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.)

Week 38: El TEMPLO!!

What a week it has been indeed! I've got lots to tell and little time to tell it, so I'm going to try and type really really fast!

This week we started off with a great P-day, we had our actividad de Distrito, (district activity) It was pretty awesome, different than what we had planned, but it was good. We made some great pizzas, and we watched the new disney movie Zootopia, it was way good. I'm not sure if it is out on disc there yet, but the movies here come out of nowhere from the street venders with there illegally copied movies so yeah. It was great though! 

The rest of the week has been filled with a few different things, but first a quick investigator update, 

we're still working with Juana and Gustavo, they are super great we are going to have a family home evening with them tonight, they still need to go to church and get married, but we're seeing good progress with them. 

As well we are working with Pamela still, the miracle from the Capilla abierta, she is sooooo amazing, we taught her about the plan of salvacion this week and the whole time was asking all of the right questions and asking questions that are a lot more complex than the normal investigators that we have here, and she is only 12, so that's pretty amazing! We're hoping that she can be baptized here in July, but her dad still is thinking about giving permission.

As well we are working with this great man and his family, his name is Vicente, it's like Vincent, but in Castellano :P He's super great, he has lot's of desires to know more, he's having a little bit of trouble know with work and everything, but he's super excited to go to church this next week!

As well we are working still with Fidel and with his daughter, he is really great, he is accepting and remembering everything really well, but.... He didn't come to church this last week and it was so sad. But we'll keep working with him!

As well we are working with Agustin and Patricia, we had talked with only Patricia once this last Saturday and she said only she would be able to go to church, be we were just starting the Gospel Principles class and BAM! In walks both of them!! Whoo! It's so great!

Those are the main investigators! It's the best thing to teach the people here and to invite them to come unto Christ. It's the best!!

Outside of that, really quick I've gotta give a shout out to the best dad in the world, I'm not sure when Father's day is in the USA, but it was yesterday here in Argentina! I Love you Dad so much! You are the best!!

As well, we had a Zone Conference this past week, we all went to the temple and we did a session and then we were able to have a good discussion for like 2 hours in this other building really close! It was the second to last time that we are going to see our mission president, he is going to leave this week and the new one comes in. We'll see him and his wife this wednesday. They are so awesome, I have learned so much from them! 

And this morning, we got a surprise visit from the Hermana Thurgood the wife of the president! Her and the secretary of the mission passed on by to do a 5 minute inspection to make sure we are maintaining our apartments really well and everything! It was awesome! And they gave us a kit kat!

Anyways, there's not a lot of time, but I went on 2, I don't know what they are called in english, but inter-cambios in spanish, like a split or something like that. With 2 elders in our district this week! I love learning and serving the Lord! I love you guys!! 

Chau!!

some members gave us some food to eat and the end of the night in our pench, so we ate the four of us!

this is the kit kat