SOOO Excited for Kevy!!

Dear Family,

Wow I am SOOO excited for Kevy!!!! He's going to be such a great missionary! I can't wait to write him on the mission like he writes me and to talk to him in Spanish when he skypes home and all that great stuff! It's just so exciting to hear! I'm so proud of him for making that decision to go on the mission. I already wrote my trainer (ex-Elder José Vergara) who lives in the Santiago east mission and told him to write Kevy a quick letter about the culture and the people there. He's going to love the Chilean people! They're great. I've met several people from Chile and I have met several ex missionaries who have served there too. Chile is a lot more advanced than Argentina is. It recently changed their monetary unit and I have a few bills from there along with an original soccer jersey that my trainer's mom sent me for my first Christmas here in Argentina. The Argentine's and the Chileans have a rough history. Well, actually, they kind of hate each other. ha ha! They had a war years back and they never really learned to forgive one another. ha ha! I'll just have to start hating Kevin now. ;) ha ha! jk! But seriously, he's going to love it and I'm so happy for him and his call! One more quick thing. The thing that Chileans do to Spanish is instead of saying ¿como estas? sometimes, if you're really close with someone, they'll say ¿como estaí? They have other words that mean different things too. But it's more normal than Argentina Spanish. We're really Italian out here. :)

Anyway, back to my mission. ha ha! So this past week was a bit nuts. We had a lot of success in some ways, a lot of let-downs, and a lot of crazy stuff too! So after general conference, we all left ready and filled with the spirit to share the gospel with everyone! (catch the wave, wink wink ;)) We had a zone meeting planned for Tuesday morning and Elder Cruz and I had a great lesson planned out using an example from the Book of Mormon to really excite the missionaries in our zone. We got in their faces just like Elder Holland does and we got all of them even more pumped and excited to go baptize the world! And they will too. This next week in our zone we have 9 baptisms planned and that's more than this zone has seen in a long, long time! President has told me that Adrogue, my zone, is the zone that has suffered the most and has never really found a way to get some real success going. We now look like we're going to make our goal for this month and it'll just make president sing for joy; I know it! Anyway, the meeting on Tuesday was great and we had really good feedback from the missionaries. 

That afternoon we did an exchange with the elders of Claypole. I was partnered up with Elder Smoot who returns home in just one week. He's one of my district leaders and I love the kid! He's a spaz and a great motivator. So we went and taught a bunch of lessons, took out some baptismal commitments and found some new investigators. One of which is Melisa. She's a poor single mother with several children and six months pregnant. No father in sight. It appears that all the children are not from the same father either. She was beaten by her last boyfriend and he broke a brick over her head once and now she has a bit of a memory problem. But she wants to learn about the gospel and how she can receive help from her Savior. It's amazing the amount of faith these humble people have. Even though she lives in a tin house with a dirt floor, she still has more than most people have, and that's faith. We went and taught her another time with the help of a member and it really helped. The young recently activated mother member shared a sweet testimony that touched Melisa's heart and it was a great opportunity to see the growth there.

We also were able to find a recent convert and her family who are not members. Noelia is a cute little nine year old and was baptized with the help of a member family that lives near her. She has such a desire to go to church and now that we've activated that family that used to bring her to church, now she can go again. Her two older sisters, Daniela (11) and Ayelen (12) both want to be baptized too. Their parents are kind of negligent and don't worry too much about their children, so obviously, they have no problem in letting them get baptized either. Ayelen was the only one who came to church yesterday and I think she enjoyed herself. Anyway, we should be seeing a few baptisms through them in just a few weeks. Also, their aunt, Veronica, and her son, Rodrigo, decided that they want to listen to our discussions also! The only bad part there is that Veronica started sending me text messages saying that she fell in love with me and is obsessed with my blue eyes. Great . . . more snakes. Anyway, we'll see what happens there. She's like 35 too. ha ha! It's amazing how people can be so daring. 

We have been teaching this one part member family from Paraguay, the Correa family, and they've been progressing really well and we were expecting them to come to church, but then they pulled a no show on us. They gave us a bunch of excuses and it was kind of disappointing, but we'll bring other members to their house now to try and get them excited to go to church so we can baptize their daughter Araceli. Maybe we'll plan that baptism along with the other girls' baptisms.

So I've been pretty sick this past week with a terrible cold/virus thing. I still went out to work in the cold every day though and we taught a ton of lessons! :) But for some reason my wind breaker is missing . . . I have no clue what happened to it. It's just gone. So I've just been using sweaters cause it's still not cold enough for my huge winter coat. So I might need to go buy myself a jacket so I can actually get batter and protect myself from all the rain and the cold. Oh speaking of rain, all of the city of Plata got extremely flooded and the capital. I'm right in between the two and many people died and missionaries said that the water got up to two meters at one point!!! It was crazy. Poor people.

Oh by the way I almost forgot to tell you the funniest story of the week. So when Elder Cruz and I were crossing a big field, this guy comes walking out to us as we are reaching the street again. He was acting really weird and was really nervous. I walked passed him but my comp stayed back and tried to give him a pamphlet. He started talking to him and then I go back and when I get there, the guy looks around, looks at me, and then puts his hand underneath his shirt in the shape of a gun and asks for our stuff. I said "you got to be kidding me" and just shoulder pushed past the guy, but Elder Cruz got super excited and then runs and shoves the guy with all of his strength! ha ha. Then I had to back up my companion and I started running at the man who is like eight inches shorter then me and he took off running sooo fast! ha ha! I ran him down for a few yards and scared him off. ha ha! It was such a crazy moment! I couldn't believe my comp pushed him so hard, though! The guy almost face planted the ground! It was quite the table turn on the poor robber. ha ha! 

Anyway, I have to go. My comp is waiting on me and I'm over my time. Love you and miss you! See you in three months from today! 

Love,

Elder Blake W. Cowan