Goat....yummy!

Querido familia,                       26 de Agosto 2013

So here in Campo Largo there are quite a few members who give us lunch and we eat three or four times a week with members.

On Tuesday we ate with the Relief Society President Nelly Machada. She made us milanesa (meat that has been breaded and cooked in oil), salad, and birthday cake (it was Elder Sacalxot's birthday the week before I came).

On Thursday we ate with a member who was recently baptized named Selva Dominguez and her son Luis Perez. She made for us noodles and chicken cooked in the oven.

On Friday, Sister Mirtha Fernandez cooked goat (which is actually good) and noodles. It was kind of funny though. She had called us the morning of the day that we were going to eat with her and she asked, "Elders, do you eat goat?" I looked at my companion and he just shrugged his shoulders and said to me, "sure." So I told Sister Fernandez that we do eat goat and that it sounds good. And surprisingly enough it was good; it didn't really have a unique flavor or anything.

On Saturday we had empanadas with the first counselor in the young womens presidency Alejandra Duarte. It was anything new or something that we don't regularly eat, but it's good anyway.

But those were our meals this week.

We've been teaching a girl named Karen Gonzalez who is eight years old; her older sister, Dayana, is already a member, but her parents aren't. Due to her age, we've been making sure to teach in a very simple manner so that she understands the principles and concepts. So, this last Monday we taught her about tithing and fast offerings and we had bought a big bag of tootsie roll type candies to help us. What we did is we gave ten tootsies to each of the kids who were there (there were five) except for Karen. At the point that she didn't receive any candy I assured her that she would. So we explained that they had all just been "blessed" with ten tootsies and now they needed to pay their tithing. So they all gave one tootsie back to me. I then explained how tithing and fast offerings are used to help other people and then gave everyone's returned tootsies to Karen plus four more so that they all ended up with nine. I then explained that for being obedient they would blessed and gave them all more tootsies, so that they all ended with more than they started with.

Later on Wednesday we were going to practice the baptismal interview with Karen and decided that we were just going to review the concepts briefly and then draw something to represent the idea of the commandment. Now that I think about it I should have taken a picture with everyone and their drawings, but I didn't have my camera with me.

So when Friday came around it was time for Karen to have her baptismal interview. She did very well, but at the very end when she was asked if she was ready to be baptized she said, "no." It's alright though because she said that she'll be ready this Saturday. So now we're preparing her baptism for the thirty-first.

On Tuesday we had a meeting with all the other elders from the zone and as part of our training we were all asked to come to the front of the room and and explain a Gospel word in a way that a child could understand it. So one elder was asked to explain "exaltation" and couldn't think of how to say it. So the leaders asked if anyone could help him. I said, "being sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise" and it got some laughs even if it didn't really help us define exaltation more clearly.

When we had lunch with Luis and Selva, Luis started telling us all his stories about the times he has had debates with people from other religions, whether they were members of that church or missionaries. He said that one day the Jehova's Witnesses came to visit him and they asked if they could come back with some more members of their congregation and Luis told him that would be fine if he could invite two of his friends. They asked if his friends were the Elders and he said that they were and he says that now the Jehova's Witnesses haven't been to his house since.

He was also telling us about someone who made the comment that the missionaries are annoying become they always want to talk to you and visit you in your house. So Luis asked him, "who else in this world comes to your house every day to offer you salvation? To me that isn't annoying."

This week I had the opportunity to give service. There is a member who's husband is a member of the evangelist church, but sometimes comes to our meetings. He doesn't want to get baptized (trust me, I already invited him and got kind of mad), but he likes to visit. But his wife mentioned how he needed a haircut and how it's difficult for them to get to the barber shop (her husband, Francisco, needs a wheel chair), so I told her that I have a machine to cut hair. So we went back the next day and I gave him a hair cut.

Yesterday, I invited all the leaders from the organizations of church to come to have a branch council meeting and it went pretty well. I gave a training that took about thirty minutes (even after I had shortened it), but it went really well. I taught about how it is that we are going to do the missionary work and I based the training on the parallel chapters of Alma chapter twenty-six, verses twenty-three through thirty-one as well as Heleman fifteen verses four through eight. I also threw in Jacob chapter five verse seventy-two just because I like it. We had a really good meeting though. Our plan this Saturday is to have all the members that can make it come to the church at four in the afternoon, split into companionships and go and visit a many less active members as they can in an hour and a half, and then all come back to the chapel at six for the baptism of Karen Gonzalez. We decided to call it "Super Saturday of Visits," but Elder Sacalxot wants to call it "Member Hunting." 

os amo,

Elder Burt

Branch President again....

Querido familia,                   19 de Agosto 2013

This week held a few surprises for us. While we were looking for a member that we've yet to find or get to know, we ran into a guy who  asked us if we spoke English. We told him that yes, we do speak English and he started to speak with us in English. After talking with him for a few minutes he told us about how he used to live in Kentucky for fifteen years raising horses for the Kentucky derby. It was really fun to talk to him about the United States and his experiences. When we started talking to him about the church he said that he has  lot of friends in the States that are members and that he really likes the temples that he has seen.

On Tuesday we had a meeting in Paso De Los Libres with all the elders in our zone because the next day was going to be transfers. So we all went there and had a meeting and did some trainings and then we all played ping pong while we waited for our bus to come. The Argentine elders tend to be really good at ping pong because all the chapels here have ping pong tables instead of basketball hoops.

So once we had gotten back to our apartment in Mercedes later that night, the zone leaders called everyone on a conference call to let everyone know what changes would be happening. Elder Reynolds was going to stay in Mercedes and I was reassigned to another area called Campo Largo (Long Field) in the province called Chaco. The branch is pretty good here, but there ins't really any Priesthood, so I am serving as the branch president.

My new companion is Elder Sacalxot from Guatemala. His Spanish is pretty good I'd say. We've been working really well together and we're actually planning a baptism for this Saturday.

I'm still trying to remember who is who in all the people that I've been meeting. 

There is one boy that we taught who is nine or ten I think that isn't a member, but his mom or sister is. His name is Damiro. I wanted to get him excited to come to church and to be more comfortable with us, so in our first lesson with him I taught him how to make the the Vulcan symbol with his hand from Star Trek and then we read in first Nephi three, seven. So we talked about how we need to have a good attitude about keeping the commandments, even when it seems hard. We then memorized the phrase, "I will go and I will do," with him. It is now his motto.

Saturday here was Children's Day and there was a big activity for it in the branch. The young women did the majority of the work getting this prepared and decorating the chapel; we just went around and invited everyone, did some cleaning, and purchased all the things that were needed. It all went really well though. There were about forty kids that came. They all played games and the primary president made hot chocolate for everyone.

On our way home that night however, a dog came up to us and it actually bit Elder Sacalxot. I was pretty surprised by that because I've never come close to being bit nor have I every seen anyone else get bit. It wasn't bad though; it mostly just left a bruise and put a hole in his pants. We just need to go back there in a week to see if the dog died from rabies; if not we received permission to take it out ourselves.

os amo,

Elder Burt

Looking for lost sheep

Querido familia,                             12 de Agosto 2013

So maybe a month ago I was talking about a man whom we had begun teaching named Lisandro. He is the one who was a reformed convict that knew a ton of stuff about the scriptures. Well we weren't able to ever find him for the longest time until last Wednesday night.

We were walking down the street and we saw a guy across the street who turned toward us and got a big smile on his face. We walked up to him as we crossed the street and realized that it was Lisandro. He told us that his landlord didn't want us coming by anymore, so that's why we haven't been able to find him (his landlord is an evangelist that claims to be a prophet). He also told us that his name was actually Luciano and that he just never corrected us before. 

It was really funny though because no one can ever remember ELder Reynolds name (it's just too long and difficult to say) and everyone just remembers mine. So Luciano told us that he was thinking to himself, "When am I going to see them again? I remember that one of their names was "Burt," but how am I going to find them?" Well we kind of found each other. 

It's still a tough situation though, because he is still living where he used to and we can't teach him there because we aren't welcome there. 

Last Sunday I mentioned that we started teaching a girl named Soledad Pavón and her friend Noemi Acuña. Well the second time that we went to meet with them went really well. Soledad had lost the page that we had marked for her to read, so she just started reading the introduction She never said that she had read it, but we knew later on because Noemi asked the question, "Who is Mormon?" and Soledad, without even hesitating, said, "Oh, he's a prophet." So we're happy with the iniciative on her part to be proactive in reading.

The next time we went by to visit Soledad and Noemi, one of the sisters from the branch, Silvia Gonzalez, went with us to teach them. It worked out really well because Silvia was telling them the story of her conversion. She said tht when the Elders would teach her that she would always be told that she needs to read and pray, but would never do it for one reason or another. Then one day she finally did it and prayed about the Book of Mormon and recieved a testimony. So that was really cool to have her with us in that lesson; for her to say, "I was once in your position and I did what they're asking you to do. And it works; it's real."

So on Saturday night, we were talking with a less-active family and they told us that there had been a crash not far from their house the night before between a traveling bus and a truck that was really bad. Then later that night I realized that we had plans to be in that area where the crash had happened, but for some reason we never made it over there and avoided the crash all together. So whether we were guided away from it or it was just a coincidence I don't know, but all the same I know that all things work together for our good.

os amo,

Elder Burt

Fixing the font

Querido familia,                           5 de Agosto 2013

My young friend Alex

So this Saturday we had the baptism of María Soto and we spent a lot of time this week getting everything ready for the baptism and it's a good thing that we did because we ran into a ton of problems along the way.

De-rusting the stairs

On Thursday, we went to the chapel to see what we needed to do about getting the font filled up, because we don't have a real font, but rather a metal frame that has a tarp inside of it. But that wasn't the problem, the portable font was just dirty and needed to be washed and disinfected. The real issue was the water pump in the chapel. Previously the basement had flooded, so President Baldovino had done some homemade repairs and re-wired a couple of things in order to get power around to where he wanted it and that may have caused some difficulties. 

Maria's daughter, Camila

So on Friday we went in with the intent to not leave until we had found a way to get water running in the chapel again or until we had an alternate solution to get the font filled (the back up/last resort plan was to buy a super long hose and ask the neighbors if we could use their water to fill up the font). But much to our surprise, we arrived at the chapel to find three other men already there working on things. We hadn't called anybody, but we certainly had prayed for a way to get the font filled so that the baptism could be a success; we would have attributed these three men to the three nephites if it wasn't for the fact that I already knew one of them (he used to be President Heyman's counselor before the mission divided).

Cleaning the font

So they did some work and we talked to them about the problems that we were having and eventually they got the water working. So then they left and we continued working and getting things set up. Then we had another issue because the water stopped working after an hour and then not long after the lights started to flicker before going out completely. Well, we didn't really have any more time to work on anything there, so we left with the hope that everything would somehow work out in less than twenty-four hours. 

I was able to talk to two of the three men that were working on the chapel on Saturday morning and they said that the problem was likely coming from the city; Elder Reynolds said that was typical response; it's always some other group's fault that something doesn't work or someone else's product failed. So we got the city over to look at things and sure enough it was a problem on their end and we got everything we needed and ready before the baptism.

So we didn't have a big turn out to the baptism, but it was really good. the water was kind of cold, but I wasn't the one in it either. María had a really good experience and it was cool because it was very lightly raining that day; it made me think of the song "I Like To Look For Rainbows."

We had another really cool experience on Thursday with Oscar Alvarez, the less active member that I was talking about last week. He asked us how long we had known about him before we decided to go visit him. We compared notes a came to our conclusion that we found him only one day after having looked for him. He then told us that the reason that he wanted to know was that because two days before we found him he had been confused and felt lost and wasn't sure what he needed to do. So, he had been praying for the guidance that he lacked and two days later we showed up at his door. 

On Wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister Heyman, so we went to Paso De Los LIbres to have lunch and meet with them. With them also came Brother Holm and his wife from the United States; their the Heyman's friends and neighbors and they came to visit them in Argentina for a time. Brother Holm is a lawyer, so I spent a lot of time talking to him about political processes and law and I shared with him a little bit about the "We The People" program that I took. It was really interesting and had me thinking about careers to do in political science; he said that studying Political Science and English as majors and minors would be the biggest advantage in a law school. 

Afterwards, Elder Reynolds and I went with Elder Otterstein and Elder Hasleton in their area because our bus didn't go back to Mercedes until eleven forty-five. So Elder Otterstein and I went out together and at the end of the night when we all got back we found out that Elder Hasleton had led himself and Elder Reynolds to a dangerous area where people usually get robbed. Of this Elder Hasleton said, "Well I felt the Spirit so I wasn't worried about it." So I told him, "well I'm sure that Abinidi felt the Spirit too right before he died."

On Sunday, President Baldovino, the branch president, and I went to go look for some people to invite to church when we went to a lady's house named Mercedes Itati. We clapped outside their gate and her youngest son Mauro, who is about five years old, came to the window and asked what we needed. We told him that we had come by to invite them to and offer them a ride to church. So he said that he'd be right back and then his older sister, Agustina, came who is probably thirteen years old. She then told us that they wouldn't be able to go to church because the baby was sick. Mauro then said, "The baby doesn't have a single problem," Agustina then insisted that the baby did indeed have a fever, "She's lying," interjected Mauro. Agustina gave her brother a look before he said, "She just hit me!" So we just said that we'd come by some other time. President Baldovino got a pretty good laugh out of that whole conversation.

os amo,

Elder Burt

Pigeon in the water tank....yuck

Querido familia,                               30 de Julio 2013 

This week we started by looking for a less active member whom we didn't know named Oscar Alvarez. We found his name because his wife isn't a member and she was being taught by the missionaries before. We also found out that he is an elder in the Priesthood, so we wanted to find him to see where they were at and why they stopped coming to church.

So when we found him he was home alone and so we just talked with him for a bit about his family and how he came to know the Gospel. He told us a story about how he was baptized eighteen years ago when he was still fourteen or sixteen, but it wasn't until after his baptism that he really gained a testimony of the church. One day after church, not long after his baptism, he was walking down the street and heard a voice that said, "You're clean." Looking around, he found himself alone and knew that the voice was that of the Spirit telling him that his baptism was indeed the ordinance that he was taught it was.

So we had a really good visit with him and before we left he asked us when we could come back to meet his son, who is also a member.

So we went back to visit them on Wednesday night and he presented us to his oldest son, Damian. He has one other son named Ezequiel, who is not a member, but is eleven years old. they have an interesting family tradition, all three of them are named Hugo for their first name and all the men in the family, all the way back to the dad's great-grandpa are named Hugo Something Alvarez.

It wasn't until Friday that we actually met his youngest son, Ezequiel, that still needs to be baptized, but we had a really good chat with him when we did met. So we invited Ezequiel to be baptized on the twenty-fourth of August and now he is getting ready for that day. I don't I'll be here for that because I've already been in this area for four months and I think that I'll be moved in two weeks or so to a new place.

So we actually just done gone with a lesson with María Soto and the assistants to the mission president stopped by to give her a baptismal interview to see if she was ready. She passed it and is gong to get baptized this Saturday. So we've actually been doing a lot of preparation for her baptism; things like  making and handing out invitations as well as making the baptismal program.

(I attached the baptismal program and invitations that I made)

The hardest part of the preparations were done by the branch president. We've had problems with the water tank in the chapel for a long time and the water has become undrinkable. Well obviously we didn't want to fill up the baptismal font with nasty water and everyone is getting thirsty in the chapel on Sunday, so President Baldovino, the branch president, climbed up on the roof to see what was going on with the tank. Turns out that a pigeon had fallen in the tank and died. Tasty. So he spent some time getting it all cleaned out and then decided to run bleach through the pipe system to clean everything out (I'm not sure that that was a good idea, but we'll see what happens).

On Saturday we taught an interesting lesson with a man named Maxi Galván and his girlfriend Natalia Rivero. They both were born and baptized into the catholic church, but they don't believe in it. Maxi believes that after we die, we become energy (kind of like the Force) and that God can't have a physical body because that would limit Him. It was really tough to teach them because they had some many questions and they just kept jumping around from topic to topic that it made it very difficult to answer their questions really well. Elder Reynolds had the idea that we just have them write down their questions and every time we go to visit them we will answer one question from each of their lists. I really like what Maxi said though during the lesson. He was talking about the great example that Christ was and how we should try to do what He did; he then finished his his thought by saying, "Christ was a boss."

With them, we finally got it down to where they understood that in order to be happy you have to follow Christ and keep the commandments. So we invited them to follow Christ by being baptized like He was and they both said that they were already baptized in the catholic church. But they already said that they don't believe in the catholic church, so I'm not sure what they're thinking.

Yesterday there was a mission conference for all of the new elders in the mission, so Elder Reynolds went to Resistencia and I stayed in Mercedes with another Elder named Elder Otterstein, who just so happens to be from Pocatello. So we talked about some things like the Blackfoot fair and what happened in our schools. We also found a less active family that was kind of an interesting visit. We only got to speak with the son, Gaspar who is eight teen years old, but he wasn't really so interested in the scriptures or the church as he was hanging out with us. In fact, at the end of our visit he said that we were more than welcome to come back, but that it wasn't necessary to talk about the scriptures with him; we could just come and play PlayStation with him and drink juice.

We were walking down the street on Wednesday night when a couple of horses ran past us in the road and stopped half a block ahead of us; they were running from some dogs and once they got away they stopped and went back to eating grass. Then one of the horses stepped out into the street to move to the other side and at this same moment, a man came by on a moped and he almost hit the horse, both of them dodging each other. The man then turned around, apparently upset, and started chasing the horse on his moped yelling, "guilty! Guilty!"

os amo,

Elder Burt

Still working hard...

Querido familia,                    22 de Julio 2013

After a party at the church, we went in and in the kitchen we found a mysterious pink shirt and cowboy hat.

So we are kind of bummed out about Milagros and Lisandro. Their step dad isn't allowing them to have anything to do with the church and now he is taking drastic measures to make sure that they can't be involved with the church.

On Tuesday, Milagros said that she couldn't keep meeting with us and wouldn't say why and then just muttered something about how she has to do what her parents say. Later we asked Lisandro what was going on and he said that their aunt said that we were going to kidnap Milagros and take her to another country, so now she is scared. And on Thursday when Elder Medrano and Elder Reynolds went to see them, there was a lock on the gate and they had been locked into the house. Elder Medrano tried to talk to the dad, but he just said that he was catholic and didn't want to talk to them. So Elder Medrano said that they just wanted to talk to Milagros and Lisandro then and their step dad said, "They're catholic too," and that was the end of it.

So it's a tough situation and now we're just hoping that nothing will happen to them and that one day when they don't have to live with their step dad anymore they will find the missionaries again and can get baptized. For now, there isn't really much that we can do; even though their mom is on our side and likes that they are in the church. It's really sad too, because they always refer to their step dad as "evil" and I don't want to think that he is a bad man, but I can't help thinking about how he is completely prohibiting them from coming unto Christ and is actively working against us as well as them.

On a funnier note, we went to visit our friend Cristian and when we got to his house we found that he was there with his brother, Guillermo, and they had been drinking a little. So Guillermo was really friendly towards us and asked why we never came by to teach Cristian anymore. The reason is that he wasn't really ready to progress and was just kind of stubborn, even if he was always welcoming to us. So we figured that maybe Guillermo wasn't really asking why we stopped seeing Cristian, but rather, when are we going to visit him. So we set an appointment with Guillermo for a few days later.

During this exchange with the two tipsy brothers, Cristian was texting this girl on his phone and he kept asking me to send her a message in English for him. So I finally conceded and asked him what he wanted the message to say. First he said something that wasn't very gentleman like, so I wrote, "I've been thinking that I would like to get married in the temple, but I need to find someone with whom I can get sealed." When he asked me what it meant, I told him, "it basically means that you want to be with her forever."

So that happened on Tuesday and we met with them again on Friday. We talked about the Gospel of Christ and what they have to do to follow Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, receive the Holy Ghost, and continue to the end). At the end of our lesson we invited them to be baptized, but Cristian is still where he was before, just not really ready to change. Guillermo, however, was all over what we had to say, but he wouldn't accept a baptismal day. He says that he needs to pray and study still, which is fine because we know that if he is legitimately seeking then he will find.

The other day, we were talking to Marcos and Alan Castillo, two kids that we're trying to get baptized. Their parents are members, but they don't come to church. But we were walking down the street and they called out to us to come over and talk to them,. They were in a friends house, so we walked over and they were on the other side of this fence with their friend and this massive dog. After talking for a bit we went to leave and I took a bad step off the tall sidewalk because my foot landed in something smooshy, so I twisted my leg and kind of stumbled. So then I had to do my best not to limp away because at that same moment that I fell the dog started barking and I didn't want them to think that the dog had scared me (it really hadn't).

On Thursday we had splits, but in a different kind of way. Elder Reynolds and I both stayed in our area, but Elder Kimball and Elder Medrano both came and we worked as two companionships in the area instead of four for the day. So while Elder Kimball and I were together we started to play marbles with some kids in the street and then ending up teaching them before playing another game and leaving.

I´m all out of time until next week.

os amo,

Elder Burt

Return of the Prodigal Son

Querido familia,                                15 de Julio 2013

This Tuesday, we were walking down the road on our way to go find some people when a man, who was sitting on the curb with his family, called over to us from a half a block away. We had no idea who it was, but he called us "Elders" so we went over to him to see what was going on. We started talking to him and he told us that he is a member who had recently moved from Córdoba and that they were looking for a place to stay. I was a little suspicious, wanting to help them, but I had remembered what the district president had just told us a few weeks ago: that there are people who go around trying to deceive the elders into giving them lots of stuff and they always say that they are members of the church and they know all the words that we use that other people wouldn't know what they mean.

So we talked to him for a while and we found out that his wife wasn't a member still, but she wanted her husband to prepare himself so that he could baptize her. So we talked to them for a bit about repentance and then we invited his wife, Maria, to be baptized (his name is Walter Nieto). We she said that she would most definitely be baptized, we told her that we want to set a goal with hew that she gets baptized on the tenth of August and she said no because she wants to get baptized on April sixth because that was the day that Christ was born. So that's kind of a tricky date to work with seeing as it's next year, but we'll see what we can do with her.

It's kind of a tough situation for us though because they are homeless for the time being (we think they have a place now because we haven't seen them in the spot where they have been hanging out) because we really can't do much to help them as missionaries; we can only inform people who can help them and then share with them the Gospel. We gave them all the contact information they needed to find an apartment and we've been keeping our eyes open and working with other people to see what can be done.

I requested his church records from the general offices of the church and we just got them a little bit later on last week and it had a message that just seemed powerful for some reason. It said, "Dear President/Bishop, The church has not been able to find this member for some time and as a result they have most likely not received the blessings of the church or the blessings of being fellow shipped by other members. Please do everything appropriate to fellowship this member into your branch/ward." As I read it, it made me think of the story of the prodigal son; even though the son had wasted his father's fortune and a good chunk of his own life, when he returned with desires to actually make something of himself his father received him and gave him the very best of everything that he had.

We've been teaching a lady named Maria Soto that is the friend of a sister in the branch and she has been progressing really well. Just the other day, one of the members was telling us that after every lesson with have with Maria, her friend Sandra (the sister in the branch) takes her inside to watch a bunch of church videos and share more with her.  When she came to church yesterday she even brought with her her mom that is deaf and she was signing the talks to her during the meeting. But we're really excited for her because she is definitely going to get baptized and then the rest of the members will hopefully start to have the desires to invite their friends to church so that they can get baptized as well.

On Sunday there was a homeless lady sitting across the street from the chapel that we've seen around town before, but today we decided that we'd try inviting her to church. So we went to go drop some things off in the chapel before coming back outside to go talk to her and as we did so she started to yell at us and I had no idea what she was saying; I was convinced that it was Portuguese. But we came back outside to talk to her and saw that she had started to get up to leave, so we kind of had to chase her down just a little, but when we invited her to come to church her faced brightened up and she started walking with us to the chapel.

When we got to the chapel she said that she wanted to leave her things there for a bit while she went to do some things. I wasn't sure that I had understood her well because she said, "I need to go to the butcher shop to get sugar before the manager closes down the sales." So we asked for the help of the members to understand what she was trying to tell us and it turns out that she is actually just a little crazy in the head. So she left her stuff while she went to go buy her sugar and then never came back during the church meetings. So, we put all her stuff in plastic bags and carried them with us until we found her and gave her stuff back.

os amo,

Elder Burt