Summer Storms

Hey family!!

First of all, sorry I didn´t write ya´ll yesterday, it was a random Argentine Holiday so all the places where we go and do internet were either closed or full of kids who had the day off from school. So here we are. I have some good stories this week so hopefully that´ll make up for it.

The awesome thing about Argentina is that we have some pretty freaking sweet summer storms. The day will start out sunny and throughout the day more clouds will start moving in and then by 8 or 9 there´s lots of lightning and it´s just pouring rain like crazy. The not so awesome thing about our pench (apartment) is that aparently it´s not very waterproof. Let me explain. Our pench is basically a giant trapazoid made of cement and our doors are all made of metal. I am fairly confident we could be bombed and come out fine. The roof starts out high enough to have two stories (which is where we sleep) and then gradually slants down until it meets a verticle part of the building where a sign could be placed, about 6 feet above the sliding metal door we open for church. On the inside there´s a rectanglular section of sheetrock to hide all of levers and chains we use to pull up the garage door. There´s a couple lights on the bottom side to make everything look better.

On Saturday this giant storm started coming in, and we were all excited because we usually have fun watching them and whatever, storms are cool. After it had been going on for a while we realized water was starting to come in under the door, where there´s a space of a couple centimeters. At first we were like, "oh that´s cute Mother Nature, too bad our pench is impenitrable" and we stuffed a couple towels under the door to stop the water flow. Then water started coming in from above the right side of the garage door. We started taking matters a little more seriously but we were not about to get beaten. It was Man vs. Nature at it´s finest. We abandoned our battle front at the door and started using the squeegy to push water from the right side of the building to the left, and out the door. We thought we had everything under control, we thought we were invincible. Then water started coming down from one of the lights in the sheetrock. At this point we realized the war was slipping out of our hands. We were bombed from the right flank, a huge peice of sheetrock and gallons of water fell down. We were shelled from infront, water flowed out of the lights in our sheetrock. And through it all we were trying to control and push out the water still coming in from the door at our left flank. Chaos insued. We realized that although water was dripping out of the lights in the sheetrock, water was coming in the pench faster that it was coming out of the lights, so the whole of this rectangular sheetrock thing was filling up with water and would probably fall like the other piece did. We were forced to sacrifice some of our own. We punched holes in the sheetrock and forced the water out of the ceiling and out the door. The battle was fierce but in the end the storm passed and after our soldiers worked with the squeegy for about half an hour, our fortress was more or less under control again. Although it´s very humid and has a weird smell now. haha. Oh, and then the next day we had church here. It was quite the adventure.

In other news, breastfeeding down here is super weird. They have no shame at all, very few people make an effort to cover up. It´s really awkward. This week we were teaching a mom and her 16 year old daughter and 12 year old son. The 16 year old has a 6 month old baby and the mom has a 2 week old baby. First of all, that in itself is really weird. The daughter has a kid older than her mom´s kid.. At one point during our lesson both were feeding their kids. It was very uncomfortable to say the least. Sometimes it´s hard to keep from laughing because the situation just seems so weird. haha. Also, I don´t know what it is about down here but they have like a statue of a lady breastfeeding in the city plaza and there´s this famous painting i´ve seen a couple times of this baby breastfeeding off of her dead mother. I don´t really get it, but maybe I´m just missing something.

Also, we had a Zone training meeting this week and it was the best church meeting I´ve ever been in, in my entire life. We got to watch Kung-Fu Panda. haha. It was soooo legit. It had a really good message that we applied to our work as missionaries and if any of you haven´t seen it you should definitely do so right now. I was laughing the whole time. But that might be because it´s the only entertainment I´ve had in 4 months so maybe don´t get your hopes up too much.

Well, if I had more time I´d tell you more stories but I guess that will just have to wait for next week. Our investigators are doing alright, it´s really really really hard to find people who we can consistently teach. But I guess all of them are more or less progressing, just slower than we would have hoped.

Thank you for your prayers and love. And don´t let your dad´s eat pie!

Love, Elder Lousbury