23 May 2011

Thanks for the emails. It sounds like everyone is doing well.

First off, Dave asked a question about what I eat here. The members take care of us very well and provide lunch. It depends on your area and how many active members there are for the frequency of the lunches. I've had areas where we have lunch every day. Currently we fend for ourselves 2 or 3 times a week. They serve us pasta with tomatoes and meat sauce, fideo con tuco, or fried meat, milanesas, with rice. Sometimes they do grilled meat, asado, with rice. Every now and then we get the Uruguayan shepherd's pie, pastel de carne. And in the winter we get a lot of stew called guiso. It's rice and/or pasta with meat and vegetables, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions . . . really good. There's a lot of variety and it's good. We eat enough at lunch to get us through till night, and even then usually I don't eat anything, or very little at night and just wait for breakfast. And for breakfast I buy a 3 kilo bag of frosted flakes and that keeps me going. I've never eaten so much cereal in my life.

So this Sunday was good for us. We're going to have 2 baptisms next Sunday. There's a cool story for why we're doing them Sunday. Their names are Silvia and Agustin. They're in no way related. Silvia, 15, is the cousin of a member, Javier. Javier just got married and his wife got baptized when we got here. We finally taught Silvia everything and now she's getting baptized. The second person is Agustin, 11 years old. His mom was more or less inactive, due to the fact that she isn't married, and her partner is not divorced yet. Because of this Agustin was never baptized. Agustin and his mom asked an old family friend to baptize him. This family friend is Elder Echagaray and he's an Area Authority Seventy. They coordinated with him, then called President de Silva, and President da Silva called us telling us to do everything in our power to make it so this elder could baptize Agustin. Area Authority Seventies are busy people; Sunday at 5 is when he can do it. Cool. I've never had a Seventy come to a baptism before. I'm way excited.

Thanks for all the support and prayers. Don't worry about me. I feel great. I'm working in the same intensity that I've worked my whole mission. We're still running. We're trying to finish in white.

Love, Elder Whitaker