Speaking good and a dog bite! New comp Elder Carmona

Dear Family,

Elder Sirrine says goodbye to Companion leaving

Thanks to all of you for the emails and the updates that you sent me. It sounds like things are going awesomely for you. The updates for this week are that my new companion is Elder Carmona, he is 19 and has three months in the mission, he is also a meter and a half tall. I don´t know what that would be in feet. He is totally awesome. He is totally full of energy and the spirit and hasn´t been corrupted by any bad companions. I totally love him. This week we have found two or three families that said we could pass by again to teach them. It´s going to be really exciting to see how that all turns out for us. We also are starting to work a lot better with the members now. I can tell that he is going to help this ward a lot.

Elder Sirrine Says goodbye to Friend in district

Elder Sirrine and new companion Elder Carmona

The other really cool thing from this week is that he has got me to talk more in the lessons and with the people. Before him I was really quiet and didn´t talk to much. I always threw out the excuse that Spanish was a bit complicated for me but that was a lie. Most of the latinos tell me that I speak better than the majority of the gringos. I also had a family tell me that they thought I could speak really well and that I should do it more. So now I´ve got five weeks to change that here in this ward and then to keep changing it in all of the other wards that I go to. It´s going to be fun to see how that all turns out for me.

Elder Sirrine and Friend from Distric

The other updates from the week are that yesterday was Argentina´s independence day and that on Saturday I ate a TON of food. We had an activity in the church where we ate Locro. Which is a super stuffed stew that has just about everything in it. It has pumpkin, corn, three types of meat, beans, bones and you put spicy sauce on top. It was totally AMAZING!!!! I love the traditional foods here in Argentina. And then after that we went to visit our Bolivian investigators and they had all gotten together to celebrate Mother´s day. Which for Bolivia is tomorrow. They had an asado and when they saw us they invited us to eat too. That was way too much food for one day. I felt sick and my companion couldn´t finish off his portion of the meat. It was terrible, but cool.

Oh! I also got my first dog bite on Thursday. It totally took me by surprise and tried to eat my elbow. I got away with a ripped coat and a bruised arm, I have since sewed the coat up. It was a crazy experience and I don´t want to repeat it. Also the mission has a blog now, http://comodororivadaviamission.wordpress.com/ that´s the link. Visit it and you can see more of what´s going on here. Love you all tons and miss you lots! Have a great week!

Love, Michael