New Things in Fray Bentos

Hello family,

It’s my second week here in Fray Bentos! Wahoo!

Really it is a beautiful place. This morning I dragged my companion out of the house down to the Rambla – the boardwalk – a morning run on the shore of the black river (Rio Negro) is amazing and just the thing to get a morning going right.

Yesterday was Sunday; the ward here is good. The hard thing is not to compare places with other places. I will admit that a lot of my heart is still left in Artigas, land that I love. Good ol’ Hermana Murdock remains holding down the fort. (She’ll be there for at least 7 1/2 months by the end of this change.) Occasionally I get news about investigators and how things are going. The family Galvan that got baptized while I was there (I don’t know if you remember them, Fabio, Mari, Estefani, and Esteban). Well they apparently are doing AMAZIING. Recently they made a special trip down to the temple and completed HUNDREDS of their family names. (Yea crazy huh, three months as members and they’ve done all of their genealogy, not to make anyone look bad.) Also I just got news that another couple that we had been working with, Yolanda and Carlos (the pics of the tatu and arpincho were with them) decided to get married!!! Well actually its more than that, Yolanda has wanted to get married for a long time, but Carlos wasn’t sure and all of his family was against it because they thought she just wanted to get married to have more right to his money since she really doesn’t have anything. So she was just holding out saving up, but apparently about a few weeks ago she just couldn’t take it anymore. (She’s been going to church and the activities every week since we met her in June.) So she got Carlos and his parents together, called a lawyer and had them make lists of things that were hers and things that were Carlos’ so that there would be no way them getting married could rip Carlos out of anything. And so they should be sealing the deal soon!! Then they are both getting baptized!! A family one step closer to something eternal. Really just to see the change that they have come from is amazing. Carlos loves his family and has always felt the spirit with the missionaries and in the church. Sigh. Wish I could be there, but its enough just to know that they are moving forward.

Hermana Moreno and I are doing good. She is Hilarious! And has the most awesomes accent ever; I love the way she talks. Also, we get along really well.

We live with two other hermanas in the house. Of course since we’re never there, we really don’t interact that much; they do their thing, we do ours. But anyway, the first week in the house we hadn’t had time to go shopping, so we were short on a few of the necessities, i.e. toilet paper. Luckily the other hermanas are really well put together and the first day they bought a package that they said we could use. So we are using this toilet paper and we both realize how extraordinarily nice is the type of paper they’d boughten (I know that’s a mistake Karie, but I like how it sounds more.) It is soft, durable, pearly white, imprinted with a floral pattern, and gives off a rosal scent with each tear of a square—really HIGH quality TP. You just don’t see that kind of stuff in Uruguay; I didn’t know it existed, to be honest. But after a few heavenly uses, we both start to worry that when their stock runs out they will start expecting us to supply the same type of TP quality. I don’t know how much that type of luxury costs, but I’m pretty sure it cant be cheap! But of course we cant be using their stuff without being willing to be fair and give back equally. So before we could be torn into more compromise than necessary we made it to the almcen (corner store) buying our own paper supply, 30 pesos ($1.50), six rolls. Brown. Scratchy. Smells like what its used for.

Really it just wasn’t the same. Our TP experience was ruined. I almost dreaded going to the bathroom knowing it would not end with a heavenly experience like before. That’s when my companion comes in with her bidet.

Just to clear things up for you United States people. Do you know what I mean by the term “bidet”? Have you ever seen one? They were everywhere around in Spain, but truthfully I never thought much about it. No one ever used it in my house at least, I had thought it was for a foot bath or to wash hair on the go.

Well, the bidet is like a sink but not for the hands or the feet but the rear end. You sit after you have used the “water” as they say here, refereeing to the toilet. Turn on the faucet which sprays water in the upward direction. Clearly, it washes those hard to reach parts. The washing makes the wiping irrelevant. With the washing you don’t need the wiping; you either wash or you wipe, either or. If you wash, you don’t wipe. If you don’t wipe, you don’t use—that’s right—TP. Goodbye brown, scratchy, smelly paper world! We are onto better things. I have been converted. I don’t wipe, I wash. Of our six rolls we’ve been through one-half. Our goal is to make it on what we have the rest of the change. My question is what the other hermanas will think’s up since we’ve stopped using theirs but ours just stays around.

With the money saved, we buy ice cream cones at the corner store.

It’s getting hotter, yay! I have pictures to send but don’t trust the cyber here…so we’ll see if I get some sent next week. Love you all!

SUSWHA