Weekly Oct. 27

Hello my good people!

Last week of training for Elder Bartlett! I'm a big missionary now! Unfortunately that means my trainer Elder Sirrine is heading out to be district leader elsewhere. He got some asados lined up for us this week, though! Thanks companion! Familia Rodreguez made my mission on Tuesday... I had my first ice cream here! We also had an amazing zone conference this last Firday, and a seventy, Elder Spaunaus (I think) came down and talked to us. So many people came from Rio Grande to Ushuia, and we had some Elders sleep on our floor! Sadly I missed basically all of what the seventy said because of Spanish, plus the speaker system was terrible and screaming kids. Oh well...

Today we went to the Light House at the End of the World! Super tiny, but still cool. We also saw sea lions! I never realized this, but they literally look like they have the head of a lion! I'll try and get some pictures to ya'll, but my camera is still broken...

Light house at end of the world

Sea Lions

From Elder Sirrine's camera

It occurred to me that maybe some of you don't know what a missionary does, so I'd like to describe my average day. 6:30 I awake, pray, excercise, and put some hot water on the stove for tea. I shower, if I didn't shower the night before, and get dressed. I usually shower at night because our shwoer only lasts 8 minutes, and then it takes 30 minutes to heat back up. I drink tea and eat cereal and milk while I prepare for personal study for an hour. The milk here comes in bags or cardboard juice boxes, which are more expensive. We have personal study for an hour, then companionship study for 45 minutes, then language study for 30 minutes. Unfortunately on busy days, language study often gets cut out. We leave, usually to go contacting, in the morning and walk about 30 minutes to our area along a either dusty or muddy highway. We usually eat lunch with members around 1, so we leave our area for the long walk back. The members either have us over to their house, or we go pick it up from their house with tuppers. Lunch lasts 2 to 3 hours most of the time because there's not a rush to leave because of the siesta, most people won't answer doors. After eating a massive lunch, its the biggest meal here, we head back out to work! Long walk, no one has a schedule, so most of our plans fall through, and we usually end up with 1 or 2 lessons. We take a long walk back at the end of the day, and plan for the next day as soon as we get home. We may or may not eat dinner, depending on when we get home, then go to bed! It's taxing walking up and down the mountian and highway all day, and its hard to stay focused on the work. I am loving every day of it, though! Thanks for all the happy thoughts and prayers! Hope all is well back home!

Love, Elder Bartlett