elders I was put with was so awkward it was funny. He has been on his mission for over 6 months now, but he can barely speak spanish. So then people think that he is brand new. Besides this, he is really bad with people. Every house we went to goes like this:

(imagine with lots of awkward spaces)

Elder C: Hola, Coma esta? (how are you)

Person: Hola... bien... (well)

E.C.: Todo bien? (everything is well?)

Person: ugh... si...

E.C: Somos missionarios ...( blah blah, something no one can understand)

Person: Como? (what)

E.C: Como? 

Person: Como?

E.C: Que? (what also)

Door Slams.

It was pretty funny but it may have been the longest day of my life.

       I've actually started contacting now and I understand what they are saying most of the time, unless they say more than a sentence, in which case I am usually doomed. The other day we gave a little lesson to Sadam Hussein look alike and it was nice. The best part about our sadam hussien look alike is that he speaks the most awful spanish ever. It sounds like a mixture of yelling, crying, growling, and someone messing with the volume control. Elder Webb says that even Argentines have a hard time understanding him. 

        I'm having a grand ol' time here! Its hard but I'm fine with it. We teach lessons every day but lately all of our investigators have just started ignoring us and won't answer their doors or talk to us. Elder Webb says Argentines are quite lazy and from what I've seen, I agree. So then its hard to get them to commit to anything. If I had a dollar everytime we taught the first lesson, Id be a rich man. 

Mom: I show our family picture to all the members and they think you and dad are super young. Then they don't believe me when I tell them how old you actually are (32, right?) So way to go, you are angering and impressing women on a different continent. Also packages take like 2 months to get here, so if you want to send one every once in a while, that be great. 

Dad: You would die here. I have never seen such awful teeth in all my life. More than half of the people have missing teeth or just straight black teeth. So then it makes it million times harder to understand what the heck they are saying. They don't care though, as long as they have their scooters and mullets, they are good.

Megan: One of the other Elders, a mexican, saw a picture of you and said you were pretty. After I beat him to a pulp, I told him you would appreciate the compliment.

Sam: Did you send these children a message or something! Because every kid here want to beat me up. I've been punched, kicked, bitten, stabbed, shot, scratched, and tackled so many times already and I feel like you are behind this....

Love,

Elder Evans

Week 7...arrived in Argentina!

Hola Familia y Amigos!

          I´m in Argentina right now, thats super crazy. At this very moment I am sitting between an argentine teenager who keeps trying to pop a pimple on his arm and my companion, Elder Webb, in some cyber cafe in downtown Santa Rosa. I am currently assigned to serve in Barrio 3 of Santa Rosa, which is some minor city in the middle of no where in the north west of my mission. This is definetly a different country. I would like to describe Santo Rosa as a cross between mexico, a little bit of europe, and a large poop. Not that I don´t love it here, the people are awesome and I´m having a great time but mmmaannn this place is very very ugly. Argentines here have a lot of standards but infrastructure is not one of them. The houses are just cement boxes and and the insides are have no rhyme or reason to their decorating. I like to think that when they want to spruce up the room, they think "This (insert random decoration here) is nice, I think it is beautiful. I am going to put this next to twenty other unrelated beautiful things on this cupboard in a unorganized pile, or maybe I will hang it on the wall in a wierd place. That would look nice." The people are very intersesting here and this is one of the poorest, if not the poorest part of my mission. (The kid sitting next to me just started yelling at his video game.) The people live in pretty much squalor, but then they go and buy a flat screen tv, I have no idea how that works. Despite all of this, I love it here and the guachos (look it up on google images) are so cool.

              My companion, Elder Webb, is the bomb. He calls me "Hijo" which means son. He is from gilbert arizona and has about a year of his mission done. Luckily he is fluent in spanish because I am not. It turns out that we learned a mexican spanish at the mtc, which would be fine but here they speak a lot differently. In other spanish countries, the letters Y and LL make a ja sound, but here they make a "sh" sound. You wouldn´t think that makes much of a difference, but oh, it does. When people talk, I hear "aSHo aoSHo aSHo SH SH SH SH!" Its not spanish, I swear. I manage to understand what they are saying when talking about gospel things, but other than that, I get nothing. Luckily Elder Webb helps me out a ton. So far I have testified to a couple people about what we´re saying and also prayed a whole ton, but next week, I am going to start helping teach lessons.

               Its not really dangerous here, we´re almost always home by 9. The only thing we have to watch for is chorros (no, not the delicous treat) who are just drunks who sit on the corner and drink and occasionaly break into houses, but they never really give us trouble, just swear at us a bit. The crazy part is the amount of dogs they have here, every single house has a terrifiying dog in front of it to keep out the chorros. On top of that, these dogs aren´t spayed or nuetered so the amount of strays is ridicoulous. If I had a dollar for every time I have been barked at so far, I´d be very rich. Some times the strays like to follow us around and then we form a pack until they get chased away by the other dogs whose territories we walk in.

          

 I ran our of time becuase I thought we had more than an hour! Sorry!

I love you all and I will wçdo better next monday

 

Love Elder Evans,

 

p.s. Mom the packages do work, so maybe try to send something as a test, like jelly bellies and sour patch kids haha

Week 6...last email from the United States

¿Que tal mi familia?

ESTOY LISTO SALIR pero, no quiero salir tampoco. ¿Por que es español muy difícil? Yo no se. I am soooo sick of the CCM, you have no idea. I just want to get it over with and head out to Argentina, but at the same time I really don´t want to leave my safe little bubble. Oh well. 

       This week has been pretty boring. The only cool thing is that on Tuesday, almost the entire 12 apostles and 1st presidency were here. I got to see Elders Bednar, Ballard, Nelson, Anderson, Oaks, and Cristofferson and the seven presidents of the quorums of the seventies all in the same room! Elder Cristofferson talked at our devotional and it was super good. I can´t actually really remember what he talked about, but I remember I liked it. I don't know if I told you but we sing in the choir every week and this week I was shown on the big screen like 5 times. So all those apostles and every missionary in every other MTC saw my beautiful face.

       Remember my roommate Elder Andersen? I've got a great story about him. Elder Andersen likes to be self righteous and loves to tell Elder Giliam and I that we need to act more like missionaries. He tells on us to the branch president for every little thing.  So we have some friends from another zone that we really like (one of them I'm going to probably room with at BYU-I) and they love to mess with us. We had just come home from class for the night and Elder Andersen got into the shower. Right after he got in the elders from the other zone came in and we were talking. Then one of the elders decided to scare elder andersen, so he banged on the bathroom door really loud. We then heard "WHAT THE "bleep" ARE YOU DOING!" screaming from Andersen. Needless to say, Elder Giliam, the other elders, and I ran out the door to their apartment across the street. We were laughing so very hard. We then looked out window and saw Elder Andersen across the street, through the window, barricading the door with couches. Finally, when we went back to the room we pushed open the door and he was sitting there with the iron (yes, the hot one that makes clothes straight), waiting for us. He started yelling. So then I got mad and started going into my sarcastic super, mean way like Dad did with that guy at the airport shuttle in France.  Not my proudest moment though. He got super mad and left because I was making fun of him. Then the next day he just pretended like it never happened What a crazy kid. I promise everybody else at the CCM is pretty normal though. 

         I'm so excited to get out of here, I want to eat something different then the same thing every week. I'm also excited to call, that will be nice. Also, Mom, I used a pay phone so I'm pretty sure you can't call me back. And, yes I got the package, thank you! but I may need to buy a better jacket when I get there. The one we got doesn't seem very warm. If you could make sure I have about 250 on my card that would be fantastic, I just want to be sure I have a lot when I travel. I will get charged $100 for my second suitcase but the mission president will reimburse me when I get there.

        Tell Grandma thank you for the cookies, I loved them and so did my zone!

Also tell Sarah for the cookies and goldfish, I had a real hankering for some of that cheddar gold. I also love the clay Argentina flag. As soon as I can find something to tie it to, I will!

Don´t Cry for me Argentina

Con mucha amor,

Elder Evans