Happy Birthday To Me!

Dear Jeffersons,

How goes it? Splendid, I hope. I just got back from having lunch—cheese and garlic hot dogs—not as absolutely horrible as they sound. But anyway.

Yes, I presume word got around that I will be 20 so say goodbye to hanging with this old person (teen girl squad reference). It’s a little weird though but hey, only one more year till drinking and gambling! I got that going for me....which is nice! As of birthday plans, I believe my package is still in Salta. I just saw on the list that it got picked up today so maybe, since we have zone conference this Wednesday, Pres will bring it. If not, no biggie, more to celebrate later. In Argentina the 20th is the "dia del amigo" which is "the day of the friend" so we are having a big party at Millian's on Friday with the entire branch. We are gonna have cake and pizza and a white elephant exchange, it’s gonna be incredibad! But yes, that is that.

Now the week....not much. Adams got sick this week after we ate lunch with the same family that made that bizcochuelo I ate and got sick from last week. So we didn’t get a whole lot done but we still had a good week none-the-less. We found this one street on Saturday that we had never seen before. We decided to knock it and got a couple good investigators out of it. We found this one girl who we were teaching and, while we were teaching her on her front porch, we saw a man running toward us. Remember how I told you guys about that drunk ex-contra vet that is harmless but was like our stray dog and wanted to accompany us all the time? Yeah, it was him. We have officially named him Mike. He ran up to us and began to talk to us incoherently, right in the middle of this lesson.  C´mon! We told the girl: "Ok we don’t like this guy, he just follows us sometimes" and she said, “Yeah he’s kinda the town drunk”.   So it was all good ‘cept Mike would not leave—even when we were teaching the lesson. So we cooked up a plan: My comp would quickly teach her while I distracted him. So I did. For 15 or so minutes I listened to the ramblings of Mike talking about Reagan, Jesus, Nicaragua, his woman, back to Reagan, and so forth. It was some goodtime babysitting and another reminder why it’s a good idea to drink. We ended the lesson with a return date for us (thank heavens) and we lead Mike away from the house and got him back to his hang-out spot and took off. That’s Mike for ya: harmless and he likes us but soooooo dang annoying!

Yesterday we were walking home and we saw, like 16 police cars, 4 fire trucks, and news crews down the street. It was on our way home so we passed by to see what’s up. I guess there was a car that crashed on its side so when an accident of any kind happens here, it’s news worthy. Unbeknownst to us, as we were passing by on the side walk, there was a news camera and we walked right in front of it. So I think we were on the news last night! Maybe. And I may or may not have done the up and down eyebrows thing in front of it. Who knows? But yeah, as in wacky events for the week, those were about it.

We have a few new investigators this week. One, who is a friend of Rodrigo (the Mohawk kid) and another one, who is the sister of a member. Also, we heard of some Americans living in Bajo la Viña so we might go see what’s up with that this week. But other than that—quesssstion timez!

• Any new investigators?

Yeah, just with the one I told you about. We got about 6 newbies this week.  Were gonna pull out the big guns this week to find more.

• Are people still nice to you, even when they don’t want to listen to you?

Oh yeah. They never get mad or anything at us. Everyone usually has very good manners to strangers.

• Is your peace treaty with the dogs still holding up?

Oh, so-so: They keep their distance I keep mine. It’s the cats I’m getting sick of. Every cat in Jujuy is in heat now and that means non-stop meowing. There is a very heavily sex-deprived cat that lives below our building and it constantly meows, day and night, to the point where I might have to kill it. But other than that, it’s all good.

• Are you still hiking up to Alta La Viña?

Nope, not as much. Our investigator there fell through so we stopped going. But we may go back in a few days because a hermana in the ward is gonna get us a reference who lives up there.

• Josh Torgerson mentioned the “snaky” girls in Chile who are always trying to cozy up to the missionaries.  Any problems with them in Jujuy?

Oh yes, the “snakes". We’ve got a TON of them here. I think I remember telling you guys about them awhile ago. Yes, you do run into a lot of them here but you just brush them off like its nothing ‘cause mostly they’re just goofy, flirty 16-year olds.

Well Peeps, I best be headin’ out. Thank you guys so much for everything. I love hearing from you. Thank you so very much for the birthday wishes. Have a happy July 20th and celebrate it to the max! I love you guys so very much. It’s all good.

Con amor,

Russ