We had some good experiences this week. On Saturday we met a couple and were able to teach them the restoration. It was really cool how this happened. There was a guy on a motor scooter that waved at us from the street. He then went into a little shop near us, and Elder Wallace wanted to wait for him to come out so that we could talk to him--because when someone waves at us, we want to see who they are, but usually get caught up talking to some one else. At that point, we were talking in English with each other, just waiting, and all of the sudden, the door to a house we were standing next to opened, and a lady and her husband walked out, somewhat staring at us.. We were a little embarrassed and Elder Wallace started explaining--in Spanish--that we had initially been looking for someone, and that we are now waiting for someone else. The lady looked at us as if she had no Idea what we were saying and then said IN ENGLISH asked, ''Do you two speak English?'' My face lit up!  It was fantastic. We taught them and they came to church the next day!! It was really great. 

Some things that I miss...(and that I would like :) . . .

Ritz crackers
Reeses Puffs cereal
Orbit Spearmint gum
Kraft Mac and Cheese
Snickers
Chicken in a Biskit crackers
Hamburger Helper
Fruit Snacks
Gravy packets
Starburst 
Reeses Peanut Butter Cups

Just some things I noticed I was thinking about, that sound really good right now... haha.  OH, and the mayo thing has been fine for the moment, because the members know I don´t like it! hahaha. No, we don´t have a crockpot. We tend to only ever eat a big lunch, and then snack on bread and fruit when we get home. And Pepitos--the Argentine Chips Ahoy. The members have been feeding us a lot, too. Good stuff...

No, we don´t get siesta.. sigh. Oh well. We actually had someone slam his window in our face because we woke him up from his siesta at 4:00 in the afternoon.. I thought it was hilarious, haha.

Anyway. I love you mom. I miss you, and yes... I do miss my brothers... 

I´ll talk to you soon. Love Wyatt

Ha ha OK. You´re going to love this. I forgot to tell you, that every single--well not EVERY single--but practically every car here in Argentina is a stick... And they know how to drive. They're crazy. At one point, on my way in a van from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, the driver passed 4 semis at once, WHILE dodging an oncoming semi. And that guy and another driver our van switched places while we were going like 55 mph... Así que bueno. 

In the mission, we only have one car. For the Office Elders. Everyone else walks. Everywhere. 

Well have fun!! Oh and how are your classes?

OH YEAH, there is nothing here, haha. Miles and miles of farmland. There are a lot of little stores in centro; paneterias (bread stores), meat stores, fruit stores, and, like, one supermercado. The only major thing really here is a giant Reebok factory...it's so random--a Reebok factory in the middle of Argentina... We call it the Great and Spacious Building because every time we try to set an appointment with someone, they always say they have to work at the fabrica.. haha :)

It's really flat here, too... kind of throws me off. According to Elder Wallace, this city is a lot more quiet and safer than some of the bigger cities like Bahia and Mar del Plata, which are a little crazy. Olavarria, where Elder Fuentes is from, is a ways away. I'm even four hours from the mission home in Bahia. We take a bus from Suarez to Bahia every 2 weeks now for a district meeting. So our whole day is spent on a bus every two weeks. In three weeks, I will travel there twice in once week, because this was Elder Wallace's last transfer, and he'll be leaving. He's pretty cool, by the way. I've had to rely on him a lot for the superficial Spanish small talk, but I can manage teaching lessons of the gospel with him in Spanish. I keep finding every day that I have so much to learn. It's hard, and I'm still getting used to all of this, especially the fact that I'm in ARGENTINA, but it's all good :) 

We did find another apartment and our Pensionero is working on getting it for us. It's practically new!! We checked it out last Monday and it was really nice! It's only 6 months old, so we're really hoping for it. Also hoping that with time, missionaries will be more respectful because the apartment we live in now really is kind of messed up...

Monday is my P-day now and I have an hour for computer time, and I still have to write Pres Detlefsen. I'll make it happen, though. I'll try and figure out better ways to do email to give you the most detail possible. And yes, Grandpa will be in my prayers...

You met Elder Fuentes' sister on Facebook, cool!  I really hope I get transfered to Olavarria at the time Elder Fuentes comes home... that would be so great. 

I love the iPod shuffle, I listen to it every day....  The battery died last week and I figured out that I can't charge it in the house because the power in the wall and my converter just won't work for the iPod for some reason... so I just charge it at the church, no big deal.

Pictures, apparently if I open the file in Paint, that is the best way to send over email from here. Changes the file type and sends it faster, so I will send you a few right now... 

Sheet music, I can't promise I will use it often... There is a piano at the church and I only have access to it before and after church and on P-Day... no time :) 

Stuff that they don't have here.... pretty much everything, haha! Except they have some Coke products. Oh, one of our mission rules is no caffeine... btw... just fyi. Something I wish they had here.... Panda Express, Skittles, Snickers... Oh, and milk in plastic bottles. They only have milk in plastic bags, haha!  Anyway, I'm going to try and send you some pics now.. Love you !!! Bye!!  

P.S. Yes, that mission home address is the address where you send EVERYTHING, letters too.

WOW!! This has been an extremely busy week. Oh, and all the computers here are in Spanish, so I have no spell-check and everything I type in English gets a red error line under it, haha. 

Ok, Mom-Info first:
Packages--do NOT send through UPS, Fed Ex, etc, any private carrier, because there is a huge tax that gets put on it when it gets here. So if you're going to send a package, send it only through the normal U.S. Mail. Even then, when it gets here, it might be taxed, depending on what it is, and I will have to pay that debt when I pick up the package from the Mission Office. Speaking of which, here is the address:

Misión Bahía Blanca 
Chacabuco 1755
Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires 8000 
Argentina

And I don't have the pouch mail address with me, but all that basically is, is a P.O. box in Salt Lake that sends all that mail here. Apparently, it isn't any faster.

I'm glad you got the email from my Mission President! You'll have to forward it to me so that I can see what he said. Get this... in that picture I hadn't been able to shower for two days, since Monday morning, and after the picture, STILL didn't get a shower until Friday morning...  It was nuts. 

When I left Dallas, it turned out to be something like a 10-1/2 hour flight and I barely slept. But what was cool is that when I woke up on the plane, it was morning and I was looking out the window at the Andes mountains... SO cool. And 30 minutes later, we landed in Buenos Aires. Then, we went through Immigration, which I thought I wasn't going to be able to get through, because the guy at the window called the supervisor over.. haha. I had no idea what they were saying, or if there was a problem. MTC Spanish is completely different from the Spanish (Castillano) spoken here. After that I went and bought some pesos, got through customs, waited about 40 min for a guy named Alberto, and the van driver Roberto, to get us in a van to drive us all the way to the other side of Buenos Aires to another airport, where we met a guy named Javier. Keep in mind that none of us have any idea what's going on, we are just following whatever missionary is getting his hand held... Then we were told that we were getting on a plane to go to Bahia Blanca. Three hours later, it turns out that the flight was cancelled due to ash from a volcano in Chile. So then, we waited about another hour for another van, to take us to another van and other drivers on the OTHER side of Buenos Aires :). By this time, it was about 4:00 p.m. Then we drove 9-1/2 hours....... to Bahia Blanca. We got to the mission home, and then drove another few minutes to a house where we finally went to sleep at 1:30 a.m. Then we got up at up at 6:30 a.m.  Awesome. Oh yes, and all this happened, still in the same clothes :) 

That is pretty much the travel experience. After spending the day in Bahia, Elder Wallace (new companion) and I tried to catch the bus going to Suarez (our area) but missed it by like 20 seconds. The whole day, we had been contacting people, visiting some people that Elder Wallace had made appointments with, and looking for key things: Area Book, our cell phone, oh yeah, and the KEYS to our apartment. We were going in "blind" to this city. Apparently missionaries hadn't been here for 3 months, so we kinda had to settle in again. It turned out that our apartment keys were in a completely different city (luckily, on the way), and our Area Book was hidden somewhere in the office. We still don't have a cell phone which is a bummer because we have had to go to the church every night to call our district leader.. Yeah it's a lot of walking.. :) 

OH and we were also told that we already have to find a new apartment! Haha, my first transfer and all this stuff is going on. But it's been fun so far. I have to go because we are meeting a imobilario (renter basically) in like 10 minutes. 

So Monday is P-day now.... And the food is good. But apparently they put mayo on everything... Not good...

I love you, Mom!!  Chaio!


[short notes from Mom]
1. I will update your blog/website with your new address. Even without having the P.O. Box address for pouch mail, I think the DearElder process is probably easier for pouch mail... it's as easy to send as an email, and free. Free is good.
2. Exciting travel adventures, and a shower at the end... what more could you ask for??
3.  Mayonnaise on everything, for my Condiment-Challenged Child... the Lord works in mysterious ways :)

Queridos padres:
Sus hijos llegaron muy bien, cansados pero con gran animo. Ya tienen sus compañeros y ayer mismo salieron a sus areas. 
Dear Parents:  Your children arrived safely, tired but animated and with great encouragement. They already have their companions and yesterday went to their areas. 

[AREA/ Entrenador (Senior Companion), Compañero (Companion)
  1  Balcarce/ Elder Pendleton, Elder Yadon, Alexander
  2  Bahia Blanca/ Elder Lloyd, Elder Lisonbee, Nathan
  3  Viedma/ Elder Horton, Elder Oakes, Brayden
  4  Bahia Blanca/ Elder Soto, Elder Pace, Joseph
  5  Bahia Blanca/ Elder Thackeray, Elder Patterson, Cody
  6  Olavarria/ Elder Sweany, Elder Stott, Paul
  7  Santa Rosa/ Elder Garcia, Elder Tapia, Jesse
  8  Miramar/ Elder Perez, Elder Clegg, Austin
  9  Santa Rosa/ Elder Hatch, Elder Cunningham, Nathan
10  Necochea/ Elder Risenhoover, Elder Furlong, Evan
11  Pigue/ Elder Ochseingbein, Elder Himebaugh, Andrew
12  Bahia Blanca/ Hna. Alston, Hna. Israelsen, María
13  Coronel Suarez/ Elder Wallace, Elder Koeven, Wyatt
14  Bahia Blanca/ Elder Caicedo, Elder Riffo, Cristopher
15  Mar del Plata/ Elder Miranda, Elder Sancho
16  Mar del Plata/ Elder Vance, Elder Sonderegger
17  Bahia Blanca/ Elder Connoly, Elder Lishman

Gracias otra vez. Cuidaremos a sus hijos.
Thanks again. We will take care of your children.
Elder y Hna. Detlefsen

Yes, I got the second package you sent me, thank you very much. Those pictures are absolutely perfect. I almost have all of the albums filled up. I don't know about you, but I was kind of shocked at some of my pictures from a while ago.... haha! Thanks for the iPod and everything! 

OH, I need to tell you something cool that happened this week. Elder Holland came and spoke to us on Tuesday. Apostles don't come very often to the MTC, so it was extremely exciting to have an Apostle here, especially Elder Holland. His talk was practically a Q and A. President Brown, the MTC president, asked some missionaries a few questions that would be given to Elder Holland to address for us here. Before Elder Holland really talked about those questions he talked about Missionaries not disgracing the name and image of the Church. And that we have no right to do stupid things that would tarnish the image of missionaries and the church alike. And you know him, he comes off pretty strong.  

Ok, so I just read your emails. I think it's best that we just don't do the airport thing, because it is against the rules, and I don't know what all is going to happen before I get on my flight or how long things are going to take. CTR :)

I understand the top priorities of mom communication....

I'm out of time.... :p\

But I love you and I will talk to you on Monday :)

So, I can write a little email today AND some tomorrow. For the last weekend they give us P-Day on Saturday to pack and what-not. Today is "In-Field Orientation'', pretty much a workshop day talking about stuff for the field.

I got the package with all the deoderant and goodies yesterday. Thank you very much, and where did you find the Pitch Black !!!!!!!!!!!!?????????? Thank you!!!!!

We are going to get the mail with our DL in a bit then go back to the workshops. OH, and I think that from this point on, DearElder's may be ineffective in communicating, because we don't receive them on Saturdays and Sundays, I'm leaving on Monday, and I don't know if they work in Argentina. If you have any info on that I would love to hear it :)

I love you!!! And I've had a fantastic week...
Chaio