Week 78:

Hey Hey Hola!

It's been another incredible week here, we were running around teaching a ton and inviting everyone to read the Book of Mormon and to Pray and all that good stuff, it was nice.

We had some exchanges this week, I was with Elder Hall!! YAY! My MTC Companion! Yeah! you know that's what's up, Elder Slack and Elder Hall back in action, teaching repentance in Villa Celina! Whoo! haha! It was super great, and as a plus, in the night time we bought fried rice, which is something that apparrently they eat a ton in peru, next to our pench and we ate it and it was very tasty!! It was way nice!

Also, on Tuesday we had to do a training for a district in our zone, so we did a workshop on Love and unity. Sounds a little weird now that I write it in english, but it's true, love and unity are very important in missionary work! To pracitce our unity, we bought some bungy cords and we bound everyone together in the district and we made them do some activities. The original idea was to bind them together for a day, but we weren't that sure if it would go over very well with the president when he finds out that we make the missionaries do that, and we weren't sure the missionaries would like it either. So we decided for the less drastic version, but it was great!!

This week was holy week, down here in Argentina, there is a ton of preparation for easter and a ton of traditions about holy week. From Thursday to Sunday everyone was on a fish only diet, with bread and noodles and stuff. But it was awesome! I had my first experience of eating fish that has pokey bones! I didn't know why everyone told me that it was going to be pokey until I started eating and I realized that the the fish that I normally eat is not the same as the fish here, but it was awesome!

We were working with a ton of investigators this week, some of who have made us sad because they don't pray or read the book of Mormon, but others, for example Junior, is super ready to be baptized this week!! WHOO!! we're going to have the interview on Wednesday and then he is going to be baptized! WHOO!! 

And on Saturday, we had a really awesome experience! When me companion started his mission, he started in the ward that is right next to ours and that shares the church with us, he contacted an older man more than a year ago, and on Saturday he was baptized!!! And he asked Elder Gonzales to baptize him!! He was so happy! He has diabetes, and only has one leg, so we had to baptize him as a group, so I and one other elder helped out so that he could be baptized! We were all in white, it was so cool. And Afterwards Juan Carlos was so happy, that's his name, because now he knows that he will have the opportunity to see his wife and his son again, who passed away a few years ago! It was great!

Great week! I be happy! I hope you happy too! No time! Chau!! Much Love!

-Elder SlaCK

Week 52:

Hello World!!

Hey! It's Elder Slack once again, here to tell you what's going on in the Argentina world!! I hope you are all ready because this week has been super duper full of everything you can think of!!

First things first, we started Monday off with some good old bike problems, my companion paid for a few repairs and when I showed the bike man my bike for normal maintenance and he told me that it's better to throw my bike in the trash and buy a new one than to repair the things that are out of line. Whoo! Haha! So we talked to the pensioneros real quick and they said that they'd hook me up with a new bike some time soon, don't know when, but sometime!

And well, the rest of the week was pretty much normal running around, teaching repentance to the people of Alejandro-Korn, changing lives, seeing angels, you know, all that good stuff. I'll tell you real quick about the people that we taught this week.

Luciano, the child who's family is less active, he's super awesome, we keep teaching him and we are working with him so he can be baptized, but his family just doesn't come to the church, so we'll be seeing where that goes.  

Olindo, is the brother of one of the recent converts, super prepared and wants to be baptized, but..... He disappeared off the face of the earth this week! NO!! Ahh! We're not quite sure what happened, but we're hoping that his family can find him in his house this week, we're not sure if he got sick or something like that, but he just didn't show up at his family's house, where he normally goes 4 or 5 times a week. Weird right?

And Silvia and Brian! We had 2 lessons with them this week, both of them at the end of the day, they are super awesome, Brian is the son of Silvia, he is 15 years old, and just needs some friends, which he can surely find the the Church! And Silvia is just looking for some peace and happiness in her family, which also she can find in the Gospel! Whoo! We're hoping they can be baptized during November if they keep progressing.

Sharon, the all star child, she is 11, she's going to be baptized with her brothers the 26th of November with her brother and sister that are going to turn 8, She's praying really really well and they are reading the book of mormon for kids!

Matias and Camila, they are going to get married in January! It's a little ways away, but we're hoping that Camila can feel comfortable and ready to be baptized before then. Matias was less active, Camila is his future wife. They're awesome!! This week I ate the Kidney of a Cow for the first time with them! It wasn't that bad actually!

And well we're working with a few more people too. The biggest miracle of the week, Silvia is her name, why a miracle?? Well She's married!! Whoo!! The majority of the people who live here aren't married,if you didn't know, they are just boyfriend girlfriend and then decide to live together. But she is married whoo!! She was a referral from a member here, the member introduced her to us and we were able to teach her Saturday and we invited to her come to church the next day and she came!!! The member passed by her house in the morning and they came walking together!! Whoo!! It was awesome, she really liked the church and we're hoping to teach her husband and the rest of her family this week too! 

And well then, that's a lot about the investigators, but I guess I am here for them. Not much else happened this week. Oh yeah, on Thursday in a family home evening of the ward someone to remain unnamed who may or may not be one of the other missionaries in the ward here, "accidentally" knocked my camera on the floor and now it doesn't really work... sad face. But that's alright, I'll look around to see if I can find a used camera or a missionary that wants to give me theirs. I've got some other pictures from the rest of the week before that though. It's been a great week! Elder González and I, we're getting ourselves all ready for another great transfer here in the zone, super stoked, it's going to be great. Elder Cordeiro my old companion, and Elder Hall my companion from the MTC are both District Leaders here in the zone! Whoo! Anyways, until next week I hope I can write you guys! Much love, Chau!!

-Elder Slack

P.S. Some photos from the ward activity of halloween (my companion as "santa" and I as I don't know) And some other photos from the week.

Week 3: Joseph Smith

Amigos y Familia!!

Hola once again from the MTC! I'm loving it here! It's so awesome! My district is amazing and Spanish is honestly so much fun, I don't know why, but it is! Me and my companion are getting along great! We got an assignment for Sundays this past week, we are the Sacrament coordinators so we get to go and prepare the sacrament every week and give the prayers in español and make sure that there are people there to pass the sacrament I'm excited, all those years of sacrament experience getting to apply them on the mission!

So our old District leader, we just changed and have a new one now, he's 21 years old his name is Elder Carson and he's prematurely balding or something like that, but he told me this amazing joke this last week. "What do you call 3 rabbits hopping backwards?? ....... A receding hare line!" Prime stuff am I right!

The MTC schedule is getting a little repetitive, it's pretty much wake up, eat food, class, eat food, class, eat food, devotional class sleep. But it's great I love it, I learn so much every single day. I've resolved that we probably have some of the best missionary teachers, because they are all returned missionaries, they all served in South America/Mexico, and because they served there they taught around 5-10 lessons a day so they know how to teach and they know about the culture, one of my teachers went to the Buenos Aires North Mission, and they all know so much about the gospel and about teaching it and loving it and everything. It's pretty awesome!

Also every week on P-day, we get to go to the temple in the morning, it's awesome, it's literally right across the street and we just walk on over and get to go inside and work there, then after that we get to go and eat breakfast in the temple, it is literally the most divine food in the world right now, because we've been eating the byu food service food and let's just say that it's not the most healthy stuff and doesn't taste amazing, I've just been eating oatmeal or cereal everyday for breakfast everyday and It's just okay, so the waffle I get at the temple is just amazing compared to what we eat here. But I'm grateful for food, and also I'm grateful that I don't have to eat at the MTC for the rest of my mission.

We have a devotional here every Sunday and Tuesday, It's awesome we've had some of the best speakers here, they teach us so much and I've been spiritually fed every time they speak, but also just before the devotional we have choir practice and then we sing a song as a choir for everyone, which there are more missionaries in the choir than there are in the rest of the audience. We don't sound amazing, but we're actually pretty good, but over this past week we sang Joseph Smith's first prayer, (I think that's the song) and the choir director is just awesome, he always has some cool stories and a sweet testimony about every single song, and he told us some amazing stories and facts about the accounts of the first vision, and it strengthened my testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet so much. And he shared some personal stories from his mission and bore his testimony on the power of the first vision. This one short story, he said he was out on his mission in Brazil and he and his companion came out from teaching a lesson with some investigators and his companion turned to him and said "NEVER teach the first vision like that again" and he was confused and said "Like what??" Then his companion said to him "Like it's not true! Because it is a true story Elder!" That really made me think about my testimony of Joseph Smith and how I teach it, I never want to be teaching and speak and sound like I don't think that it is true, because I know that Joseph Smith went in that day to the sacred grove and prayed, and God and Jesus Christ came down to him. You can read Joseph Smith's story online at LDS.org or just google Joseph smith history or something like that and it should have Joseph Smith's account of what he saw, and I'd like to challenge you all to read it, or reread it, and think about your own testimony, or if you don't know that it is true, take 3 minutes to pray about it, because if that moment isn't true, then none of this church is true, and I know for myself that it happened.

Also this week, there was an elder in another district that had a birthday, and his family sent him a ton of presents and food and stuff, so we had a little mini birthday party out in the hall in front of our room, and he got a ton of balloons and candy, then he gave a bunch of it away, so I grabbed some and everyone gets a ton of packages and so there's a ton of candy just floating around, so I've been able to satisfy my sugar cravings enough for now without buying anything.

Me and my companion Elder Hall have been teaching our investigators and we have been learning so much about teaching and how to apply the lesson to the investigators. I've learned so much about teaching that I never knew before and the language is coming really easily, I don't really worry to much about the language anymore, I just worry about planning the lesson and figuring out what the investigators need. Elder Hall is still struggling with the language a little bit still, but he's talking more and more with each and every lesson.

-- 

Elder Slack

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Mailing Address:

Elder Stockton Gerald Slack

NOV02 ARG-BAS

2007 N 900 E Unit 97

Provo UT 8460

Check my ride (not really)

Found Elder Brown, but now he's gone

Cheese

The name tag on pday

Everyone always asks to try on my glasses

Devotional

The mini birthday party

2

Week 2: Strange things in the night!

Hey hey! I'm alive! Week 2 has gone by so freaking fast! It's been a great week, tons of learning and exciting things happening, general conference was great! It was so cool to hear from all of the prophets and apostles here at the MTC with all of the missionaries, the spirit is so strong here!!

I need to start off and apologize, I had this moment last week when I sat down, wrote all of my emails and my big group email and I sent it out to a bunch of people and then my time was up and then probably 15 minutes later I thought... Wait... did I send that to my mom and dad? Sorry!! I don't think I did, also sorry to anyone who wanted to get it that didn't, friends or family, I felt really bad and wanted to hop back on for 5 seconds to forward it to you, but Obedience is key and I had to stick to the hour that I am given.

Anyways, I just loved general conference it was great! There were so many different things said that I thought applied directly to me! And getting to watch all of the sessions was a nice little break from the normal schedule here at the MTC, we just got to sit back in our horribly cramped uncomfortable stadium seats and enjoy their words for us. Honestly it was great I loved it apart from the seats that are meant for Elementary school sized kids, I can never feel comfortable when sitting in them no matter how hard I try or how much I move around.

The rest of the week was just incredible, I'll try and touch on a few of the highlights. I've essentially gotten used to the MTC schedule now, waking up at 6:30 is a cinch, at least if you get to bed right at 10:30, there are a few elders who just don't care and stay up later every night and every morning I hear them complaining about how hard it is to get up. I try and tell them, but they always want to do other stuff besides sleep when 10:30 rolls around.

We got 2 new districts in our zone this past week, they're an interesting group of kids, a lot of them still have the total high school mindset going on here, and they're all about the social life and trying to look cool and impress everyone else with their girlfriends and their extreme workout regiments. It's kind of weird, every night probably 6 or 7 people from our floor have a big pow wow in front of our room where they all try and show off their muscles and see who can do the most complex kind of push up and the most pull up's and then some people will stand around and talk about how "back in high school" they could do so many more push-ups. It's kind of weird, but whatever.

Story of the week, it is quite a doozy! My companion, Elder Hall if you didn't get my last weeks letter, he's an interesting kid, we get along really well, but we just have different personalities, I want to work hard all the time and he just wants to mess around and have fun all the time, it works out though because we kind of balance each other out. So just the other night, I was sound asleep in my bed, I was having the weirdest of dreams that you'll have to ask me about some other time, but in the dream I hear this banging and it is really annoying, I have no idea where it's coming from, but all of a sudden I wake up. And I'm thinking why in the world am I awake at this time of night? I look at my clock, it's like 2:45 in the morning and I'm super confused, so I just go back to bed. Well I sleep well the rest of the night, then I get up the next morning, everything is fine and dandy. Then Elder Hall starts talking and he's like where were you guy's! I was freezing all night! Why didn't you wake up! And we're like whoa whoa, what are you talking about? Because he just starts getting all grumpy about nothing we know about. Well as it turns out... That thumping I heard in my dream, was Elder Hall thumping on our window, it woke me up, but he didn't keep knocking. Elder Hall had slept walked out of our room, up the stairs, through the door and to outside, he said that he woke up by a tree over by the fence here. He was trapped outside for 2 and a half hours!! He couldn't get anyone to wake up, he was just freezing outside in his G's until finally around 4 am a security guard was taking his morning round about and he spotted him and let him in. We died when we heard his story, but also turns out he woke about 4 people up, but they all decided not to get up because they were to tired and they didn't know what it was, and some of them assumed it was some kids just messing with the MTC. But, from now on Elder hall is sleeping with his key and key card attached to him. 

Other then that, the week has been pretty normal. We've been teaching these 2 people consecutively almost every day. But just the other day after we finished our TRC lesson, which is just essentially another person we teach in Spanish for more practice. And we finished, we walk out of the room and we see our other investigator, and he's all dressed up, in a nice shirt and tie and has a name badge on that say's Hermano Brown. Elder Hall and I are confused right now and he just tells us to follow him so we go and we get to watch the other missionaries in our district teach on these camera's they have on a live feed from every room. And turns out, our investigator that we taught on the 3rd day, Who was named Guillermo, is actually Hermano Brown another one of our teachers. Quite surprised actually, but I like teacher Hermano Brown a lot more than investigator Hermano Brown as Guillermo. He is super energetic and excited about teaching the gospel. He keeps telling us that he's not here to be our friend, he's here to train us so that we can go out and baptize the WORLD!! He's awesome.

Other things, food is still food. I borrowed someone's card reader so I have pictures this week, we had the relief society general president come talk to us last night for our Tuesday night night devotional, it was awesome she said some amazingly inspiring things. I'm still learning Spanish, it's getting harder now, but I still love it.

I just thought of another story, I know you hear all the time of language switch ups and things that people say and earlier this week when Elder Hall and I were teaching a lesson we were teaching and Elder hall was trying to talk about Joseph Smith and tell our investigator that he was the start of the Restoration of the church, well it came out as "José Smith es la esposa de la restauracíon" Which translates to Joseph smith is the wife of the restoration, and our investigator just gave us this really weird look and then we realized what he had said. 

Anyway's I'll tell you more next week! Keep everything real for me and stay awesome!!

Elder Slack

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Mailing Address:

Elder Stockton Gerald Slack

NOV02 ARG-BAS

2007 N 900 E Unit 97

Provo UT 8462

P.S. My companion is the big redhead one in a few of the pictures. Also if anyone still doesn't get it let me know.

Week 1: Espanol?

FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!!! Hola! From the MTC! I'm here I finally made it! I love it here in the MTC, honestly I think the MTC is exactly what you make it. It's all about attitude and loving everyone. Honestly though, the MTC is nothing like what I thought it would be. I'd really even seen it up close before, so in my mind I imagined it being this big gigantic building for all of the missionaries, in some sort of mall structure with rooms and classrooms and a cafeteria. Nothing like that, if you've never been here before, essentially it's like a micro college campus, you've got the residence halls where each of the different zones sleep in different buildings. Then you've got your cafeteria building with some other rooms for meetings, and then there's a bunch of separate buildings for all of the different language's and for training the missionaries. Spanish is going amazing!! Honestly the gift of tongue's is SOOO real! I took 2 years of Espanol back in high school, and honestly I had forgotten the majority of it all except for a few words. I've been here for a week exactly now, and I can speak in sentences, slowly, I can bear my testimony, I can pray, It's going so well. I can almost hold a conversation, but it takes me a while to conjugate everything to fit and I only have a small vocabulary, but it's great!!! I love Spanish so much!!! It's so much fun to speak and try and figure out how to say everything, and also to be able to understand everything is so cool. Our teachers are Hermana Bennet and Hermano Roberts, they speak only in Spanish all of the time, except for when we don't understand everything, then they'll explain it so that we know what the words are, but it's 96% Espanol, and 4% English. I love it! My companion, his name is Elder Hall, he's from a little town in Arizona called Vernin, It's about 20 minutes away from Sholo is what he said, if you know where that is. He's awesome, super energetic and excited all of the time. I'll try and send a picture of him, he has a really strong testimony, but he is really struggling with the language, he took 3 years of sign language in High school and speaks that amazingly fluently, and he was really hoping to go on a state side ASL mission, but he and I are going to the same mission. He knows that he just needs to be patient, but he hates not being able to understand everything and not being able to speak his mind, because he likes to talk all of the time. He's a redneck, according to him, and he's proud of it. This past week was crazy though, the first few days were kind of hard, we got in to class the first day and all of us were confused because our teachers were speaking only Spanish, but then a few of us started catching on to what they were saying and could help the rest of our district. But then, on the first night they were talking to us and they told us to start preparing a lesson, and they showed us a video of this guy talking, his name is Guillermo, he only speaks Spanish, he has been struggling with drugs and some other stuff, and we had to prepare a lesson to teach him. Then, we had about an hour and a half in class the next day and mi companero (companion) and I taught him a lesson Thursday night, all in Espanol. We had to fill 30 minutes, it was the worst lesson that I've ever taught in my life! Haha! But then we got back to class the next day and they told us to prepare a lesson again, so we've taught him about 5 times so far, only in Espanol, but we've been improving a ton every time. Oh yeah, they haven't "officially" told us that he's another teacher yet, but I'm like 99% sure no one would sit there for 3 hours while they get lessons from 6 companionship's. And we can see his garments, but not even worried about it. I still look at him as a real investigator and try and plan our lesson's around what we want to commit him to do. The food here is.... well.... BYU food service food, and that's pretty much it. It's just okay, definitely not the healthiest food in the world, and there is so much of it. It's kind of odd, because you walk in and you just hop in a line and start grabbing whatever food you want and you just walk away with it and eat it. I almost feel like I'm stealing it, but I'm not. I try not to eat to much, I don't want to put on the pounds here at the MTC. But everyday we get to have about 40 - 50 minutes to work out/play games in the gym, the first few days I played some 4 square and some volleyball, but the past 2 days, I've been able to go to the gym and get in a good workout.  My Spanish district is awesome!! I love all of them! We've got a decently big district, we have 12 people it it, 10 Elders and 2 Hermanas (Sisters), we had a testimony meeting with our district near the beginning of the week, and everyone has a cool story of how they decided to come on a mission and we all have great testimonies. Surprisingly, there are only 2 other people in my district from Utah, the rest are from the surrounding states. One's from Beaver, and the other is from Sandy and went to Alta, so we knew some of the same people it was pretty awesome. But everyone else is from Idaho, Arizona, or California, and a lot of them are from small towns. Anyways, the first few days were rough, but from Sunday on has been so much better, and my first P-day has been awesome, I never thought I'd miss wearing a T-shirt this much, but it feels great! But that doesn't matter, I enjoy getting to be a missionary everyday, I've seen several people here that I know, including that stud Elder Brown (how's that shout out Carter). The Spirit here is amazing, I really like the personal and language study time. They challenged us at the beginning of the stay to finish the Book of Mormon before we leave. So I decided that it would be really cool if I could read it in English and in Espanol, so I'm going through one verse at a time reading it in English and then in Espanol. It's pretty awesome, also we have 2 devotionals a week here, yesterday we got to hear from Elder Costa of the seventy, it was a great talk, he talked about his own conversion story and about missionary work and it really just motivated me to keep working hard.  All of the emails from home were really appreciated, it was so cool to hear from all of you about what's going on. I can't wait to email let you know what I'm up to again next week. I love you all, I hope all is going well in your lives, and if anyone wants to send me a Dear elder, they're free to send to the Provo MTC, my address is down below on my signature. Thanks so much I'll catch you all next week! I'm scheduled to leave November 2nd, just so you know as well. P.S. I can't send pictures yet, you need a SD card reader to hook up to these computers because they are super dulled down so people can't do much on them, but I'll send pictures next week of me and my district and my companion. Adios! --  Elder Slack Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission Mailing Address: Elder Stockton Gerald Slack NOV02 ARG-BAS 2007 N 900 E Unit 97 Provo UT 8462