Well, I'm here.

BIG NEWS!!! WAY TO BIG TO EXPRESS. I got transferred. No longer will I be in El Cruce. Good old times. My new companion is Elder Harmon. We are in the area of Villa Zula. It is a cityish area on the outskirts of a city called La Plata. Which means plate or money. I’d go with the money side. We`ll see what that means. I’ve basically just moved all my stuff in and that`s about it. We are in a 4 man pinch. The other missionaries are not there right now. One is new so he will be arriving tomorrow and the other is still at the offices waiting with all the other trainers. Elder Hakes (my last companion) will also be training in El Cruce.

Because I am no longer in El Cruce, I figure it is time to share some of the funny stories that I didn't want to share earlier. For example:

- 2 months without running water in the pinch... (don’t worry, we used a hose)

- Walking laps around an area of about 20-25 circular miles

- Muddy roads when it rains

- Having to carry my laundry and groceries from the pinch to a city 50 blocks away

- Cockroaches surprises

- Party house below the pinch

- Church building outside our area

There is more than that. But I thought I’d just list a couple odd things about El Cruce. But the funny thing is that now that I'm gone... even though it has only been a few hours. I miss it. We find out transfers on Saturday night. So I said goodbye to everyone at church on Sunday and then went over to Alex´s house for lunch after church. He was my last baptism. It was hard to walk away from their house after that. We ate and shared stories, photos, music and love. My companion was sick and I needed to pack. So after a couple hours we left their house and I really do hope I’ll be able to go back some day. Every member of that ward, every person I’ve talked to in that area seems like family now. I don't like the idea of leaving them. I really do love them all.

That said... I need to tell you about the Saturday activity. We did a Family Home Evening with the members of the ward. It turned out great! We planned for it all week and spent most of Friday and Saturday planning it. It involved going back to the offices and making arm braces. At the activity we did fishing (for candies and such), pictionary/charades, photo search, janga, bowling, and a fun little arm brace activity. You needed to eat Jello with arm braces so that you couldn't move your arms. Quite fun! At the end we watched WALL-E. We ran over to Blockbuster to get it (yeah, a REAL Blockbuster... I felt right at home). They were all out of what we wanted... so I ended up buying it. So now I have a copy of WALL-E with a Spanish cover. Go figure. Everyone loved it though and we had a lot of future investigators/ inactive members come. I felt good leaving on such a high note. I also left 5 people with baptismal fechas. I hope they make it till the end.

Um, I'm not sure what else to put. The rest of the week was normal preaching and teaching. Oh, story:

On Friday after planning we took off out into the rain storm to head for a cita (appointment). It turns out they failed us. So we headed off to a non-muddy road when we passed some guy that we had given a Book of Mormon to. He was kind of weird and we weren't sure what would happen with him. I suggested we drop by and luckily he was there. We came in the yard and sat down under his... sun net thing. I took the wet seat and figured what they hey, I'm already damp. Elder Hakes took the dry one and ended up getting dripped on the entire lesson. Because of the rain issues bothering him, I basically taught the investigator alone. We taught part of lesson one and the purpose of life. During the lesson I felt he needed a goal. So I challenged him to baptism. He looked at me and said, "I’ve been changing my life for a long time. I want to do what is right. If you are telling me I can be forgive by being baptized, then yes... I want to be baptized" It was a very weird turn of events for him. He still needs to stop smoking. So hopefully he will be baptized by the end of next month. I know I won’t be there for it... but I was there when I needed to be. Thank the Lord.

Well, I'm good. I’ll see you all soon. Take care. I really do hope all is well in the home land.

I love you all so much,

Tommy

PS I ran out of deodorant. We`ll see if Argentina makes anything as good as Old Spice Pure Sport. I doubt it.