The next time you are in Buenos Aires, you will want to visit us in our new apartment, located in Palermo.  We live on the 3rd floor of this quaint red brick building and have included some pictures for you that will acquaint you with our humble dwelling.

 Here is Hermana Knapp making supper.  Note the SMALL fridge, the SMALL microwave, and the mini-clothes washer, as well as the SMALL Hermana!  She says that she feels like she is playing "house".

 Here Elder Knapp is enjoying the brand new KING size bed, in our very small bedroom.  Notice the night stands are turned sideways or they would not fit in the room.

 Here you see the latest in Argentine bathroom comfort, with square toilets, and the other thing which we will have to figure out.  No, Darin, the people here do not have square fannies.

 This is our Great Room, where we eat, study, and entertain guests (we haven't had any yet).  We have been in here one week tomorrow, and have already changed the furniture around 3 times.

Here is our patio.  You will notice the big gray corrugated metal wall.  That is all that we can notice as well!  It is the back side of a huge events center here in Buenos Aires.  Last night the event was a rock concert that lasted all night and was still going at 6:00 this morning.  It looks like we will be in for some amazing entertainment and not have to pay even one peso!

    

We have been out for two of the Visitor Center Events and they have been great!  We have really enjoyed working with Paul and Ellen Garvin, from Iowa.  They have been our trainers and will be flying home tomorrow.  We have come to love and depend on them so much.  If this is the last you hear from us, they weren't very good trainers, but they sure are awesome people.

We report to the Area Office which is 9 blocks from our apartment at 8:15 each morning and are finished at 4:30 in the afternoon.  There are 10 other couple missionaries that are serving in Area Leadership positions as full-time missionaries.  None of the other Hermanas speak Spanish and neither do some of the Elders.  We have an office on the top floor, which is 43 steps up and 43 down again.  We are going up and down all day, because we are the only office up there.  It is all twisty and confusing and if we don't get lost on the way to work, that is lucky, but if we don't get lost finding our office, that is a miracle!
 
For those of you who knew Grandpa Call, that is Paul Garvin!  From the nose, to the twinkle in his eye, to the OCD--I feel like I have spent a week with Grandpa!

We have been trying to learn our way around on the broken up tiled streets with big trees growing out of them.  We have found our way to a Carrefour which is a very SMALL version of a Maverick with no gas.  It is about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide.  The selection there is very limited.  We have found a bakery, but the best find of all is the "Jumbo".  It is the supermarket with most everything you could want.  We buy most things there, but we buy bananas and oranges from a little lady who sells them on the street.

The charger on our computer went out this week and we found a place called Compumundo to replace it.  Thank goodness for universal chargers!

All in all the first week in Argentina has been a good one.

Working in the CVC program (Visitor Centers in the Chapels) has been very rewarding.  Doug works with the Elders and I get to work with the Sister missionaries who actually lead the tours just like in the Visitors Centers that you all have been to.  We set up a Christus figure in the chapel and then the sister missionaries who are in charge of the tour play the words of Christ just like you'd hear at any Center. From there the people go in to the cultural hall and we have 18 large posters that teach about different aspects of the gospel like Jesus Christ is the center of our religion, need for prophets, the restoration, the Book of Mormon, families and temples.  After this they all go into the baptismal font room where two elders dressed in white explain about baptism.  It is pretty impressive to see these young missionaries at work.  The people are asked for references if they'd like and then the members who have set up booths about the various organizations take the people around to show them what we do in the church. And of course there are refreshments.  Below you can see some examples of our work.

MTC Week one

Amy and her kids brought us to the MTC on Monday, July 29th.  Darin met us here and they dropped us off at the front door and we said goodbye.  It didn't really sink in then that it would be the last time we'd see all of our family for two years!
We checked in, got our name tags and went to the chapel where they teach senior missionaries.  We met Brother Peterson who introduced us all to each other.  There were 47 senior missionaries in our group..a few single sisters included.  We were given instructions and started our Preach My Gospel training.  We met our teachers, one set for the morning, Brother Jacobs and Sister Zollinger; and Brother Sillitoe and Sister Vela for the afternoon.
The purpose of missionary work follows: "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end". (Doug and I have started to memorize this purpose in both Spanish and English).
We were divided into districts with Elder Knapp as the district leader.  In our district we had the Browns going to the Detroit mission in employment, the Millers going to the San Diego Mormon Battalion mission, the Gibbs going to the Leeds England Mission as MLS missionaries and us.
We had large group meetings with all the senior missionaries at various times, but spent a lot of time with our teachers in our district.  We learned so much and had great experiences as they taught us from Preach My Gospel.  We had to teach investigators, be missionaries, be less active members being taught by missionaries.  They taught us to not teach lessons, but to teach people.  That is a great concept.  If all we do is try to teach a lesson, it is so easy to not be in tune with the spirit or understand the needs of the people you are teaching. We had a great experience with our investigator, John Fields.  He was a sweet little man and we liked his humble spirit. We had to go in to get to know him for 15 minutes and then teach him a lesson for 30 minutes.  From our 15 minute get to know you session, we had to discern what his needs were and the best way to teach him the doctrine.  We also had to teach a Sister Genther.  She was very difficult to keep on track.  Everything seemed to go back to her problems, and family and it was hard to feel like she got anything out of what we were saying even though we were able to commit her to reading the 11th chapter of 3 Nephi.
We had to take the part of a less active family and have the missionaries come and then we switched roles and were the missionaries and taught a less active family.  This was an activity in the district.  It was eye opening.
We also had to get to know another couple who were role playing a less active family for 15 minutes and then take 30 minutes and prepare a lesson according to what we discerned as their needs.  We then taught them for 30 minutes.  We had a good experience when we were the missionaries, but when we were the less active family it just wasn't the same.
All of what we were taught and using came from Preach My Gospel. It just makes us want to really get in and study that amazing book.  You could study it for your whole mission and not learn everything there is to learn from it!
The cafeteria has been our hangout for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  The food isn't really all that bad.  It is all you can eat, and we have seen some missionaries eat a lot!
When we first arrived, we had to check our travel plans to get our flight out.  We checked at different times and with different people and couldn't get anyone to tell us anything.  Finally a Brother Jason Mitchell from the Missionary Department in SLC called us to set up a lunch appointment for Friday and we told him we had no flight plans.  That very day, we got our plans to leave on August 8th.
Brother Mitchell took us to Maglebys for lunch and showed us a power point presentation about our mission assignment and answered questions for us.  He said we would be talking to him at least once a week over the phone and more often if we had questions or problems. He told us he had read our missionary application and that when they had decided to use us and change our call, it had to go back to the brethren to get it approved. Wow!  We have to be really good to live up to the expectations they have for us.
There wasn't room for us here at the MTC to stay so we spent our first week in the Marriott Hotel in downtown Provo. We walked to the Smiths store a couple of times which was only about 2 blocks away...for exercise and a few items.  We rode the exercise bikes in the exercise room at the hotel every night that we spent there.  It was nice to ride since I've been having trouble with my feet hurting.  We had to ride a shuttle back and forth to the MTC each day. 
On Saturday, our P day, we were able to move to the MTC since we have a few more days of training here.  We have a nice little room and the air conditioning is great since it has been so hot here. We did our laundry at the MTC and then walked to the BYU Bookstore to see if we could find a white shirt for me.  It was a long hot walk and we had 2 different people stop and offer us a ride on our way home.  That was nice of them, but we walked even though it was hot outside.
This week has been great.  It wasn't so fun saying goodbye to many of the new friends we have made, but it is exciting to know that we are all about to embark on a great adventure wherever we are going!
Next week we have a few days of training about Visitor Centers.  It should be fun!