Josh gets spaetzle

Querido Familia,

This last Friday, Elder Clark was sick again, but this time with food poisoning (I didn´t eat whatever he had because we had exchanges that day), so we stayed in our apartment all day. It was good in a way because I was able to get a lot of things done that needed to be, but even then it would have been better to be out doing the real work. During my time in the apartment, I was able to: update our records (we have three massive binders, two are for old records and one for current), which includes throwing out years of old records that shouldn´t have been there to begin with, and moving papers around to be where they actually should be. I also organized all the members (about four hundred and fifty) alphabetically and into groups based on where they live. I set up a map on the wall for us to use, did some cleaning and organizing around our apartment, and then just studied until the end of the night (which was only about an hour).

There is one thing that we did avoid by being home on Friday, which was eating at a member´s house. Normally, eating with members isn´t bad, but this is the member that made us the spinach and broccoli crepes a few weeks ago. So what happened when they found out we couldn´t come over for lunch was that they bagged it up and brought it to us. It was another spinach dish. Last Friday when we had lunch with them, they made us these bombas de papas (potato bombs) which are almost a kind of corn bread roll with hamburger meat on the inside. They weren´t bad, but it was the side dish that was tough to eat. We´re not entirely sure what it is, but it´s basically some kind of vegetable that has been breaded and deep fried. They wouldn´t even be so bad, but they taste like grease and they go down like grease.

Yesterday was Mother´s day here in Argentina and we didn´t have anyone to speak in Sacrament meeting on Sunday, so on Saturday night I was assigned to give the Mother´s day talk. I had about twenty minutes to prepare, but I think it went pretty well. I started off by reading in John 19: 25-27 when Jesus is on the cross and asks John to watch after his mother and then went on to more fully explain what was happening in the verses (the scriptures are written in a different form of Spanish that is never spoken among the people) and added some more depth and emotion to the brief story. Then I read a story from the Miracle of Forgiveness that President Kimball shares about mothers, so I was reading in English to myself, but speaking to everyone in Spanish. Then I finished up with the example of the Helaman´s army and how they were so successful in their endeavors because they listened to the teachings of their mothers. During the entire talk, all the women shed a tear at some point, so it went pretty well.

Mirian and Diego either didn´t go to, or missed, their appointment for their blood exam they need before they can be married, so now we´re going to have a bit of a delay on their marriage, which means we´ll probably be pushing Mirian´s baptism back to November.

Ivana is still looking good for her baptism. We went through the baptismal interview questions with her the other day and she was able to answer everything. The only problem is that she has a problem with praying in front of people, which she will be asked to do when she is interviewed for baptism for real.

The Guzman family (Ivana´s mom and her old sister) had us over for lunch this week. We sat down waiting to get everything started and in the center of the table was the meal. I could tell there was chicken in there, but there was something that I thought was diced up potato, but I wasn´t sure (it was all mixed together in on a big skillet). We started to eat and Maria, the older sister, started explaining what the little potato looking things were. I had already eaten some and though it tasted really familiar, but as she explained it turns out that it was spaetzla, just a different shape and a different sauce.

os amo,

Elder Burt

P.S. Elder Clark has requested Flake bars.