Dear Alpine family,
Hey-hey. Man, oh man, good to hear from y'all. Wow, what
an up and down email that was: Lani´s leaving
and Traci is adopting! I’m kinda like super thrown off there but for the good
stuff, that’s great! Give Traci a big hug from me, she’s got the right attitude
about things. And do hit me up with Lani's mission address, if you would. And tell Kevin he is in my prayers and he’s pretty
much my hero no matter what.
Yes, how about that conference? 18, huh? When we heard that everyone was saying things like, "Dang it! I could have been
married with kids now had I known that!" It was very exciting news,
though. It was a good conference. I loved Holland’s talk. We have a talk he
gave at the MTC about a year ago and it’s very similar--it was so good. When he
came on all the missionaries were suddenly at attention and scooting forward in
their desks and chairs—missionaries love that Jeff Holland. I also loved Dieter’s talk
how he said we are in charge of our own happiness—and Christofferson's
and Monson's talks in priesthood session. When Christofferson talked about we
should do the best at what we are doing and Monson’s story about the missionary’s analogy of seeing the people in white. Scott’s made me regret not doing family history
with Papa. And Oaks? Well, he pretty much just dropped Cain on people who aren’t
nice to kids. That talk just about broke the missionaries’ hearts because we
see so much of that here and there’s just so little we can do about it. I
did like how Ballard talked about bees and Eyring about eagles (although all I
could think of was dad’s very favorite (not) eagle song: Let the Eagle Soar).
Conference really taught me that I should listen to the
spirit more. I’m gonna really try to start doing that more here. It was just so
cool. I remember hearing somebody say that conference in the field was better
than Christmas and I remember thinking
"are you high?" but now I see that they were pretty much dead on with
that. We had conference in the nice, two-story stake center where Christofferson
spoke when he came here. We had about 7 or so people in our comfy, English-speaking
room. We had to go in our suits (which sucked because it was soooooo humidly
hot) but it went well. As you can tell that’s pretty much the highlight of the
week. Conference is always so good (and only 2 more here).
We had a goodish work week. We are slowly but surely
coming along closer to baptism with Sebastian and hopefully Ignacio. We ate
lunch at this guy’s house this week and had this weird soup. It was like the
texture and taste of cold, refrigerated gravy. Turns out it was some good,
tasty bone marrow soup! Dig it. Later that day, at a house of a recent convert,
the wife of the recent convert gave us some morcilla (blood sausage). We ate it
all, happily but oh, our poor tummies! We werent sick but it’s always kinda
like you feel like you will.
I was talking to Larsen the other day about kids at his
school and I asked him if he knew a Dan Isrealson who was in my MTC group going
to Paraguay. Larsen said that, yes, he did know him and that he went to school
with him and they used to hang out when they were little. Pretty tight, huh? But
other than that there was really nothing new in the week.
Well, ?’s
- What is your overall impression of Salta?
Good! Hot, humid but really it’s become pretty much home now.
- Do you cook? What do you cook?
Milanesea, ramen, empanadas, cereal with yogurt, etc. Nothing
much, we don’t have an oven.
- In the photo of your zone at the zone conference there was a cake looking thing in the front of the picture. What was that?
A cake for the goal of 200 baptisms......hooray!
- Do you ever get to talk to President Levrino?
Yeah: Interviews, conferences, the weekly letters, and
just every now and then.
- Did you see any old friends at conference?
I didn’t really
see anyone I knew but I made a few new friends like Adams's old comp and some
other peeps.
Well famz, I need to be heading. Watching conference did
make me think of you guys a lot. You know at almost 11 months you feel very comfortable
in the mish: A lot of the old fears and worries are gone or are starting to go
away (like the homesickness of the first little while). Things like
conference do make me a little homesick but in a good way--to know you guys
were watching and listening at the same time was a really nice thing to know. I
miss and love you guys so much. Have a
great week. Keep on keeping on, praying for us here, and just being happy. I
love you guys it’s all good!
Con Amor,
Russ
p.s. I was going to send a pic of conference but the
computer is being stubborn as of now so we'll see.
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