After nine laborious cooped-up weeks in a building in the middle of Buenos Aires, Argentina, I am finally here in URUGUAY! My area is San Carlos, Maldonado, Uruguay. For those of you who are google eart lovers, I live on the street called Carlos A Cal. in between the two streets Agorrody and Chavez. We literally live right across the street from the church building. And the Bishop lives right down the road. ¡Qué buenísimo!
I can't believe that almost a week has already passed since I got here last Tuesday. I met my trainer on Wednesday. His name is Elder Sevilla and he's from Honduras. And he doesn't speak ANY -- wait for it -- English at all!! So I have had to abandon the language of my fathers and really devote myself to understanding these Uruguayos. It's a good thing that I learned so much in the CCM because I would be lost out here if I hadn't. I can pretty much understand almost everything when people are talking, unless they are under the age of twenty, inthewhich case I understand about half. These chilluns talk so dern fast!
This past Sunday I introduced myself to the ward (with complete fear that they wouldn't like me) and huzzah! They are so surprised that I'm in my first area because of my language. I'm telling you, the gift of tongues is so real that I can taste it. No pun intended.
To add on to all of this new stuff, my trainer Elder Sevilla is also the district leader AAND we were whitewashed. For those of you not familar with this term, that means that he wasn't already in the area and I just got transferred in. That would be too normal and too easy for me. So we have to start basically from scratch for several reasons.
One, the information that the previous elders from the area left us wasn't completely helpful. They told us about their investigators (the people who are looking into the church), but didn't leave addresses with the names and some don't even have teaching records. Seriously, people with baptismal dates that we can't find. What a drag.
On top of that, the house/apartment that we live in was left in terrible condition. It was so dirty that Elder Sevilla stopped the middle of the planning session and in a rage of frustration said "that's it! The Spirit cannot be present here in such filth! We are gonna clean this place up!" Of course, I might be dramaticizing because he just started spitting out Spanish like a crazy person. So we cleaned. But we have to clean more today. Our apartment is pretty spacious, but it is really a piece of garbage.
Elder Sevilla says that it's the grossest, worse apartment he has been in his whole mission. And he has been out 21 months! Why is it so bad? The toilet is jimmy-rigged very iterestingly so it can flush. The shower is just...there. I don' know how else to describe it. It's like the area of space used for the shower wasn't meant for it, because their is just a random spout coming out of the bathroom wall with no real section away from the rest of the bathroom. The kitchen is just gross. Like, honestly. I don't even want to pain a picutre for you because you would die. I almost did. But the Lord spared my life so I could do this work.
We have started teaching a few people, but nobody shows a great deal of promise yet. We found some of the old investigators that the missionaries were teaching before, but none of them want to come back to church. We're gonna work hard and find the people that the Lord has prepared to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am having the time of my life out here and it sometimes gets really frustrating, but the Lord provides for me. I am ready to buckle down and work. My language is always improving and I'm so grateful to be out here preaching repentance to the souls that have great worth in the sight of God. I love you all and continually pray for you! I ask you to do the same! I must now go and serve the beloved children of God.
LOVE,
Elder Plautz
PS Everybody stop using dearelder and start emailing to the open email urumontemission@gmail.com. It's an open email, which means that the mission secretaries read it before printing it out and sending it to make sure that it's appropriate, but they print it out the smae day it's sent (except Saturday and Sunday) and send it out to the missionary, so it's faster than anything else.
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