Serving in Mar del Plata

Elder Roberts & Elder Cano

Flia Galli our neighbors in Olavarria

Paraguay Food in Argentina

Hey watsup

1st off I think Jimmer was fouled.  Bad call by the refs haha jk.

It's all good here. Weather is a lil more like Olavarria and not San Diego coldish stuff haha.

On Tuesday of last week I went on divisions with Elder Snow from Layton (and just b4 I don't forget, I don't know Juan Joglar, friend of Shari but I will ask around. There are 3 stakes here so I'll try to find him.) Anyways, he only has almost 2 months in Argyworld but his Spanish is good for only lil time. He can understand and talk good. I was impressed haha. My 1st month I was trying to pick out words haha. But he came to my area and it was kinda funny cuz we were lookin at the map for most of the time cuz I'm new here too lol. But it helped me to get the area down better haha cuz I think I still don't even know Olavarria. It was cool being the Sr comp. Lil different, but it went pretty good. We had one lesson where this guy David was asking these good questions that we could answer gr8 if we were speakin English haha. That was a hard part cuz he had gr8 questions but we couldn't get our point across as good. Elder Cano and I are passing by him Wed.

We had an investigator come to church. His name is Dionisio and he's 80 yrs old and Saturday we passed by his house with a member (Kostiuck - the guy in the photo from last week who gives me besos) and that really helped him feel more comfortable about goin to church. Hermano Kostiuck is hilarious. He is an energetic guy and it's not rare for him to stand up and explain somethin with like his whole body haha.

Also, this week we passed by some Jehovahs witnesses and they let us in their house for us to teach and they also kinda wanted to take that time to teach us some stuff too. If I were a person without a religion and heard them talk it would be hard to follow them cuz there is nothin spiritual about it. They are kinda stubborn and you couldn't feel the spirit from their teachings which makes the spirit so important in our religion cuz we aren't just teachin words kinda like they were. And it was funny cuz they kept talkin and we were trying to leave cuz there was not much point in stayin and comp set the alarm on the phone as if some 1 was callin ¨oops gotta go¨ haha I remember dad asked about the religions here like a week ago and it kinda reminded me as if your religion is kinda your sports team.  Just something I've kinda noticed.

Que mas my espñ is getting better. I don't really like speaking English. Thats kinda why I haven't taught comp much of it hahaha. It's fun to talk in espñ and to have your brain think of other ways to explain things. Mi encanta hablar todos los dias en espñ es divertido a mi estoy tratando tener mi espñ mas rapido cuando estoy hablando a personas.

Comp is funny haha. He's hilarious. I cant really think of funny things he says, but he's hilarious and at the same time hes a gr8 missionary. People love him haha.

We found some more inv and Pres set the challenge for until he gets released in June to get 1000 baptisms for the 6 more months. We got like 828 bapt all last year. He's really done a lot for this mission in raising the bar. I heard that probably in 2015ish they might have a MDP mission and a Bahia Blanca mission but it could be just a rumor.

We played some more ball today with the zone leaders, Elder Miñoz and Elder Corrientes (the american argy) he's white as snow, but is from Argy haha.

Now I'm going to send photos. 

Love 
Elder Reginald Grant Roberts 

y ps thanks for the photos scott. I am a fan of graffiti. They have some sweet ones here. Who knows, I may have graffiti on the side of my house one day. Maybe of Jimmer hahaha and I love your Joseph Smith pic.

Playing some basketball on P-day!

We helped this family paint their house.

Hermano Kostiuck and me. He likes to give me besos, no big deal hahaha.

Whats up people?

It's all good here!

Mom my stomach feels better. It was just me getting used to the water here. We went and played bball today and it was dandy haha gr8 like always.

Hey alyssa y scott y grandparents smart - I received your packages for Christmas and I heard I have another one that I'll get tomorrow. It might be the other one from gma smart! thax I loved them!!

My comp is a funny guy haha. He's kinda a clown haha and also a gr8 missionary. The members in the ward love him cuz he's hilarious hahaha. He likes bball but also soccer. I'm going to try and change his mind on that haha. He also thinks Paraguay is paradise hahaha. And pretty much knows all the Pargys here. I'm teaching him a lil eng. It was funny yesterday on the bus on the way to church we were sitting by some members who actually lived in Florida for 8 yrs and we were talkin about eng and comp was like tell me if this is bad to say, "I will punch you in the face" hahaha. No doubt I'll be teaching him some nacho libre stuff. Comp has been here for three transfers I think. He was baptized when he was 12. He use to be Catholic. And it's funny when people say,"Sorry, I'm Catholic" and he says "Oh, that's ok, so was I." haha Catholics are big here, also Jehovah's Witnesses. The JW's also have missionaries that go around lookin like us. Some people get confuse with us. And then also there's a "cosecha mundial" it's like worldly harvest idk something weird lol.

We had a great week in finding people. One day we found 2 fams. One with 4 Flia Cejas (translated to eyebrows in eng haha). Then flia Bitres we found flia eyebrows from the grand kid. He went to church with his friend and we immediately asked him where he lives etc hahaha.  Also, the sis of the less active guy that came to church last week. We taught her and she listened to the mish b4 and is excited to get bapt. No one came to church, dang it. We're going to be workin more with the members so inv will have friends b4 they attend church.

The biggest difficulty having a latin comp? hmm idk they have a bigger vocab in espñ. He's gr8. We have pretty good communication. Like the language thing haha sometimes I have to try to explain somethin and he's like "what?" haha. It's not like when you can ask your american comp what is this word and they tell you.

I went on divisions with Elder Muñoz Tues I think and it was funny cuz we both know lil bout this area so we'd be lookin at the map a lot.

Giants and Pats aye. I'm glad to see that the Alex Smith had a good year this year. tom brady u tha man.
Alright I have 10 min so I'm going to try and send fotos. Hopefully this favring comp works or I may throw somethin haha jk.

Church is awesome! Keep goin to it haha!
Love
Elder Reginald Grant Roberts

Suup from MDP!!

Suup from MDP!!

Like Dad said the weather is much cooler here then Olavarria. I  was freezing the 1st 2 days. Went to bed all wintered out haha.

So where to begin, alright my area where I'm at the apartments are called S.O.I.P  or SOIP idk. And maybe if you look that up you'll be able to find me better. I'm bout 20 to 30 minutes from the beach. (We can only go in winters lol.) In the parking lot area of SOIP I can see the city cuz we're kinda on a hill. I can see the soccer stadium. The church is in Carasa by a store called Toledo. It's just out of our area and the ward is sweet. The bishop's awesome. I had to bear my testimony and it could've been 2 minutes hahaha. But that's alright, there was 3 other talkers.

My comp is cool. His spanish sounds kinda funny like Paraguayans. We were going to go ball at the church, but like this whole week my stomach has been feelin like I've had a punch to the stomach and so we just rested the whole day. Feeling better.  Still kinda feels funny. There's a lot of dirt roads where I'm at or you could say rock roads haha. They're the worst ones I've seen lol. It's kinda hilly here too.

I can understand my comp pretty good except he has the normal espñ accent with the double ll and y is a Y (young) sound and argy is a sh or kinda like Jaque vaughn the j in his name so he'll say somethin and I have to think of it in argy way haha. Members are cool. There is a fam that lives kinda by us and they have 7 boys and 2 girls. Big fam and I need to  have the boys one p day teach me how to do one of the dances. It's kinda like the Dougie not really.

There is no wal mart which stinks, but I got lucky to have one in my first area. There is a kiosco (supersoip) a little store with a bunch of stuff. It's kinda pricey though. There is also a store the Toledo thing by the church, but it takes a while to get there. We were goin to go 2day but my stomach was little weird. I'll miss u wal mart :( We do get lunches from members which is good.

We found some new people this week.  A fam of 3. One named Veronica. They were all good with the church til Sat night when they told us they want to keep goin in their religion, but they said we can keep goin by so they're not defiantly outa hope.

Went to a less active house and one of the sons hasn't been bapt and the dad and the little girl attended church, but not the boy cuz he was sick.

Go bulls! What the favre the Pack are out ugh! Go Utes I'm comin lol.

I'm going to send the picks. Hope it works.

love you guys church is true
love Elder Reginald Grant Roberts
Good Night Now haha


(P.S. The photos didn't come. From, Lisa) :(

Transfered to Mar Del Plata!

Heyyy thereee!

So the mission trade deadline went down and guess what? I've been traded from Olavarria to Antartida Mar Del Plata!!! It's crazy, we got transfers Friday at 4ish and I'm here writing from Mar Del Plata. My days are now over in Olavarria! My new companion is from Paraguay. His name is Elder Cano and he knows about as much English as I know espñ after a few days in the mtc hahaha. It's gr8! No more English, but he says that I need to help him learn English.  He already knows 3 languages.  espn, a paraguayan language - guateni, (spencer will probably have to learn that) and brazilian, cuz he lives by brazil haha. My area is the 3rd area from the beach by where we were for ¨super p day¨ and its cool we can see the view of the city of Mar Del from our house with the buildings and stuff. It's about a 15-20 min taxi ride from here. I left Olavarria at 8:20 pm argy time and arrived at Mar del plata (mdp) at 1:20 am. I came here with Elder Muñoz, my old leader of the zone in olavarria. He's still my zl and his area is right by me.  It's pretty sweet. He's a gr8 guy. It's more of a city here. I'm still kinda far from the actual city, where centro is and all that, but there's more cars. I think we saw some ballers arriving in Mar Del last night cuz there's not many black people here and they were carrying their gym bags and I wanted to yell, "Watssup!" haha Maybe I'll get to go to a game haha. But it's cool here. I like it, my house is huge! We live in these apartment buildings. There's like 50 plus in this little area thing. I'll never forget what no. we are - 32, jimmers byu haha. But yeah the apartment is huge! You walk in and there is a big living room thing that'll be my work out place. I might even be able to to sprints in it haha. Then there's a kitchen, a bathroom, another room that doesn't get used, our study room and then our bedroom. It's sweet! My last house, I didn't realize how small it was. Kinda thought that most mish houses were like that and maybe they are but it was tiny.

If you don't know where mdp is, it's like on the right of the mission, bottom right and I'm by San Martin. I don't think Antartida is an actual place just the name of a road in our area.

So I've got that adjustment now. It'll be good. I actually have more time on the mish then my comp, ok by 24 hrs, but yeah. I still have more  haha. But he's been speakin espñ for 21 more yrs then me hahaha. He's gr8! He likes bball. He said he was kinda sad that his last comp didn't want to play bball, just soccer haha.

I have pretty much no idea how the investigators are here. I think they've had a lot lately. Which reminds me, Leonel y Florencia in Olavarria. Leonel said he did all the reading we gave him and he says he wants to share the gospel with his friends at work.  He works nights and he said whenever he has 10 to 20 min he will read!! But then I got transferred haha. Cecilia showed up for church with Nico her other son we want to bapt!

It's funny, right now my screen has like 90 percent of the words with the red underline thing cuz its in eng not espn lol. I'm defiantly a bad speller.

I have church from 10 to 1 here and the church isn't even in our area. Sacrament meeting and a principles class with the less actives and new members, then a priesthood. The ph thing is about George Albert Smith but we don't have books yet haha. And this yr is also bout the b o m.

I used my sleeping bag in Olavarria, but here I don't think I will right now cuz its hot. But I might get it for like a blanket thing. There are some bugs that I've seen that I've never seen b4 like a small lime green one.

Today I was reading the tribute to Pres. Hinkley in the Ensign magazine that they have here and I read Uncle Earl's talk bout the sand footprints. I loved his story where he was taking an elevator and Pres. Hinkley just started to use his cane and saw Earl go in and Pres. said  something like, "I'm going to be taking the stairs." haha. And also the ¨You all look like a bunch of penguins.¨ haha to everyone in their suits.

Well, I don't have much time. Thx for all and keep prayin for me. I need them :)

love the church it is tru and love u all
Love
Elder Reginald Grant Roberts

iFELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

iFELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

Hollllaaaa!
Everything is gr8 here. 1st off I love the pictures that Dad sent me hahahaha. The beard stuff and everything. You guys are hilarious! I'm laughin right now hahahaha. The stache is Farvulous hahahha!

Sounded like your new year went good. Mine was good too. We were with the other elders in our district (more passed centro on the map) and stayed with them for the night. We were on divisions on the 31st and when we went to change back to regular comps at their place comp was like we are going to stay here and we are going to have an asado (bar-b-q thing) and the taxis ended at 8 and we got there like 8. So we stayed there and all I had was my clothes and BOM ha. No camera for pics, so I have no evidence of being in argy on new years ha. Kinda a bummer, but what ever. There were a lot of fireworks, which I'm a fan of. They go til bout  1:30 am-ish. They're pretty cool. We saw some clowns riding these big bikes in the street haha pretty cool. It's kinda weird, people tell you happy new year more than merry christmas. It's kinda sad that they forget the meaning of christmas and love new years for the parties haha.

We had church the next day at 10:30 again for an hour cuz of new years. I couldn't remember if they do that in the states, but if i remember right we don't haha. Had no investigators. :(

But this week we found some families. Youthful or young married couples with kids. There is Maxi y Marisol. Maxi was bapt, but he's less active. He's a cool dude. Chill guy, cool family. And Marisol has a bunch of family that lives by her (in star area) so that'd be sweet to do a bapt family tree thing. Then there's Leonel y Florencia. We went to them b4, but this week was a first time in a while and talked bout gospel more. He's funny. Leonel, he sometimes speaks in english (he just knows words like most people) and his phone rang and was like, ¨Excuse me,¨ then answered. Then at one time he was counting the months haha. Found also Ricardo y Pamela. Also knew lil b4 this week of them but had a good sit down with them. Then Magali y Luis. Luis almost got baptized but he had to leave town or something during his bapt and never got bapt. It was like 8 yrs ago. Also talked with a teen the other day and there is 3 people of 10  in his fam that have been bapt, so hopefully we can work with their family good. The teen is Brian. So we have a bright future with investigators. Cecilia is having a hard time with smoking still and she seems not to have much faith in herself.

Hey I got the package from home and the christmas card from gma merlyn and card from nathan and alison!! thanks I love it all! The liahona, book marks, photos are awesome!! And of course, ¨Teach me how to Jimmer¨ watsup young sim haha!!! na dht ebig (Just looked at that after writing it meant to say ¨and that big¨ hahah )  ol card from the Roberts!! and nathan and alison's fam looks gr8. Ruby has grown a lot and it was funny to read how she's talking up a storm!! thx they're gr8! I love scott's drawings haha and ¨merry christmas¨- Manu lol

That's awesome you got my gifts stuff YES!  and you have my map. Cool so you know where I'm at. Hopefully I don't get transfered this week. Can you believe it's transfers again? Rep the jerseys, shades and all.

So Sub your friends with paul milsap basically. That's awesome hahaha. Tell him wassup 4 me lol.

I'm holding a U sign as I'm singing utah fight song!! thats awesome!

That's cool my lil accent in espñ the vowels are always pronounced the same and so I'm use to saying the vowels all weird haha and I have a hard time reading in english. It took me 4ever to remember wat ¨qui¨sounds like in eng lol.

It looks like it might rain today. Dang I might have to put on a jacket. Darn haha.

Thanks for all everyone! Love u(tes) tons! Keep being capos and ches. Church is true and there are miracles on this earth everyday and God lives and Jesus is our redeemer, gracias por todo.

Love
Elder Reginald Grant Roberts

Super P-Day in Mar Del Plata

Hello again and Feliz Navidad hahaha

So that was sweet talking to you all yesterday and seeing everyone. It was pretty awesome. You guys all look great!!

I got the Duncans package today that they sent me. Thanks!! Also, the ward Christmas tree letter, thanks!

I forgot to ask you guys what you got yesterday from papa noel. It's pretty funny yesterday when we were talking with Melanie's family and her uncle or something was sayin how he heard on the radio how someone said on the radio that they thought Christmas day means it Santa's b-day haha. And they also didn't like how the Christmas feeling is dying here. I saw some guy working on his trees and I thought, "What are you doing? Don't work, eat some pie or something, its Christmas!" hahaha

Mom mentioned about how she wanted to know what else I ate at the party thing in Mar Del Plata (sea of the silver or (cash)). We ate some meat like beef and the sausage things and some salad and of course bread like they have in every meal. It was funny, they kept missing our table when they were giving out the meat. People would be going on their 3rds and we've had one serving lol. It wasn't a ton of food, but enough to feed everyone. I sat by El Dobson and he's still hilarious haha. Then we played ball and it was gr8!! Some fresh air! There was some Argy scouts in the building, but I was like, "Sorry, I can't play for you now." haha jkjk

So it sounds like I have an accent you say? Thats cool. Is it like a mexy accent like, ¨yeah man howsa goin man¨ or is it a Cali accent cuz I'm with comp from CA haha.

Mar Del Plata is really one of the most gorgeous places I've been. It's funny. When we were driving on the streets to Mar Del Plata they have the normal white lines like in the USA, but in Olavarria they just drive wherever they want haha cuz there's no lines. And it felt weird with the lines and it was a lot slower like in the USA (more formal) to. And I wanted to say to the driver, "faster" haha so if I come back and I drive like a maniac it's alright haha anyways....There are beautiful buildings and beaches and eveything. The main part of Mar del is like a ¨U¨ the shape of the "u¨ is the road and on the tips, top parts are big buildings and it's really incredible. The part in between the ¨U¨ is ocean so you kinda go around it but the ocean is kinda below  ¨downstairs¨ haha or however you can explain it ha. I also knew that they played the FIBA bball tourney to go the Olympics there and so I had an eye out to find it and we passed the arena it was awesome!

Cecilia said she's 70% for sure that she doesn't want to get bapt on the 31st. Her son Nico (11) doesn't want to get bapt too.  Ugh! So I'm lookin forward to a week of miracles to find 3 people to bapt b4 1/1/12 (the last yr ever) Luke 1:37.

It snowed this morning  haha jk. Still sunny. I wanted to ball way bad with the new ball and stuff but comp was like the other elders want us to go hangout with them. I shed a tear jk next week.

Jimmer looks gorgeous in purple. I hope that doesn't sound at all weird or anything haha. Thx for those. Ok sorry I'm talkn lil bit bout ball but how many games are they going to have this yr, like 60? And an all star game or what? it will be a challenge now that the season has started but I promise I'll focus as hard as I can on gospel.. ugh I can do it haha.

It's cool, I heard they have even more fireworks on New Year's Eve at 12 then they had on the 24th at night. So that will be cool to hear! As we were walking to church, it was hilarious, we saw a guy, probably low 20s, sleeping against a wall with one of his shoes off by his leg haha. He probably got drunk and fell asleep haha. I wanted to poke him haha. But after we passed him we think one of the teens set off a firework by him to wake him up cuz we saw him laughin at him when we walked by and we heard a big boom where we just were haha.

Espñ is doing gr8! Still gotta keep goin hard. I could understand everything like I said at church. There are some words that I didn't know why they were placed in the sentence, but so far it's doing good.

Merry Christmas!!! everyone and a happy new year with a new beginning and everything! Party hard, don't stop til you get it. CTR and read the BOM and be gr8. Church is true without a doubt and study your spanish haha. I'll give you a word ¨hoya¨ (ho_ sha) it means awesome. Pretty much the literal translation is Jewel ¨que hoya¨means, thats awesome.

Love Elder Reginald Grant Roberts

E Tres UNO

1st off Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everything's going perfect! Comp just said at 4 o'clock argy time (12 utah) we will be on Skype. He'll be going 1st,  so I'll get on bout 1or 1:30 utah time. If you need to contact me I'll probably check my email b4 I get on or something.

It does not feel like Christmas at all haha. It's pretty weird. There's no Christmas music. No big decorations. Maybe some lights here and there and maybe a santa thing outside their door. And the most popular decoration is probably the 2 foot high tree thing hahaa. But other than that, not much christmasy stuff. I do love Christmas in summer. It's so hot that a man just walked in with his shirt off and he probably weighs 3 times my size hahaha. I will enjoy the 1st day of summer on the 21st aww yeah lol. It's not extremely hot for me, but my comp hates it haha.¨pobresito¨ the only uncomfortable part is probably having to wear these pants the whole day, but I love the heat. I'm not sure if they focus on the birth of Jesus much here (to answer your question) (LIKE WITH OTHER PPLE)oops caps lock..but really it just feels like a normal week in the middle of the year except that the calendar says December haha. It doesn't have that feel of Christmas except wal mart haha. They've got the Christmas fever and Bieber fever. Saw jb's Christmas cd. Do you have it sub? haha

It's kind of a half P day today. We went shopping at walmart and email today. It's not really p day cuz we have the activity thing in Mar Del Plata this week. We leave from here in the night on Wednesday, like 5 or so. Then arrive like at 8:30 in mar del plata, the next day. There we can play sports. BBALL, USA football etc. But you know for sure you can find me - on the court! I'm pretty excited to go cuz I guess mar del is one of the prettiest places in Argy. I'm defiantly going to take my camera and send some pics your way. Pres will be there. Then we get on a bus like at 10 Thursday night and go back home. We'll probably get home like 1 in morning.

Hows Vegas life everyone? Hope it's warm. Give a high 5 to a tower for me or something haha.

My espñ is doing really good. Yesterday i pretty much understood every word in priesthood class. And it's cool to talk to the kids in our ward and understand them. It's sweet. Hey we got the Liahona from conference!!! It's en espñ, but i think the zone leaders should have some in eng.  It's kinda harder for me to read and understand espñ. I can read fine with pronunciation etc its just remembering what I said. It is hard haha. I did get 2 cards from gma merlyn in the mail thanks!

Cecilia didn't attend church. Nor anyone else :( That always stinks. But hey that was 24 hrs ago. Haven't been in contact with Alberto. Haven't seen Carmen in a while cuz she's been in the hospital. We've been working with the grandkids of Pedro y Lucinda. They're members, but less active and we're teaching their 8 yr old grandkid, and her cousins (3 of them in same family). They have been taught by the missionaries b4 right b4 I arrived here.  One of the cousins got in trouble or something and the mom punished them by saying they can't attend church anymore hahaha. Pretty silly, but that was like 6 months ago.  We talked about working on a ¨baptismal family tree¨ where you baptize a mom, then her kids, then her cousins etc for example. And so we're thinking that if we can baptize the 8 yr old (Priscila) then maybe the dominoes will fall. They've all been to church b4 a few times. So we hope we can get them to church probably twice more then baptize them on 31st cuz we're trying to get the 3 baptisms for this month so we can get 1000 as a mish this yr!

What are my plans for Christmas? Talk to you guys of course!! Then idk haha. I think we'll have lunch with our neighbors the Galli´s. Our church is from 10:30 to 11:30. Other than that, not much else to do. We'll open our gifts, maybe after church or b4. Then listen to Christmas music haha.

Have fun this week. Be safe. Think bout the birth of Jesus and what Hes' done for us. It's amazing what he really did when you think bout it!

Hope you get all you want from Papa Noel y su elf's.
Merry Christmas and see u LIVE next Sunday!! ino puedo esperar!
LOVE
Reginald Grant Roberts
ps  I sent the package finally. Should get there probably 28thish. Sent it Tuesday.