And the adventure begins!

It has been a busy 2 weeks!  We have had 2 zone conferences, met all our missionaries in person and traveled to the southern part of our mission.   We are becoming less overwhelmed every day.   

Neuquén & Neuquén Oeste zones

Zapala Zone

Grocery shopping is very different in Argentina.  They have a separate store for everything.  For example if you want bread you go to a pandaria (pan is bread in Spanish).  If you want meat you go to a carniceria (carne is meat in spanish you see where the names are coming from). If you want vegetables and fruit you go to a verduleria.   For fish a pescaderia. We did find a few Super markets that carry a variety of things. 

 

One thing we haven’t found is Diet coke.  We have found little cans of Coke sin azucar so my diet coke habit has been replaced with a traditional Argentina drink called Mate.  It is an argentina herbal drink that you drink with a very special straw called a bombilla that actually serves as a sieve and doesn’t let any of the herbs get in your straw and that I really like.  

 

 More interesting things about the food are  - we buy milk in a bag, really hard to find basil, sourcream is non existent, No tortillas , no brown sugar and cheese is all very mild mostly mozzarella type.  But the Dolce de leche can make up for everything we lack! There are shelves and shelves of the different types and we plan on trying every single one.

Cultral- Co is a little town 2 hours west of Neuquén 

                       

Argentina is below the equator so we are in the middle of winter.  It can get cold where we are in the southern part of Argentina.  This last weekend we traveled to the southern part of our mission which is part of the geographic region known as the Patagonia, one of the most beautiful regions in the world .  They had plenty of snow.  We stayed in two of the most beautiful lakeside cities in the Andes, San Martin de los Andes and San los Carlos de Bariloche.  This north part of the Patagonia is miles and miles of huge lakes surrounded by the Andes mountains.  This north part of the Patagonia rivals our home lake of Coeur d’alene in beauty!

San Carlos de Bariloche

      

San Martin de los Andes

 

The best part of the last two weeks was meeting all our wonderful missionaries!  They are incredible!  To choose to serve a mission amidst a pandemic and work as hard as they do to find people to teach is inspiring.   Missionary work has changed quite a bit in the last year because of the pandemic they use a lot of technology to teach.   After one of our Zone conferences two of our cute Sisters went out into the foyer of the church and taught a lesson right from their phone.   It was wonderful to see the Lord using all the craziness of COVID to help us realize the great opportunities technology can give us.

 

We were able to attend a baptism of new member in Bariloche.  He was so excited to get baptized that after he came up out of the water he put his hands in the air and exclaimed “SI!” in English “YES!”  I feel the same way everyday!  What an incredible opportunity we are having to be able to bring the Love of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of Argentina!

Cute sisters were so happy to have us in Bariloche