Rafael Castillo- mailed letter came today

If you follow this blog, on Rafael Castillo- Email #15 you read how Sean lost his long email to us. Well, he ended up writing us a letter that day and it arrived in the mail today. Here is what he wrote:

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Hey Mom and Dad,

Well, you probably just got a disappointing e-mail of me just being frustrated because my e-mail that I spent an hour on got deleted. What I am going to start doing is write my e-mail in Word,and then copy/paste so that if anything happens it is still in Word and I won't have to start over. Right when I clicked send, a window popped up saying my connection had timed out and the computer had experienced an error and had to log out. We all know the rest of the story.

So I am going to write the stories that were lost in the e-mail so you know what it is I intended to send, even though this will be about three weeks after the fact. I'm sorry to hear about Auntie Anne and all the mess, that is really too bad that her own son has decided to stoop that low and show what kind of man he is, but what is done is done I guess. I'm not sure what else we can do about that. It is comforting to know, though, that all that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

So I am looking through my journal for the stories I am going to write and I noticed I have almost filled up my journal. I have written one page everyday and if I continue doing that I will run out of pages on January 11th. So if another could be sent that would be great.

Alright, so I talked a little bit about how we got to go to the Capital on Wednesday, and I spent most of the e-mail talking about that. So Elder Sheilds had to get his in-grown toenail treated, so he called Hermana Benton, because she is over all the medicine and stuff in the mission. Well she told Elder Shields that he needed to call the Area Medical Advisor for all of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, who happens to have his office in the Area Offices for the Church in downtown Buenos Aires. It was nice! We totally were right smack dab in the middle of the Capital. First, we had to take a Remis (taxi) from Castillo to Buenos Aires, but our driver got lost haha so we had to pull out a map and Elder Shields had to direct the guy around. Regardless, we were driving around the city for like two hours! I was LOVING it. It was like a little tour for us. There are cool statues and buildings everywhere. We didn't see the Casa Rosada or anything, but it was still really cool. So we finally find the Church offices and go in. Umm.... I thought we walked into the United States. It was like... a nice Church building... with nice Church artwork... and air conditioning. I seriously felt like we were sitting in Salt Lake City! Let's just say Elder Shields, made the statement of the trip when we were sitting in the lobby and he said... "This place makes me trunky." Haha, it totally did I'm not even going to lie. Not trunky like I want to go home, but trunky like this reminds me of home a lot. Anyway our Area Presidency is Shayne M. Bowen and his counselors Marcos A. Aidukaitis and Claudio D. Zivic, all of the Seventy, and we saw arrows going up some stairs to their offices. Unfortunately, we didn't get to drop in to say hi.

But we did drop into the doctor, Elder Peterson,he and his wife just started their senior mission here six weeks ago. They have lived in Spanish speaking countries for 5 years, and his wife still doesn't speak any Spanish at all. It was so funny! She was hilarious. Anyway, they had to give him some shots in his toe to numb it, and it looks pretty painful, and he looked like he was in pain, but the Sister kept snapping pictures of it haha. She took like 20! of his bloody toe. Maybe she has a blog or something. Anyway after that they gave us oreos! And then we left back to Castillo in a Church owned Remis, but the guy had the radio on to a station that played all ABBA music. I wasn't complaining haha it was sweet! ahem... I mean... I wish he would have played Mormon Tabernacle Choir.. or conference talks...

So that was the main story I told. The other ones I don't really remember what I wrote. It has been rainy here lately, but it is supposed to clear up today and tomorrow. So, hopefully, you weren't too bummed I didn't write a lot today. I was kind of bummed. It is a rule we have to write our families once a week, so it feels weird not to send a good long e-mail of what is going on. I will be in touch before you get this so talk to you next week.

Love you! Thanks for everything!


Love, Sean