It's a Beautiful Day in the Barrio

Alright folks, let's get started

FIRST - My companion is Elder Llerena from Ecuador, he's doing a great job of training me, we're both new to our area (a whitewash). San Jose, Uruguay. We are the only missionaries here so we are starting from scratch. Time to grind.

Firstly, to finish out the CCM, we did some stuff and some other stuff. Sunday night was kind of goodbyes. Saying goodbye to my Haitian districts was harder than saying goodbye to my family no cap. The reason being it's so much more unlikely I'll ever see them again. Somehow over the couple weeks I had with them I grew so much love for them and such a strong friendship. It hurt my heart to say goodbye to them.

The flights: Mexico to Panama City, about 4 hours, then PC to Montevideo about 7 hours

On the first flight me and an Elder that sat next to me talked with this Mexican feller, cool guy. We talked about a bunch of random stuff and had a good time. He asked us about our missions a lot and also the church so it was an incredible experience. We shared a scripture with him about how the Lord can consecrate your performances (He was going to give a presentation and was nervous about it) 2 Nephi 32:9 I think. We told him to pray also. Cheers Cristian.

The second flight was at night, from 10 to around 6 or 7. I slept some. We flew around a humongous lighting storm, like enormous. I was seeing lighting for 20 minutes straight it was insanely cool and bright.

My first week has gone well. If I were to describe it in one phrase, it would be this: I could literally fall asleep at any time I want, I doubt I would even have to close my eyes.

Here are some common sayings here, I will just spell how they sound

Fua (At first it was strange because it sounds like the beginning of the f-word lol) To express wowness

Tah - Okay/bet

Tranqui as in "Todo tranqui" - Calm as in all's calm

Also they put a finger gun up to their smile when something is cool or stuff like that

Alright bullet points

- Every house has a butt spraying machine, stray away from the rags that hang near it, they're to dry off after

- Acne, it's as if the gods of acne said "You know what, this poor kid's had enough, ease off his face a little bit... but we can't just end his suffering. Target his back, destroy it."

- Dennis Moss, an apology; I remember whenever you would take Jake (Elder Moss) and I anywhere and you would play your favorite christian tunes and christian rock, I thought death would be better. HOWEVER, now I realize it's not so bad (only because it's all we have) Love you Dennis

- There are so many motorcycles here. Like every person. I saw this 95 year old tiny granny just zooming around the other day. Truly a surreal experience. I also saw a family of 6 split up onto 2 bikes. Todo tranqui

- We watched The Best 2 Years in spanish. Good but just so far off from the original.

- Apparently Uruguayos aren't super huge fans of spice, but we were eating at this Peruvian member's house and he slapped down his spiciest jar of pepper stuff. My companion whimpered in fear, fled the house entirely. Bought a ticket to Montevideo and is now in hiding in Argentina. I slammed my fist on the table. Breaking open the jar, and drank the whole thing. Didn't even flinch. (It was good on my rice, I did dump quite a bit on and wasn't bothered by it so they were impressed)

- Something called Mate. It's an herbal tea type thing, look it up. It's pretty good, kind of tastes and smells like a pet store but I will learn to love it. EVERYBODY drinks it here. They carry around specific flasks for hot water and a lil mug with the crushed leaves in it, pour more in and drink it out of their Mate straws.

OUR HOUSE
When we arrived, it was filthy. There hadn't been missionaries in the home for 6 weeks so we did a deep cleanse for about 3 hours, 'twas quite the job but it needed to happen. The AP's helped us and also the Mission President (Escobar) and his wife! They were there because they were stocking our fridge and cupboards. Super cool to see a MP get dirty and clean. It's quite modest, and the one of the AP's was telling me how fortunate we were to stay in this home because apparently it's really nice. My companion later told that he was just saying that to make me think that haha. Apparently there's much nicer houses.

HOWEVER

It was the hottest place on earth when we got here. We had to buy a fan. Which saved us. Then today, we were ultimately blessed. Our Presidente Escobar has been the MP for several months, and has been making some great changes, especially with the housing. SO TODAY we got an AC unit, I cried I embraced the 2 technicians for 40 minutes crying into their shoulders, thanking them in Spanish. A huge blessing. I'm crying as I type this, my companion is holding a bowl underneath me so I don't destroy the wiring.

FOOD

The food has been great. The members invite us for enormous lunches. Wow they're good. The desserts are good and the ice cream is good and the food is good. You know what I always say, if the food is foody, it's foody. We have a plastic container of Dulce De Leche and I try not to eat it by the spoonful. But but some of that on bread with some bananas on it. Dip that bean into some milk and boom you have ascended to heaven. God doesn't let you stay up there for too long though so after you're done eating you have to go back down. Cool stuff though.

DOGS

Everybody has a dog, if not 6. The mission leader in our ward is so cool. A true capo. He runs a dog care business so he always has like 20 dogs, also like 15 birds. His family is awesome. There's lots of hobo dogs as well, it's sad. More dogs and cows them people for sure.

Accent

The Castellano accent. Everything that makes the "y" sound, makes an "sh" sound. So all the ys and double ls. Me llamo = Me shamo

Puedo ayudarle = Puedo ashudarle. It's cool. They also talk super super fast so I'm trying to learn quick. I'm not completely clueless luckily, I can get the gist of the convo and my companion will ask me questions that will give me a direct specific thing to answer so that's helpful but I'm surviving, understanding, trying, and studying every day.

So to recap our daily experiences. We talk to a lot of people on the streets. Uruguay is one of the countries where their main meal is lunch and then they have a siesta. So the streets are dead at that time. But the evenings are super pleasant, as it is summer here. So everybody is just chilling in their lawn. We are talking with these people right now, pray for them and pray for us!

Santiago: A 14 year old boy that was committed to be baptized with the last elders, but fell through. Our first time meeting with him we recommitted him. He's progressing great and came to church this week. We love him!

Cristian: Another 14 year old boy, but he's got a beard and looks like he's in a midlife crisis and paying child support for 2 kids. Great guy. Him and his dad are pretty interested, however they were really grilling us with questions of "what ifs" with the commandments. He really wanted to know why he shouldn't beat a kid up if he started it. But as Mr. Incredible says "We'll get him, eventually!"

Omar: An older fellow, he really enjoys our charlas, but we need to get his interest spiked.

Selena: We will begin teacher her more. An 18 year old girl that we found on the doorstep of the Refuge here. We talked with her for about 20 minutes and she committed to be baptized. My spanish is good enough to comment here and there and to understand about 50-60% of every conversation (increases lil by lil) but I was so caught off guard, afterwards I had to verify that we had actually done that. We had. Now we just gotta make sure she gets ready haha.

Nahuel: We found him and his friend Andres of the curb of a store. He's 20 and Andres is 25. They're a couple of capos (cool guys) however we need to get deeper rather than simple charlas. We'll get there though.

Alright sorry that was a lot, but a lot has happened. LOVE YOU ALL.

Love God, love Jesus, love your people, love yourself.

Cheerio,

Love, Elder Jerman

200 WPM

Bilingual

2 Time World Champ in falling asleep accidentally during morning prayer

Has baptized thousands

1. Santiago and your boys

2. Just a couple capos

3. The Yanez family of Peru

4. A bauru, for big boys only