Week 43: We Teach Repentance and Baptize Converts

​Hey everyone!! It's a me! Elder Slack!!

This week has been amazing, as almost all of the weeks in the mission, and I've got a lot to tell you guys, so hold on to your seats!!

Well, I think we'll start simply, on Monday we were pretty relaxed, we just hung out a little bit, and bought our food and then while my companion took a nap I was able to make my breakfast for the week! We bought a ton of these tortilla type things that they use to make empanadas here, and we bought some cheese, and I made about 57 quesadillas! WHOO!! And yeah, so I've been enjoying those throughout this entire week!!

Secondly we've been teaching a ton this week!! We cranked out 15 lessons this week, and we're looking at this upcoming week and I'm sure that we're going to be teaching even more!!! We've got a ton of investigators right now, and so many of them are progressing so well, I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to learn to teach and to be able to teach better with the spirit every time that we teach! 

As well, here in Villegas the members have been working "A full!" (a fool) as they say here. It means that they have been working a ton! They have been accompanying us to our lessons with our investigators, and they are visiting a ton of people who don't come to church, as well we've been inviting the members during lunch everyday and teaching them how to be missionaries! I feel like it's working out so far, but now we've got to verify how they're going with that this week, but I'm sure it's going to be great! As well, this week we were able to go to the ward council, that was pretty awesome, we talked about the investigators we are teaching and the help that they need from the ward, and then we had to bop on out because we had another lesson to teach, but Wow, from what we are seeing this ward here is going to be progressing a ton!!

And the most exciting part of the week! SUNDAY!!!! Well, after teaching everyone all week and they all commited to come to church, we went to the house of one of them in the morning so that he could come to church with us, but I guess he was sleeping or something, because no one answered. But then, we get back to the church and who's there? Rufino! And Fidel! WHOO!! There they are sitting in the priesthood class!! Then, at the end of the first our, who shows up?? Juana and Gustavo!!! WHOOO!!! And we had a super full class in Gospel principles! Then we go to head over to sacrament meeting and who do we have? There comes walking down the hall from the youth class Melani (the daughter of Gustavo and Juana) and Pamela!!! Whoo! And just to top it all off, we find out that Fidel's daughter who we've been teaching and is 8 years old had come with him too!!!! WHOOOOSLDFJIEDILSKDJWEOIJLSDJFO!"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JWJJW!!!!!!!!!!!! Yayay!!! It was so awesome!!! Almost everyone of our investigators were able to come to church yesterday!!! Wow!! It was so incredible! What an amazing feeling, and not even that, but all of them came on their own or a member passed by their house to pick them up! It was such a great feeling, and I realized even more that God prepares the people, I just here to run around and look for them! 

And to top it all off... Last night, we went to teach Juana and Gustavo, and we taught them about the Law of Chastity, and they were super cool about it and really agreed with it! It was super great!! They've still got some changes to make, but it's going to be great!! I've learned so much with them, especially teaching about the commandments of God. I've realized the importance this week of the commitments that we invite the people to make, what we really do here is teach repentance and then baptize converts! That's what we do!

Anyway's, that's been our crazy week! I love you all! Let me know how you're doing! Luckily this week I can write with all 27 letters! (27 because spanish has the ñ too!) haha! Love you! Chau!
-Elder Slack

PS. The Photos are attacthed in a google doc link, I made a video too, I don't remember how much spanish I spoke or if I spoke any english, but if you don't understand, ask your local argentine!

Week 42: I hope you guy read good, beauze zome of theze do't work!

WeII, I'm writimg from zome where here im Argemtima, It'z bee a great week, zorry for the bad writimg, but the Ietterz dom't work, zo I am puttimg other omez for them. I hope that you guyz umderztamd my mezzage!

Zo thiz week haz bee awezome, I am here with EIder Marty, he iz a great ompamiom. We are aIready Iearmimg a tom together! I'II zum up the week for you guyz!

Momday, we got together with my mew ompamiom, EIder Marty, Amd them we bought our food, wrote you guy, made the pemziom zmeII good. (I hab to zubztitute other word zometimez) Amd yeah, it waz pretty great! 

The highightz from the wrezt of the week, we had our diztrit meetimg, amd, that wemt reaIIy weII. I'm ztiII Diztrit Ieader, if I didm't teII you guyz. We taught a tom of perzomaz, amd it waz reaIIy fum! We'be got our imbeztigatorz, Juama amd Guztabo, they habe dizappeared, they were aII ready to go to the reIigiouz houze yezterday, but them they ztopped rezpomdimg to our mezzagez, zo we are goimg to fimd them tomight. 

Thiz iz turmimg out to be a Iitte harder tham I thought, to write, but, we keep goimg... EIder Marty amd I habe beem workimg a bit om our umity, we are pretty differemt, but at the zame time, I thimk it iz goimg to be a great tramzfer! We are ztiII gettimg to kmow the other ztiII, but he iz AWEZOME! 

Thiz week it waz reaIIy reaIIy freezimg! It waz quite the zite! It ztiII hazm't zmowed here, but it pazzed beIow freezimg the other might, zo I am hopimg! Mot mamy of our imbetigatorz ame to the reIgiouz houze thiz week, that waz reaIIy reaIIy zad. But I kmow that we wiII keep workimg!!!!

I am zuper duper exited for thiz week, I'be got a great diztrit meetimg pIammed for tomorrow!! it'z goimg to be amazimg. Thiz week, om thurzday, I wemt to a traimimg with our mew mizziom prezidemt! He iz reaIIy Great!. I'm zuper happy to zerbe with him! Zorry, more iz hard to write, but, I zemd hugz amd heartz to you aII, Mo puedo write amor, im EmgIizh.. With Amor for eberyome!

.EIder ZIak

Photoz of the freezimg amd zome zerbize that we did, amd zome other ztuff.

Week 41: We're the kids from America!

Hey howdy hey! That's me on my yoyo!

Just kidding, but hello everyone! This week has been super and a lot different to tell you the truth. But we've got a lot of things in store for us here in Argentina!!

TRANSFERS!!!!! Well............ My companion is gone! What!? I know, it's so fast, but he is now gone! Elder Cordeiro, and Elder Torricella have both gone, and my new companion is!.... Elder Marty! Yup! That's right! I'm here with Elder Marty right now! Now, who is Elder Marty you might ask? Well, he's pretty legit, he's originally from Puerto Rico, but, when he was 9 he moved to Florida and then to Texas sometime later. So, he also speaks English, so my first half "Yankee" (as they say here) companion! Whoo!! I'm super excited! He's got about 6 months in the mission, which is pretty interesting, why? Because my past 3 companions all got here in the same day to the mission! Haha! It's pretty cool. So now I've got like this inception thing going on, I had the first three months of Elder Ribeiro, then the second three months with Elder Cordeiro, and now I've got Elder Marty who has 6 months! WHOO!!

I'm super excited for this transfer, I've got a feeling that it is going to be great! Now, this week in the life of Elder Slack...

-Well, we've had transfers, that's now said and done! 

-This week I had a new idea to help out the district to talk with more people and to work really hard the last week. We had a competition, against ourselves! We all sat down and said that we would do 300 ALB's this week, ALB means Abrir La Boca, which is Open the Mouth. So we determined that if we, as a district, could do 300 alb's all together we would buy ICE-CREAM!! So... We worked a full all week and at the end of it all, the last day we were working down to the last minute Friday Night and we had to do 33 ALB's, and We pounded them out all day and finally finished at around 8'oclock at night! Whoo! And then we ate ice cream! So that was super awesome!

This week as well, we've got our super investigators going right now, like I've said before their names are Juana and Gustavo, WOW! They are amazing!! They came to church yesterday and they are working to be able to live the word of wisdom and they are just having huge progress! It's the best thing in the world to see the progress of our investigators!!! I'm super excited!! We'll be working with them so that they can be baptized at the end of the transfer, they still have to get married, but we're working on that too. WHOO!

This week has been a crazy week, we've been working a ton, we had to manage all week working in the two area's with Elder Torricella and Elder Cordeiro, they are so amazing the two of them and it was super fun being in a trio for 2 weeks, now it's going to be a little bit more tranquilo here, still super excited to work with Elder Marty. And just to keep the Brazil in me alive, we've got a Brasileiro in our district!

This last week, we had our last district meeting, it was super fun, I gave a little class on the balance of espirituality and energy that we need to have as misioneros. We did 2 little practices, the first I put some smooth music and I shut off the lights and told everyone to listen to the music and try and sleep for about 2 minutes, then they did a practice of a door contact. Then for the second part I put on some up-beat EFY music (of course misionary appropriate) and we did like a mini Zumba/Dance/Excercise class, super fun!! Never thought that I'd see 7 missionaries dancing in the middle of a District meeting, but it was way fun. Then they did a door contact again and we talked about the differences of the 2 different practices that we did. As people, we need a balance in our lives of activeness and energy and as well spiritual experiences, it's something that we all need to be happy!

As well, this week we got up a little bit earlier to go and do some excercises in the church, well, we just played dodgeball, but that was excercise enough. And as well, The fourth of July!! We went over to the church our last P-day and we played some Ping-Pong and dodgeball with the 5 Elders that we've had here in our pench. It was pretty great.

The week as a whole, well, it's been super awesome, I'm super excited to work with Elder Marty and to stay here in the ward of Villegas!!! The members and the people here are so great! I love being a missionary!! Love you all! Until next week!

-Elder Slack

Week 40: A smile can change the world!!

HELLOOOOO!!!! HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!!!!!!!!

WOOOOO USA USA USA!!! Hahaha!

Happy fourth of July to everyone from down here in Argentina! I got here to the computer and realized that I forgot to wear my red white and blue, how patriotic, no?

But anyways, I hope all of you guys have enjoyed this week as much as I have, this has been one of the fastest, most and least productive weeks of my mission, but at the end of it all it has been amazing! 

First things first to start off the week we had to move Elder torricella over to our pension this week, if you don't remember he is the Elder who is in our trio for the rest of this transfer. So we headed over to his pension for a little bit to grab some clothes and stuff for him for 2 weeks and a mattress, luckily the pensioneros (the elders in charge of the pensions) were able to help us move everything from one pench to the other. 

And now that we are in a trio we've had the excitement of trying to manage 2 areas at once, which has been quite the hassle. Elder Torricella and his companion couldn't do a whole lot of work in their area because they spent a ton of time in the hospital, so we had to fix a bunch of things that they had left undone and start it going again, but now, this week should be a little bit more tranquilo or smooth going.

As well, Wednesday, we had to waste a few hours running around in different parts of the mission trying to get the flu shot, that they told us we had to get, but at the end of it all we went from our side of the mission to the other, (our mission is actually pretty small) and we found out we can't get the flu shot without a medical prescription. So, we'll see what we can do about that now. But all in all it was an adventure! We ran into a group of other Elders trying to get the shot as well in the Hospital where we all found out we can't get it there, so that was interesting!

As well, one of the Elders in my pension this week had his mission birthday! Elder Phillips from Brigham City, Utah, so we had a mini celebration and we ate Ice cream! That was pretty fun!

And! One of the two highlights of the week! We got to meet our new presidente!! Presidente Calquín! He's from Chile and WOW! I am super super excited to be able to work with him here and to be under his direction and spiritual guide! He is such a loving and kind man and full of energy!! He told us a few stories about his mission and how him and his wife met and it was amazing!! And his wife is Chilena as well, and she was super funny and it is so awesome to have them as our leaders! We all left the meeting there with him smiling and laughing he is so great!! Now we'll have to see how everything goes, I'm hoping that he and his wife can adapt to the mission really well. 

This week I got to do another Baptismal interview, it was with an older woman! She's had a hard life and has a few problems with her memory and everything, but! after a year and a half of teaching her she was all ready to be baptized!! She was baptized this last Saturday! Which as well was an interesting experience, she has a few health problems so they were pretty worried about how she would react to being baptized, so they had the Hermano from the ward to baptize her and then Me and Elder Torricella to assist inside of the font. At the end, it all went so smoothly! It was great!!

And! My favorite part of the week now. Yesterday!! Sunday! Church day! We were working all week with our investigators so that they could come to the church, we go, we're waiting for them in the bus stop and! NOOOO!! They couldn't come because of the rain and mud, but that's not all! What do we do! We rapidly dash to the church where we solicit the help of our Bishop with his car and ZOOM! We go right over to their house where we picked them up! Juana and Gustavo and their little boy Mariano! They all came to church yesterday and they were sooooo well received! The friendshipping was amazing by the ward! They gave them a welcome shout out in sacrament meeting and then afterwards all of the members came up to introduce themselves and to say hi! It was amazing! And at the end of the Gospel principles class, when Gustavo went to say the prayer he said "Thank you so much, Father, that I could come to church today, I am so happy to be here and I want to come here every week." WOOOOOO!!!! It was amazing! And then, to top it all off, later in the day, we went on splits with our ward mission leader and we taught this part member family and the non member dad accepted a baptismal date and everything!! Wow! It was just a great day!

And now I'm here! It has been quite the week! I've been soooo happy this week, I hope all of you guys are happy where you are! Something that our mission president said was (translating): "All you need to do is smile and open your mouth!" And it's so true! I hope you can all take a moment this week to smile! And right now! Smile!! Even if you don't want to do it!

That's all for this week! I've only got a few pictures! I love you all! 

-Elder Slack!

P.S. transfers next week! We'll see what happens!

(Stockton/Elder Slack did not include any captions for his pictures...so the only person I know for sure is Elder Slack.)