Arrival

HHHEEEEEEEYYYYY!!!!!!!

       holy sheep creek im soooooo hot!! haha.
okay so monday morning we left the mtc on a bus, i took a picture of the guy who prayed for us before we left so we would have evidense of whos fault it was if we didnt make it:) so we barely barely made our flight from slc to atlanta, after eating at panda express we jumped on our 11 hour flight to argentina!! had some most not delicious food on the plane. landed into a spanish wonder land. we eveuntually got through these mean old ladies who had to look at our passports, and found our luggage after a bit, none was lost for any of us!! its a miracle, anyways. we found our guy alberto who put us on a bus across the huge city of buenos aires. got to our littler airport to fly to mendoza. the alberto guy told us to sit down. we got there at about 9am, he randomly returns at noon saying our flight doesnt leave till 4! oh yeah btw ive sweated out a small pool by this time.
  alberto buys us pizza cuz he has pesos and can communicate with people and we cant. i kind of feel like a mexican here, everyone stares at me and i cant understand what they are saying to me. at 2 we went to check in, passport problems happened, flight was canceled, waited 2 hours in line, got our passports to work, found out our flight left at 6pm, so we napped, then stood in line for an hour until the plane was ready, we finally left the smaller airport at 8, so yeah 11 hours in an airport, soooooo much fun!!!
   landed in mendoza, met president lindahl and his wife, ate amazing lasagna at their place, slept in a prison haha. seriously though, we were on like the third floor, almost like a tree house, it had ten beds smooshed into a bathroom sized room, surrounded by barbed wire. i heard dogs fighting all night long and kept imagining a giant spider landing on my face or cockroaches in my bed with me. survived it.
  woke up, took a weird shower, they use bedae thingys here, more like a bad day to me, cuz of no toilet paper means that they use them so yup its interesting all right! met my companion elder kammerman, he is a miltary type of guy, has neck and back and tendon and nose and migraine problems. oh and he has never had a girlfriend... haha but anyways. met him. went to our home, bought some food, i was mostly stunned still.
  things are rediculous here haha. there are these like canal things alongside all the roads that dead things fall in to. or garbage, and sometimes they have like a flowing river in them, most are about 3 ft deep others are 5 ft or so. they are everywhere!!
  we sleep in a closet that has a refridgerator and a cupboard and just enough room for a bed and a desk. it is just me and my trainer in our whole huge area. our area is called algarrobal. yup i cant say it either so dont be to intimidated.
  im pretty sure the only time i feel clean is the EXACT moment i step out of the shower, then i get dirty somehow again haha. we never know if there is going to be hot or cold water so its a guess everytime.
   also i havent stopped sweating at all. they eat lots of pasta here, and live soccer and swear alot, i think... i cant understand anyone at all haha. ive stepped into a wirlwind of spanish and keep gettin slapped by the stupid stick, that means i fall asleep or just zone out until i dont even notice what is happening around me haha, then i wake up so to speak, and see a lady breast feeding her kid in the middle of the street, totally not caring if people see at all. ive seen 3 bfeeders so far. also kids just starting to pee in the middle of the sidewalk, a guy who almost beat us up with a stick thing, doors slammed in my face, and yeah fun things all around. we had one lunch with a member family, we only have 25 active members in our branch, i watched them prepare the food with dirty hands and flys everywhere. we have to fight the flys off with a bat they are so big, some of them even carry around their own bats and travel in gangs, we try to avoid them. idk why i just said that, haha.
  i drank the water here right off to just get it over with, survived. i got sick one day from some food that i tried to cook haha, barely survived. so far we have been working and trying to find more people. from what ive heard is that the area i am in is the hardest one to baptize people in all of the mendoza mission, we got work to do!!
  did i say that it is kind of hot here? even in the shade im sheddin water. just swimmin in it. at night its hot to so the first night i just slept on my sheets without anything covering me. woke up with a good 30 mosquito bites on my arms legs and feet. so haha i sleep under the sheet, but the little poopers find my feet and hands and face somehow. im declaring war on them. they only come out at night, i think tonight is d-day for the little buggers.
  my trainer speaks english so thats good!! but he is really quiet most of the time so i have to ask him a few times whats going on. but its all good at least its in english.
  bus drivers think they are demolition derby racers. aka they are NUTS with a capital holy crap. dogs are everywhere, usually a few follow us around when we are prosilyting. the people here for the most part are really nice. i think i scared one off once cuz i was sitting down and they walked by so i shook their hand, but then i stood up and they looked straight up and said okay bye! in spanish though, and took off haha. its cool :) we are going to the zoo today and i might get some pictures. we played soccer with the zone today and all the latino misionaries are way good! i was goalie my first game, ten seconds after we started i was on my back and they had scored and won, im not sure still to this very second what happened in that amount of time, i might have tried something crazy and failed. sadly we were only playing to one point, so because of the gringo our team lost.
  in the midst of all the not so positive things there is some good, i made it here safe, aaaaaaaanndd well thats all i have so far but im sure itll get better!!!
  some things i know for sure.  i will never quit. there is no such thing as 'cant'. no matter how many flys mosquitos or dogs there are they wont stop me from mobbin things up. my new years resolution was only one thing, to live my life and my mission with NO regrets. i have none so far :)
  i love you all :) peace out! 

In Country

This pic was sent to us from Hermana Lindahl in Argentina...the mission Presidents wife.  We are so thankful to her, she said they made it after the first flight was cancelled, second flight was delayed and finally third flight got them to Mendoza.  She fed them dinner and put them to bed.  We think he looks a little taller?? Maybe the others are shorter??  He sounded SO awesome on the phone and said that he had already given a pass along card in the airport!!!  He says he loves you all, thanks for writing, read the blog cause he can't seem to get all of you written too!!  He bore testimony to us in Spanish...super cool adventure is just beginning for the boy...we love you all, we don't know when p-day is yet. We will post as soon as we can.  Watch out Argentina...Elder Summers is in Country!!!

Flight Itinerary!!

hey!!!

   so i have like no time at all to write everything i want to see heres the important stuff.

  i have my FLIGHT ITINERARY!! everything worked out fine my visa is the bomb and im on my way on monday morning. the flight info is im on delta airlines, (doesnt ever leave the airport) flight 1912 from salt lake city ut to atlanta georgia. flight leaves at 11:01 am and arrives at 4:35 pm in atlanta. then i have a 3 hour layover then jump on flight 101 to buenos aires, argentina at 750pm and arrive in argentina at 750am!!!! 12 stinkin flippin hours!! haha imma be on a plane with people who dont speak english at all, or the broken up spanish i can muster either. so im going to just testify to people in spanish and hopefully that works out!!

  im pretty sure that ill melt my first step out down there haha so here we go!

   last night we had elder holland come for the second time while ive been here, that man is incredible! he talked about a bunch of stuff and it was sooooooo coool! when i took the notes i am pretty slow and sometimes combine the words of some sentances with phrases from other words so i have a lot of one liners that i liked from him. he always hits every missionary in the heart with all his words. okay so some of the one liners are.

 practice makes perfect, the people deserve the best effort from all of us in whatever we do in life.

 be master teachers and deliver the goods

 we are the last missionaries for this dispensation, put your heart on the line

 submit everything you have to the Lord and he will multiply what youve givin unto him and return it to you as blessings.

 we as missionaries have GOT to be the best there has ever been, we are the hope of Israel at 19 or 21 years old.

 we must go fishing and fish where he tells us to, in doing so we will always find those in need.

 if we love Jesus Christ then we will feed His sheep, once we do this with everything we have, we will be Eternally in His work and forever the sentinals of truth if we LOVE HIM,

 there is no going back, if you go back you have failed the Lord

 stay the course, see it through, be Deciples of Christ for Eternity. (my favorite!)

 

so yeah he's is something really special, after that devotional we had a district testimony thing and haha it was like the most best experience of my life :)

 its so crazy how even if your day has been the worst day ever, if it ends good then it can be made the best day ever :)

 anyways, food still stinks here, i put this hot sauce that my companion has on everything now, and by everything i mean EVERYTHING haha. the hotness of the hot sauce numbs my mouth so i dont have to taste the food haha. i cant wait till real food!! last wednesday we got new elders in our zone so me and my companion had to teach them the ropes and such. then give them a tour and make sure they dont completely fall on their faces and to make sure they dont go home haha. :)

 

 i love this oportunity and everything that comes with it!! my next letter will be from ARGENTINA!!!

so i love you all,

peace,

Elder Summers

Awesome Orb of Amazingness

hey there!!
   man it sounds like life in alaska is still as life threatening as it was before haha. but if you all werent out there on adventures and having things go wrong i would wonder if you were sick or something. as a family we are obligated to have those crazy almost dying experiences haha.
   wow things are going by fast, i may say that every letter but seriously i push send on this email and then blink and im writing another one to yall. but things here are good! i think its actually colder here than up there. im loving the cold! its where i belong, well not for the next two years anyways, imma be sweatin bullets the second i get off the plane haha. its funny because my companion is from arizona and the other elders in my district are from idaho and oregon. so to them all the cold is like death, but to me its all smiles :)
  we havent gotten our travel itineraries yet!!! AAAHHH!! i want it a little bit.. only like a lot though. i hope my visa went through, there have been missionaries who have to wait an extra 2 or more weeks for that stuff so i dont like that.
  here we made a goal for the last two weeks we would talk only spanish, it Sucks. but amid the confusion and the headaches and the spacing out it is going good! haha
  on new years eve i felt really down in the dumps. i looked at why i am here and could only name things that others expected of me and i thought i was only here for an example or whatever. then my amazing teacher hermano penialillo talked with me. he said that as a missionary we are like nephi. in one experience nephi said that he is a giant rough rock rolling down a hill. every adversity he had or hard time he went through was an obstacle on the way down the hill, and after he hit each obstacle his rough rock got polished just a little bit more, and a little bit more. and we will keep being polished until we are the perfected shiny awesome orb of amazingness that God knows we are. it just takes time and adversity. he also compared people to Shrek and said that everyone is an onion and no one really knows what is on all the layers of your onion. the only ones that do is God and Jesus Christ. yup my teacher is awesome.
  anyways for a new years eve party we ate this NASTY fruit cake that an elder recieved around thanksgiving time haha. we all grabbed a piece and a few of us forced it down. i was one of the few who did it :) gotta represent the Summers'. anyways i gagged the next 5 minutes trying to swallow the horrid thing. it smelled like indian food in a diaper.. no good. haha but it was fun? memorable anyways. then we had a silly string fight back in our rooms (thats against some rule i think) but as a zone leader i okayed it :) but besides that its been a pretty normal week. food still stinks but i ate a cream puff that shattered my universe, translation, twas the mother of all cream puffs, aka i liked it alot :)
  i also read a talk called 'rise to your call' or something like that from 2002, i think president ewyring (i cant spell..) gave it. its an awesome one for people who feel inadequet or over run with their calling, their job, or just life.
  i love and miss you all and want to wish you an amazing new year and dont give up hope!!
  love Elder Summers