Week #6 in Argentina

Biggest news of the week is the arrival of grandchild #13 to our family as a little baby boy, Rhett Nathan Richardson was born to Kyle and Shaylee.   Even over 6,000 miles away from them, our family keeps on growing!


It is hard thing for us to think that he will be walking before we see him in person, it all feels right in our hearts to do what we are doing each day here in Argentina.  We have three sister missionaries living in another apartment in our building and we have told them they are "our stand-ins" for our three daughters so they have taken to calling themselves, Allison, Melissa and Kelly and they know which one they are.   Wonderful sisters, we are sad that transfers are occurring this week and we will lose two of them to other zones but happy we will able to keep Hermana Jimenez from Spain or our "Kelly" and a brand new missionary that arrives this week will replace the other two and we will get to know her very well over the next six weeks.   It is a little surprising how quickly we learn to love working with the younger missionaries and how close we get to them as we find ways to make their lives a little easier in small but significant ways.   We took two missionaries working in Pilar to McDonalds for lunch one day this week and I started sending their Moms pictures of them at McDonalds and this one as we dropped them off in a hot dusty street and they sat down with a family on a street corner in tree shade to teach them a lesson:


Their Moms appreciated a small window into their sons day so far away and we loved being able to share these kind of moments with missionary families.   I continue to be impressed with how hard these young men and women work on a daily basis, they leave every day at 10 am and often are not back into their apartments until 9 at night.   The Buenos Aires North Mission has baptized over 200 people in the month of February as the fruits of such hard working young missionaries.

The discovery of a PF Changs around 25 minutes from our apartment has been a good thing for us as some days we would just like a small piece of "home" in the form of food we could get in UT, we have been there twice in the past month when we have tired of really good empanadas, really good steaks and, so far, very odd pizzas  :)  


In the category of things that are different in Argentina from our observations is that many Argentinians treat the grassy strips along the side of their highways as places to lay out a blanket and have a picnic, play soccer and just relax such as the picture below:


I suppose as we drive through many cities there are not many grassy parks in the city that would allow them to do this sort of thing so the freeway sides is a place that allows them to sit in grass for such things.   Each city has beautifully groomed city center plazas but often they have benches and grassy areas fenced off so they can't really lay out a blanket and picnic in those.   It works and people don't seem to mind the rush of traffic so near where they are trying to relax.  I suppose Linda and I will need to get a blanket and experience this aspect of life in Argentina.

Another great week, the mission is losing 4 missionaries going home and 16 arrive this Tuesday so the number of missionaries is increasing here.   

We love what we are doing and look forward to what adventures serving as missionaries will bring us in the next week.

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