Week 79: Trio time!!

Hey everyone! It's been another awesome week here in Villa-Celina! It's been such an incredible and tiring week this week! We were all over the area and the zone and we just did almost everything anyone can do I think, it's been incredibly crazy and awesomely fun!

We started out on Monday with a district activity, we had an "asado" or we grilled a bunch of meat up and played a little bit of soccer! So that was fun! Then on Tuesday we had to do another district meeting training, but this time it went horrible, if I do say so myself. Haha! HORRIBLE! I definitely learned this week the importance of preparation, God will only help us if we do our part and prepare!

The rest of the week as well we were preparing everything possible for the baptisms that we had on Saturday. Oh, I forgot to mention, yes, we are now in a trio companionship. One of the elders from our ward that lived in our pench with us went home for personal reasons and his companion Elder Hernandez will be working with us during this week! Yay! So... We had to prepare everything for the baptism of Junior, one of our investigators, and the baptism of one of the investigators of Elder Hernandez, Ronald! We had one of the interviews on Wednesday, and then we did interviews on Saturday as well and Saturday evening they were baptized!! WHoo!! It was super great and awesome! Junior has been investigating the church for probably 3 or 4 months now, he was going to be baptized the first week I got here, but he wanted to wait some more, even with our pression to get baptized. So, about a month later now, he was baptized!! WHOO!! He's from Peru, and is always excited to learn!!

As well, on Monday night this week we got a call from the assistants, and they told us, "Hey, we have a new goal for the mission, we want to find 1000 new investigators every week!" So... That's a lot!!! They told us that it's about 11 new investigators every week per companionship!! A ton!!  So we talked with the district leaders on Tuesday to see what we could do to achieve this goal and we decided to do something that's called a tormenta blanca, or  a white storm! I don't know if it's the same in english, but essentially all of the missionaries in the zone we all get together and we work in one ward for a few hours, but instead of doing it like normal we changed it a little bit. Instead of just in one ward, we worked in 4 different wards together! We went to every ward in the zone for 2 hours on Friday, it took a little bit of time, but it was great! We tried to find as many new investigators as we could. It didn't work as well as we thought, but! We'll see what we can do this week so that we can make it go better! Whoo!! Haha! 

And yeah! That's about the week for you!

One of the things I realized yesterday while we were in church was how awesome this ward is! There are lot's of people and many are ready and willing to work in the work of the Lord! It's incredible! They always help us with everything we need! I'm super happy here in Villa-Celina, it's been a huge blessing for me to work here and to work with Elder Gonzales. I hope everything goes well for you this week! Have a great one!! We'll be seeing you! Chau!!

´-Elder Slack!

 the middle of our area 

On the edge of our area we found an abandoned bus stop, but it's HUGE!

Week 14: The Sky is Falling and Blessings from the Heavens

Hey! Feliz Año nuevo de Argentina!!

I hope that you all had a great time over this past week, the life as a missionary is definitely not the best on the holidays, but I loved it all the same. And now that we have full weeks we can put in more work!

On our P-day last week, after we went and emailed we went out on an adventure, the great adventure of Walmart in Argentina! It was long and hard, we searched for days and nights, through wind and snow and sleet, in jungles and mountains, and crossed a great river, but eventually we found it!! Yes I know, we found a Walmart!! Actually it was probably more like 15 minutes on a bus and 20 minutes of walking, but we actually crossed a river, a little one, on a bridge, and there was a lot of trash. But hey, It's all part of the adventure. Now you may be wondering, why would we want to go to Wal-mart while we are here in Argentina? Well I had one thing in mind! PEANUT BUTTER! And I am very pleased to say, that our mission was successful, I used my remaining funds of the month to purchase 2 very tiny, expensive, and amazingly delicious jars of peanut butter. 

The adventures of the week didn't stop there though! We had New Years this week, I hope all of you did too. If you are not yet in 2016 then you need to change something. But anyways. We spent New Years with a bunch of other Elders from our zone, we had about 10 of us. We all got together, everyone brought something and we were able to cook and eat our own asado. We didn't have a ton of meat, but it was good. We all got together in the pensions of 2 companionships of elders that are right next to each other and used the "Grill" of a member to cook it. It was great, and then at midnight once again, fireworks everywhere. New Years was even worse than Christmas, I thought Christmas was a lot. But here it started at midnight and went for about 45 minutes of non-stop explosions everywhere! It was insane!! Us Americans think we do a lot of fireworks on the fourth of July and everything, but they use probably 5 times as much here in Argentina for New Years. It was good. 

After New Years eve and New Years (when we couldn't go out to proselyte or work or anything) it was a lot better. We had a ton of appointments on Saturday and Sunday, because we couldn't put anyone on those 2 days. And It was great! We now have 3 different investigators with a baptismal date! It's so exciting!! And 2 of them went to church yesterday! We had to go out and search for Camila in the morning to bring her and her family to church,  

and we told her the night before "We're going to be here at 8:30, you need to be ready to go." We show up, still sleeping, but wait... Miracle, in 15 minutes they get all dressed and ready to go, and we leave for church the bus comes right as we are getting to the stop and we arrive at church at 9:03, not bad right!! It was the best to finally get her and see her family at church, her 2 little children found right away 2 little friends in the primary and they helped them to all their classes and everything, and after the classes when we saw Camila talking with some of the hermanas from the relief society, it was the best to see her so happy! And then in Sacrament meeting we had fast and testimony meeting, and we had the most peculiar meeting, all the people that decided to go up to bear their testimonies were couples. And they went up as husband and wife and shared their testimonies together and they talked a lot about the blessings of being with their families, and it was just the best!!

And then yesterday, we went out and had a ton of appointments all afternoon and it was good, we taught 3 lessons and have 2 new investigators. I can really tell a huge difference here when we are obeying the rules as missionaries. When we aren't being obedient to what God wants us to do he won't bless us and can't bless us. But when we are obedient and truly are doing all the things that we can to follow his commandments, he can pour out the blessings of heaven upon us! It is incredible! 

I'll wish you all a happy New Year, and I hope you all have some amazing new goals, and remember that a goal is only a wish until you write it down.

Your missionary here in Argentina

-Elder Slack

(note from Elder Slack's mom: Sorry I couldn't turn this...if you know how, email me and teach me how. Thanks!)

Here is what we ate for Christmas! Asado!!!

Week 13: ¡Feliz Navidad!

¡¡Hola a todos!!

This week was incredibly awesome, and different, and about everything that you could imagine! It's incredible! Argentina is the best!! We started out on Tuesday, we had a kind of big Christmas activity, our president came and stopped by our zone and gave all of us some alfajores and some American candy, it was delicious, and then we kind of chilled for a few hours, played some ping pong, cooked a full (a ton) of rice, made some of it into fried rice, and then we ate a ton, and it was great. I heard that the last years Christmas activity was a lot bigger and better, but it was good. I was happy eating a ton of fried rice.

As well we had a service activity the next day, we helped a member in our ward, to paint her door, and also to cut back some bushes and stuff that were attacking her car as she drove by. So we fought back the bushes and disentangled some of them from her fence, painted her door, got sun burned, saved the day and the princess. No big deal. It was fun, and she gave us almuerzo (Lunch) afterwards. 

The biggest part of the week, was Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! To all of you! It was probably one of the most different Christmas's that I'll ever have. The best part, I got to skype my family!!! Yah! They are all so awesome! If you haven't talked with them in a while, well they're all changing. It was slightly awkward as well though, because I was trying to talk English again. I can talk like one sentence at a time right now, and I can think and write just fine in English, but when I try and talk, I'm so used to talking to everyone in Español that it was a bit weird. And I tried to explain a few of the things that are going on here, it's kind of crazy. I can write this letter every week, as well I write to them separately. But they can't really understand what I'm feeling and all the things that I'm seeing. I just want to bring all of them here to see it all with me!

Other than that it was awesome to see my family. Here the Christmas traditions are a little bit different. The majority of the Christmas celebration is done at midnight. Everyone stays up until 12 the 24th and eat a ton of food and open all their presents at 12 and also they launch off a ton of fireworks. It's like world war III, it's pretty crazy. We went out up on the micro deck thing that these other elders have attached to their pension and we could see and here just fireworks everywhere. And they have massive firecrackers as well that just explode and are gigantic like bombs it's pretty crazy. All of the mission had permission to be out of the pension until 6 and then we had permission to be in the house of a member if they had a car to bring us home until 10:30, then we had to return to our or another elders in our districts pension. Where we could stay up, because it's Christmas and we don't work on the 24th or 25th. So we ate dinner with a family in our ward, all of the 6 elders in our district, together. And they fed us a ton. We ate asado, which is barbeque here but 10000 times better. And we were stuffed full. Literally, and they fed us some of the best ice cream that I have eaten here and all of the food was just amazing! 

The actual Christmas day was way different, I woke up and no one else was awake, so I studied in preach my gospel for 3ish hours, then everyone else was awake, and then Elder Tolentino and I went and visited some of the families in our ward and then skyped. Then we played some Magic ( Yes, Ethan, the card game) with our ward mission leader, in which I died a miserable death and lost -52 to 11. Then we went to the church where we played some fútbol (soccer) at which I am no where near as good as any of the young men who came to play with us.

But the week was great, we've got a great progressing investigator right now. Her name is Camila and we're teaching her and she is really interested, but now she just needs to have the faith to come to church with us, and she can receive so many blessings if she does! It's all good. I hope your New years goes well. As well I've learned a little bit of Guaraní here. It's the language of paraguay, and spanish, but.

Avani pa pejasafa año peajú? Which means with who are you going to pass your new years? (spelling is probably wrong, that's the Spanish sounding out though)

Tengan una buena semana!

Chau!