Elder Day with the Mission President and his wife:
First Email home from the mission field:

Our last fireside we heard bishop edgley the presiding bishop he talked about working hard and smart and having faith and we would be fine. The last few days of MTC time were hard to pull myself together but a majority of the time I was able to. It was just super crazy. We hosted...again on wednesday and that was definately not as fun for the third time. I looked for Evan but couldn´t find him for the whole day. I eventually found him on friday I think. He was having a great time as far as I know when I left. There was never a time I could take a picture with him so that was sad but oh well. Elder Wells had a call back at the Rc that went really well with a lady named Laura. She is super accepting to the gospel and hopefully will be converted. It was awesome. Stanfield gave us this crazy lesson that was super packed with info on how to find people it was amazing. I tried to write it all down but it was hard to keep track of everything he was saying. He is such an awesome teacher I love all i learned from him. In our last TRC we had this guy that just wanted to talk forever and eventually I just started cutting him off so we could teach him. It was a good learning experience but hard to get to teach. On a sad note Elder Wells didn´t get his visa so he will have to wait a while before he can come to Argentina. Hopefully he will get it soon. It was reallyhard and sad to say goodbye to my great teachers and friends. I will definately miss them all but hopefully we can all keep in contact. Our departure devotional was good about having an eternal prospective and by having this we will make and keep better goals in our lives. On travel day I woke up at 3:45 in the morning to make sure I had everything and get down to the travel office by five. travel was long. It was an adventure to get through security both in salt lake and miami. We had to go to dallas then miami then Buenos Aires then Salta. Total travel time of 36 hours. the flight from miami to Buenos Aires was really long and really hot. I couldn´t sleep more than about three hours. However the sunrises here are super pretty. When we got to Buenos Aires and had to go through international security no one else in my group really spoke spanish so I had to translate. That was interesting because I don´t know that much spanish either by far. when we got through we found out one of the elders was missing one of his bags so that was sad. It has to get sent to him. It was super humid out like arizona during the monsoon season. We eventually got on a bus that drove us around for a while, dropped some elders off at a hotel and took the rest of us over to a different airport to fly to Salta. That flight was about two hours and all went well there. we met the president, took all our stuff to his houe, then went to the mission office for an orientation and interviews. We had to go to the little police station that was like super ghetto to tell them we were new and there to stay for a while. After everything was done we had pizza and went back to the presidents house to sleep. When we woke up we had to go to this MVD like place to give them our fingerprints and stuff. I had no idea what was going on so I can´t tell you much more than that. After that we had empanadas at the presidents house that were delicious and met our trainers. My companion/trainer or as we call them here my papi is Elder Broderick. He is from Utah and has just under a year on his mission. My area is Tafí Viejo in Tucuman. Its like a little suburb on the outside of Tucuman. It is split between 4 missionaries and we each have half. It took 6 hours to get there from Salta so Its pretty far away. We are on the ciesta schedule so we wake up at 7 got to work at 8:30 come back home at 1 for lunch then three hours of study then go back out at 5:30 till 9:30 then its bed time at 11. The first few days we had some appontments but we ended up clapping a lot of doors and contacting. Right now we have a huge lack of investigators so It´s hard. hopefully it will start getting better soon as we make more contacts. We have found a few that look like they could be some good investigators. A lady and her daughter seemed pretty interested. We taught them the first lesson and they had a lot of the same beliefs but didn´t go to a church. oh people here are really super bad about keeping appointments. And always whenever I walk down the street girls whistle at me or hiss or something Its weird. We have a pretty awesome family in our small branch of about twenty people. Oh yeah looks like I´m gonna be playin piano for the next three months at least cause thats usually at least how long you stay in one place. Anyways they are familia Ledezmo. The kid thats about 25 is the branch president and he is cool then the girl Matilda is 18 and is always sharing the gospel with her friends. She is one of the few that has been born into a family married in the temple. They are super nice though and feed us every sunday for lunch. This sunday we had asado or argentine bbq. It was super good. the only other lunch we have is on wednesday. my living conditions...mom you might not want to read this. We live in some old school apartment that everything is dirty and broken besides the toilet. As all of us are Eagle Scouts we make it work but it definately isn´t a nice place. There are crickets everywhere and holes in the walls (which is why you don´t have to worry about my gas power in the apartment mom ha ha). But yeah milk comes in bags here the sugar tastes different. Everything is just different. I like it though its fun and new and if I can live here for two years I can live anywhere. My companion and the people I live with are great. I will send you some pictures next time but yeah all is well and I am having the time of my life. Oh they have bidettes here...great invention everyone needs one. anyways thats about it for now.

Love you all!
Elder Joshua Day