Letter from Goya - 3 October 2011

"General Conference and Other Frequently Asked Questions"
Dear Family and Friends,

bfsh

All is well here in Goya! This week we had our first day of real deadly, sticky, sweaty heat. It was very hard. But, thankfully the weather has turned more gentle and spring like once more. Today I bought a big floppy sun hat (bfsh) though so I will be prepared next time. Hna. Da Silva already has one.

My email today will be short but I will respond to a few questions.

1. How was conference?

Conference was hectic but good. On Saturday morning we went to the chapel with one of our less-active members who had never been to conference before and NO ONE was there, except one brother and the zone leaders. It turns out the satellite was broken. Slowly more people trickled in and we ended up cramming everyone into a back room to watch the session streaming from the internet on a small computer monitor. I didn´t get to watch most of this session because there was no room for the missionaries and we were all running around trying to fix the satellite so we could watch the next session on the big screen in the chapel. One elder was on the phone with salt lake for what felt like hours, reading off numbers and pressing buttons and doing all kinds of strange and nonsensical and elusive things to try to fix it. Later a bunch of elders climbed up the satellite tower to remove a bird’s nest and to clean it out in case that was the problem. It didn´t work. Then they piled a bunch of tables one on top of another as a substitute for a ladder and tried fiddling with the projector. Finally, the zone leaders went out and bought the longest ethernet cable I have ever seen in my life and ran the cable all down the hallway of the building and connected the projector in the chapel to the internet in the branch president’s office and by midway through the second session on Saturday we were in business.

Conference is not the same when it is dubbed over in Spanish. It is also not the same when you are worried about your investigators and whether they are bored and whether or not they understand. Although, thankfully, most of them are beautiful, honest souls who seemed to enjoy themselves and feel the spirit despite their boredom and general confusion.

Sadly, I missed President Uchtdorf’s talk. I hear it was excellent. I probably will not be able to watch it for another year and a half, which is sad. But at least I can read it in a few months when we get the Liahona. 

I cannot believe they are turning the Provo Tabernacle into a temple! I was shocked. That is so cool. Did anyone catch wind of that before they announced it? When will it be finished? I am excited to return to Provo and go to that temple. New favorite temple.

2. What do you eat?

milanesa

Good question! We do not have many meals with members here. I am not sure why. We are trying On Sundays we eat with the Vera family and on Wednesdays we eat with the Aranda family. I would say, in general, the food is not very delicious to me--but keep in mind I have not shared meals with very many people. So far I have eaten lots of fried battered meats (they have this thing called milanesa that people eat all the time which is a breaded meat) and fried potato things and empanadas and bland pastas. The milk and yogurt here is not very delicious either. It has a weird chemically taste. I have stopped drinking it. I also don´t really like the desserts here. The cakes are very sugary and moist and covered in caramel and the "alfajores"  (sandwich cookies with caramel in the middle) are crumbly and starchy and bland. Thankfully Sister Heyman makes some of the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever tasted and she gives them to us every time with meet with her.

alfajores

All the days that we do not have meal appointments we cook for ourselves. I actually don´t mind this because I like cooking and it means that I don´t have to eat very much meat and I can eat healthily. The fruits and vegetables here are very good and fresh. Lots of people grow them in their gardens and sell them at little corner markets all over the city. I make for myself pasta and vegetable soup and omelets and fruit smoothies (I found an immersion blender in a pile of old dirty broken stuff in my apartment! I fixed it up and now I use it all the time). I have also made crepes and french toast and hash browns. 

I am hopelessly, endlessly, tragically, desperately missing peanut butter. I would sell my left arm to get some good peanut butter.

Well, that´s all for this week. I will send more pictures and stories next week.

Love,

Hna. Brooke Parker