Week 17: Trainings up

Oh how the time flies here in Argentina, yesterday officially ends my training (the first 12 weeks of my mission) And things are just moving on! It's a new Transfer here! My 3rd transfer in the mission!! And we waited on Saturday for our call from the president, waited and waited, and it came!! AND............................ Elder Tolentino, he's out of here, leaving the ward of Catán 3, but he's going to be staying here in our zone, in the zone of González Catán, he's going off to Laferrere to be district leader and to train another new missionary. And me? I'll be staying here in Catán 3, and I'll be training a new missionary! Crazy right? But if the Lord thinks that I'm ready, then I'm ready!

Castellano (Español, Spanish) is going really well. I have been truly blessed with the gift of tongues, I've still got an accent of an american, but I've been so blessed to be able to say that speaking the language hasn't been a problem. So now we'll just have to wait and see who it is that I'm going to train. I go to find out who it is tomorrow in Banfield, which is is where the mission offices and everything is, could be another Latino or a "Yankee", as they call us here, or American. I'm really really excited to go find out who my new companion will be!!

As well, this past martes, we were just about to start doing our companionship study in the morning when we get a call. It's the Pensioneros (missionaries in charge of where we live) They tell us to pack our bags, because we'll be moving in 3 hours. So we did, that day we moved again, we actually just swapped pensions with some other missionaries, now we live a little bit closer to our area. We moved into the new pension and the other Elders who lived their before left it horribly dirty, so we've spent several hours during the past week to clean it all and try and get the bad odor out so that when my new companion comes he will feel a little better, and know that we aren't living in filth. 

We've been working trying to find some new investigators. Camila has had some health problems and hasn't been able to attend church, so we are hoping that we can get her to come this next Sunday, I'll be working with my new companion until we can get her all ready and everything for her baptism. I plan on working really hard with my new companion to try and work with the members a lot and find lots of new investigators and really spread the gospel here so much in our ward, we're going to try and do a few new things, so pray for me that I can do a good job training, and that we don't just end up doing nothing. 

I've learned a lot this past week about how I need to act now. When we wait to talk to someone about the gospel, when we wait to invite someone, when we wait to do anything it gives the devil more time to whisper in our ear and say, "no, you can wait and do it next time" So I'm working a lot to just go and do, the things that the Lord has commanded us to do! 

Love for everyone! Chau!

P.S. I stole a photo that Elder Tolentino took, so here is one of us learning how to make empanadas, and let me just say they were delicious!

Week 9: (no title)

Hey! I'm here again! I hope you all have had another amazing week even though I'm not in your lives!

Things have been pretty interesting here in Argentina, the election is over, we're still missionaries, you know, nothing really big. This past week has been all over the map. From rainy days to sick days. But all another day in the life of a missionary!

This past week we had another Capilla Abiertta (Open Church) , church tour, in our Zone. All of the missionaries in our zone went over to another area and we went out and advertised all over the area for people to come and see the church and see what we believe and what we do in the church, it was really good. That took all day Saturday, and then this week we've been planning for our Capilla Abierta here in Catán 3! Elder Tolentino and I have been planning a lot and trying to figure out where all of the members (active and inactive) live so that we can send out the missionaries to go find them and invite them all back to the church, and also the same with all of the old investigators. We're hoping for a good turn out Saturday, but we'll see. 

I got sick this past week on Wednesday, we couldn't leave the pension because I was kind of half dying. So I layed on my bed all day while Elder Tolentino worked on the list of names for our Capilla Abierta. Then that night we had to travel to another area, Adrogué because I had to go do a bunch of Visa papers the next day. So we traveled 2ish hours by bus and I was praying that I wouldn't throw up the whole time, and yay! I didn't. We slept in the Adrogué elders pension. Slept, then the next day woke up, and that is when I threw up. Then we traveled around all day with a bunch of other new missionaries as we went to different places to fill out visa forms and stuff. Whoo! What a party right! Eventually we returned back to our pension where I was able to sleep and rest and I was fine by the next day!

Today we had a Zone activity, our Zone is all Elders, because the majority of the areas here in the Zone aren't um.... suitable, one might say, for Hermanas. So we played some futbol, and ate a ton of Churi Pan, (Sp?) Which is this amazing asado sausage on bread with some ketchup or chimichuri sauce, good stuff. 

Other than that, the week has been pretty normal. We've been out searching a ton so that we can find new investigators. But we're having a little bit of trouble right now. Almost all of our appointments fell through this week, and we taught probably 4 lessons, granted we couldn't do anything for 3 of those days because I was sick and the capilla abierta. But I've been getting really good at contacting people though. The language is coming extremely fast, the gift of tongue's is amazingly real. I feel like if I didn't have it for one day I would be completely lost all day with what's going on. But we've been searching so much this past week. And we had this one day, where all of our appointments fell through. We had a member with us and everything and they all fell through. So we decided to go out finding. So we were knocking some doors and doing some street contacts, but for about 2 hours we had found no one, everyone was either to busy or didn't want to talk to us, or not home. As we were walking to go find in a different area, Elder Tolentino and I started talking. He said he had asked the President, because we've been searching for investigators for 2 weeks, why he thinks we haven't been able to find anyone. He said the president said that we need to have more faith. At that moment I realized what all of my thoughts were. Every time we would talk with someone or every time we would knock a door, I didn't believe that we were doing any good. I didn't believe that we would get anywhere by talking to the person. At this moment I realized what was happening. I was getting what I expected. All along I had been thinking we would get nothing, and we got nothing, then I would ask in my mind "why can't we find anyone?" I realized how important it is to have faith, how important it is to believe that you are going to find someone, how important it is to believe that the person you talk to is going to let you in, or make an appointment. We have to believe that the best is going to happen or God cannot reward our Faith, because we have none.

Anyway's, just a thought of what I learned this week. Also I remembered that my companion shaved all of his hair off. He got a haircut last week, and paid 50 pesos for it in a barber shop. I don't think the people in the barber shops know any more about cutting hair than I do. Because it was horrible. So he tried to fix it with the Zone leaders cutters, but messed it up even more, so they just cut it all off. I've heard it's about to get a lot hotter, so I guess that'll help haha!

That's all! Yours, always smiling

-Elder Slack

Elder Tolentino's haircut

How I take pictures of me when I'm sick