Week 77: In your dreams!

Hey hey hey!!! Hellos to all of my friends and family! I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Haha! this week has been awesome! 

On Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Torres! YAY! i was with Elder Torres before when I was an ETM, he is a super awesome missionary, and has probably become one of my best friends here in the mission! It was great to work with him again! he's from Chile, and just a stud! I learned a ton from him once again, as we were teaching I could see and feel the love that he has for the people here. I realized the what really makes a great missionary. It doesn't really matter if you know how contac really well, or talk really well, or teach really well, what's really important is the person that we are, the person that we become. Who we are is more important than what we do, because who we are will affect 200% what we do and how we do it. The people can feel if we truly love them or not, they will know if we are sincere with our words or not, they will know and we will know. If we want to help them we need to love them.

The other thing I was thinking about this week was how little we truly do in this work, I realized what it means to be truly an "Instrument" in the hands of the Lord, I realized that He is the one that makes the changes that touches the hearts of the people. I kind of understood this before, but I really saw it in action this week as we worked and as I was able to pray sincerely for the well being of the people and know that I can't do much to help them, just invite and pray that God will make the difference for them. 

This week we had a baptism!! Whoo!! her name is Liliana! She is a young Woman and she has been going to church for about 5 months now and was never baptized because there were always problems when the elders tried to have her be baptized. But this week was incredible, she had been interviewed before, but didn't pass because she wasn't sure if the church was true. This week when we asked her if she had prayed about it, she said yes! And that she was now ready to be baptized and had received her answer! She said that she had dreamt that night that she was outside the church and that she heard a voice calling her telling her to come inside, and that was her answer! We were so happy and we went running around the rest of the week to get everything ready! It was great! 

Anyways! I love you all! It's been a great week here, a little bit of rain now as the winter starts to come.

Love,

Elder Slack

A visit to the pants factory

Asado!

Week 68: The rains came down and the Elders came over

Hey Family and Friends! I hope all is well in the real world, over here in Argentina it's been another great week! 

This week we were in Aldo-Bonzi, with Elder Barrios from Paraguay and Elder Torres(The same Elder Torres from San-Vicente!) From Chile! It was a great week, full of surprises. 

On Wednesday we went to a special meeting with all of the "ETM's". Now instead of just being us 4 "ETM's" working and helping out in the mission, there are now going to be 8! Whoo! I've got a new companion! His name is Elder Cedeño, he's from Panamá, he's super awesome, I've known him since the start of my mission, we were in my first district together and we are going to finish our missions together! It's going to be a blast of a transfer I'm super excited! It was a great time with Elder Escandon, but now we're going to be doing a few things differently. 

Well, before what we were doing we were 2 companionships, one companionship went to an area the first week and found lot's of people, then the next week we went to that area and we did lot's of follow-up on the investigators that they had found, while we were doing that the first companionship was in a new area finding more investigators then the next week we would go and do more follow-up and find more people. Well now what we are going to do. There are 4 companionships and 2 teams. In each team there are 2 companionships. So what happens the first week both companionships will go to 2 different new areas at the same time, and we will both work all week trying to help the investigators that they already have and trying to find lot's more. Then after a week we are going to exchange areas with the other elders and they will go to the area where we were and we will go where they were and we will do lot's of follow-up and we will try and find lot's more people now too. Or something like that! Haha! It's a little confusing, but we're going to have some fun with it!!

Well this last week was really great! On Saturday we were walking around looking for some new people to teach and we couldn't find anyone that was ready to be taught in the same moment. We were looking and looking, well after a little bit the clouds started rolling in and in a little more it was about to start pouring. We headed over to the only appointment we had of the whole day, and luckily they were there waiting for us. We went inside and just as we start teaching fwoosh, it starts pooouring a ton of rain. haha! We looked outside and we realize that we would have gotten drenched, but luckily the Lord protected us and we could be teaching in just the right moment! haha!

The best investigator of the week was Martin (Marteen) and Lucas,  Martin we taught, he's getting out of drugs and is trying to stop his addiction to tobacco and alcohol. It was fun teaching him all week and we were able to see his progress, he's a little bit funny. Martin is the dad and Lucas is his son, but they both act like they are 10 years old! (Lucas actually is 10, but Martin is 30) They came to church on Sunday and it was so hilarious to see them acting like little kids in the sacrament meeting. Lucas, the son, would make a "silly face" by sticking his tongue out or something like that, and then the dad, Martin, would tell him to "Stop" while at the same time he would bust out laughing! Haha! What a fun week!

Love you all! We are no longer in the offices because there are now 8 ETM's, so we moved out to Monte Grande! So It's a little harder to work things here in the internet Café type thing. I can't send photos this week, but I hope I'll be able to next week! Until we see again!!

Chau!!