January 4, 2010-hola de buenos aires

hey guys,
wow so its kinda been a crazy week for me! we didn´t really do anything for new years...but i did see 3 kids try to rob a meat store on the 31st! haha it was way funny because we were walking and we saw these 2 kids running towards us. one of them was carrying this big bag of meat. as they were running, another kid came riding up on a motorcycle to pick them up. but right before they were about to leave, the bag that the kid was carrying broke and all these sausages fell out. i swear there had to have been like 4 or 5 kilos of sausages. but it was funny because he started to try and pick them all up and keep running, but the other kid next to him was just yelling, ¨lets go! lets go! just leave them!¨ so he dropped all these sausages, and they jumped on the motorcycle and took off. it was kind of a bummer because they wasted all that sausage. but it was kind of a cool story to be able to tell haha.
so about transfers...like we were guessing, araya ended up leaving. i really did think that he was an awesome guy. but i wasn´t too happy with something that he asked me to do last night. so we were walking home and i was going to call the district leader and give him our numbers for the week. when i was about to call, araya told me to bump up the numbers. i don´t know why he would even ask me that, our numbers weren´t even bad. i was just like, ¨no way am i going to do that! if we do that, why do we even work?!¨ i really wasn´t too happy with him. i wouldn´t do that. i wish that we could have ended on a better note, but he wasn´t too happy with me for not bumping them up...but yeah, so araya ended up going to a place called chascamus. technically, its a part of la plata, but its actually like 2 hours away. but he was really excited and i was happy for him too...and for me, i got what i was kinda hoping for. i moved up to senior companion. my new companion is named elder mortensen. he seems like a really cool guy. i think the only thing that i was kinda bummed about was that he was a yankee (haha i wrote that like i was saying that i´m not). i really do like have latin companions, but i´m excited to be able to try something new. but yeah, mortensen is from st. george. he told me that he played football in high school (he´s kind of a stockier guy). but yeah he seems like he´s a really awesome guy. he only has 3 months in argentina though. from everything that i´ve seen, it looks like he can speak alright. but i feel really honored that president would put this faith in me to be senior companion. i really just want to work as hard as i can. i´m excited because i see that in mortensen also. so i think that this is going to be a good companionship.
as far as everything that happened this week...lets see, ester is progressing really well! i was talking to her the other day and asked her how she was feeling about getting baptized. she was like, ¨i think we´re going to get there.¨ i just told her, ¨i know that you´re going to get there. you´re ready.¨ so she´s pretty excited for the baptism on the 16th.
mom, thanks for writing me this week. it sounds like you had some fun at the new years dance with paige hahah (hopefully not too much fun though haha). i didn´t hear how much dad loved it so i´m guessing that he would have rather been somewhere else haha. and about the memory card, i didn´t see it in the envelope but i´ll look again. it would be awesome if you could send the other thing though (yeah i forgot the name of it again). dad, it sounds like you had some fun with uncle jeff in town. Sean, dude i don´t konw if its alright to say this yet...if not then just delete it, but i´m way stoked for you and emily being engaged! congrats bro! be sure to tell her that i say hi and that i´ll meet her in a year and a half. but i don´t think that chargers played this week so hopefully lakers and still dominating. keep me posted bro. love ya. paige, so i talked with gub-daddy today ...how come you haven´t sent gub-daddy a letter in like 3 months?! if we´re going to be cuñados, you have to atleast write him once in a while. he told me that he can´t write you back until you write him again haha. and you know what...he´s gotten way thinner! he wasn´t bigger before, but he´s definately in shape (just so you know). thanks for writing me this week, but you gotta write gub-daddy too. he´s practically family! oh and by the way, the letter for araya got here...he didn´t let me read it but he said thank you. bridg, it sounds like you had some fun with brooke in town...oh before i forget! i´m going to tell you something that´s going to make you really jealous. so we have 6 puppies that live outside of our pension right now! they´re so awesome! i play with them all the time. i´ve got a video that i want to show you with them...i´m thinking that you´ll get a laugh out of it.
well i guess thats about it for this week. i would appreciate any prayers for our investigators. if you could also pray for me to be able to not just help my companion, but to also be able to lead this area, i would really appreciate it. i love you all. until next week...
con cariño,
elder ryan hall