February 1, 2010-buenas de buenos aires

hey guys,
well it been a pretty crazy week, i wont lie. i thought that i would just get right to it this week. so javier and viviana are doing really well. they´ve come to church the past 2 weeks and really love it. they´re always participating in the classes, which is really awesome for people who don´t know anyone in the ward. usually people are a little more shy and wont talk as much at first. but they´re such an awesome couple. they are progressing really well and are excited about their baptism coming up in 2 weeks.
so on saturday, we were actually walking back from javier and viviana´s house. it was like 7 or 730. at that time in the day, its really not even dark yet. but we were walking back from a lesson with them and like 7 guys on bikes came up to us. i´m actually pretty used to stuff like that because kids always think that its funny to talk to a ¨yankee¨ for some reason. but yeah they came up to us and started saying a bunch of stuff. mortensen and i pretty much ignored it and kept walking. i was in front of elder mortensen. then one of the younger kids pulls out a gun and asks me, ¨do you like it?¨ i kept walking and told him, ¨yeah dude its nice.¨ mortensen told me after that he knew the gun was real because he saw the bullets in the chamber. but then the kid got off his bike, took the gun out and started telling me to give him my wallet. there were like 4 other kids (without a gun mind you) that were trying to take mortensen´s wallet too. but the guy with the gun kept telling me to give him my wallet and i was like, ¨no i don´t have anything.¨ we kept walking hoping that they´d take off, but the chavon wouldn´t leave me alone. the one with the gun just kept telling me to give him the wallet, so i was like, ¨bueno...¨ and i handed it over. i had 24 pesos in my wallet, which isn´t alot. i shouldn´t have even carried that much around, but i had just come from el bosque (another area) and i had to take a taxi to get back to my area. but he took the wallet and took out my money. but it was kinda weird and funny because once he took out my money, he asked me, ¨do you want your wallet back.¨ hahah i was like, ¨uhhh yeah i do.¨ so he gave it back to me. i actually got pretty lucky though because 1.) he didn´t ask me for my cell phone. the other kids asked mortensen for a cell phone and even gave him a little pat-down to make sure hahah but all he had was a wallet with no money in it (they ended up taking that from him). 2.) i had remembered to take off my watch earlier in the day, so they didn´t take that from me either...i guess all in all, it wasn´t the worst way to be robbed. we were pretty lucky that it wasn´t worse. i would say that i was only mad because i get robbed by a bunch of kids. but it really wasn´t a big deal.
other than that, nothing really too excited has happened this week. mortensen and i are working hard...really it would be awesome to stay here with mortensen for another transfer or 2. we work hard, but we´re alot alike so we have fun with it. i hope that we can stay companions for a little while longer. but tranfers aren´t for another 2 weeks, so we´ll just have to wait and see what happens then.
mom, thanks for the email. sounds like everything is going smooth back in la casa right now. dad, i´ll bet you´re excited for the super bowl coming up even though the chargers aren´t in it. you´ll have to give me the ¨d-l¨ on that and everything thats goin on. sean, che no recibí tus fotos pero esta bien porque es buenisimo para escuchar de todo que esta pasando. i´m excited to hear how that angels and airwaves cd is in 2 weeks. you best let me know fool hahah. paige, thanks for the email this week also. cheerleading sounds fun. i´d like to see that 6 pack of yours when i get home hahah. but keep havin fun in school...it seems like you´ve got a good balance of work (thats awesome about the grades by the way) and having fun so keep up doing both. bridg, i´ve gotta tell you something kinda sad...so the owner keeps selling the dogs that we have in our pension. we had 3 left. but the other day one of them died. we don´t know why, but we found it and it was kinda sad to see. but we´ve still got 2 left. we named one ¨baxter¨ and we named the other ¨dumb fat¨ hahah. dumb fat is the coolest, funniest dog ever.
bueno fam, tengo que seguir trabajando. pero muchisimas gracias por escribirme y por todo que hacen. i love you all. until next week...
con cariño,
elder ryan hall