Week 97: ¡Sopresa!

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey hey! Surprise! Yup! 

I'm back to give a report of my last week in the mission.......

This week has been full full of surprises, the first one is that I'm still writing you from Argentina! They had told us that I wouldn't have time and that we'd go the mission home before we left, but then there was a change of plans, now at 4:30 their going to send a car to pick up me and Elder Flores, the other missionary that lives with us and is going back to Chile, and we're going straight to the airport. Soo!! I've got one last chance to tell you a few of my experiences here in Argentina.

This last week has been full of fun and interesting things. We started off Monday with a grand adventure, we went to a different area to buy a few things to bring home and when we were going back the other elders that live with us called us and they asked if we had touched the water heater.... We told them that we hadn't and we asked them why, and they told us that. SURPRISE! The whole department was flooded with water! When we got back we saw that it was true. The owner sent a guy to fix it and he stopped the water from leaking so much, luckily that morning we had cleaned the pench and there weren't to many things on the floor that could get wet. The repair man told us that the tank had a hole in it somewhere so they were going to have to buy a new replacement. Turns out the last time they sent a guy to fix a small leak in the pipe when he put the replacement shut-off key, he put it as a decoration, because it doesn't to anything, I don't know if that has anything to do with the tank breaking, but as a bonus all this last week we had to bathe with buckets or just with cold water, what a great memory for the last week, am I right? Haha! I loved it!

We worked on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were looking for new investigators and doing some good follow-up with some that we already had. We found 2 new people to help and teach, one is called Santos, he is a very humble man, he has problems with the alcohol and a few other things, but he really has desires to change. the other is Nelson, a great young man, he's 18 years old, we wathched a Mormon message with him, about 3 men that went to Japan to study and the first day's they were there they were invited to a party, turns out in the party that the people wanted to do some drugs and other bad stuff, 2 of the friends decide to leave and 1 stays, at the end the police show up and the one that stayed gets kicked out of the school. Anyways, it was a great lesson, when we watched the video he really liked it, he was surprised to see what a big difference it made in the lives of the 3 young men, that the 2 that left were very successful and the 1 that stayed lost many opportunities. I know that if we are bold enough to say no and to stand to our beliefs we will receive all of the blessings God has for us.

On Thursday and Friday, more excitement! Thursday Elder Flores and I and all of the other missionaries that are going home today and tomorrow we went on a tour of Capital Buenos Aires, we saw tons of stuff, we went to the Obelisk, which is Argentina's Washington's Monument essentially, but it is really cool. We went to a theater, where we got to see an orchestra practicing for an upcoming recital, that was really  awesome, it reminded me of all of the times I went with my family to recitals in BYU and in the conference center, I'm very grateful that my parents brought me to them so that I could learn to appreciate the music and the art. We also saw a giant, and I mean GIANT metal flower, that opens during the day and closes during the night, that was awesome. Then we ate lunch, we got to go to Port Madero, where they recieve all of the stuff that comes in from the ships to Buenos Aires. We went to a cementary where there are a bunch of huge graves and it's where there are many famous people from the history of Argentina are buried. And we went to La Boca, where there is a Soccer stadium for one of the biggest teams in Argentina and where there is a little "feria" or where you can buy stuff in the street. And that was pretty much the day.

On Friday we went to the Temple, wow! It was super great to go there for one last time. You can truly feel a great peace there and I learned so much! Definitely excited to go when I get back! And in the afternoon we ate lunch with President and his wife and we had interviews with Presidente Calquín! He gave me a few councils for my life about work, study, and marriage! Haha! The next mission is to get married! WHOO! And that was our fun trip!

These last few days I could say goodbye to many of the members and investigators and converts. It's hard leaving a ward where I've been so much time, but at the same time, I don't feel like it's really happening. To tell the truth I'm super nervous to get back home, I don't know what it'll feel like to see my family again, I don't know what it'll be like to do the things I did before. My life has changed, I have changed. I now understand the importance and need I have of the Saviour in my life. Over these past few day's many people have asked me, what has been the biggest change that I've seen in me during these past 2 years? Well, many things have changed, but what I see will most affect my life, is that now I follow my desires, I follow what I want, I do what I want, I know what I want. Before I think I was still dependant of my parents my friends and the opinions of other people, but now that doesn't affect me so much, now I know that the 2 most important opinions are that of my Father in Heaven and my own. Frecuently I ask myself, What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? and Where do I want to end up? and then I ask myself: What does my Father in Heaven want me to do? Who does He want me to be? Where does He want me to go? And I pray to know and feel what will be the right choice. I love you all! I'll be seeing many of you this coming week I hope! I'll see my family tomorrow morning! AHHH!!! I can hardly believe that it's so close!! I love you all and I hope that you have enjoyed reading these letters during the last 2 years. If you want to hear more, I'll be giving my homecoming talk this next Sunday in my home ward. I love you all! I have loved representing my Saviour during these last 2 years, and I will keep representing him in and throughout my life. Until the next time we meet!

-Elder Slack

Week 55: A storm is coming Mr. Wayne

HELLO! Hey hey! Welcome back all of you to this weeks news, coming straight from Argentina where you can get all the up's and down's, all of the left's and the right's, and if you even want we can give you the zig-zag's! Coming up right now straight from the life of Elder Slack, don't miss a chance like this to hear directly from me what's been going on!

Well well my friends and family, this last week there have been some mild changes in the mission. We received an email from our mission president this last week, there have been a few changes in the rules! We now have the exclusive opportunity to listen to only music from the Mormon tabernacle choir, or from the church! WOW!! #blessed! Am I right or am I right? As well, a few other changes, in the photos that we take, president has asked the we always look like representatives of Jesus Christ, because we are! So, I guess you will all have to say farewell to the funky faces of Elder Slack because we're just going to be all smiles here :D!! As well, we are not going to be having any more zone activities, we can have 1-2 district activities every transfer, Disney movies, that would be a no, because we are going to be having cleaner and safer and more productive activities from now on!! WHOO!! :D And as well, we can't visit the temple, even with investigators only if we have a convert who goes to receive their endowments or be sealed or if we go with the mission president. A few changes, but we're all good! It's all for the better of all the things! WHOO!!

Anyways, outside of that this week we've been doing a ton of prep for a ward mission activity that we are going to have this week, we're going to put on something that's called a Kermese here, it's like a fair or carnival type thing, but we're going to do it in the church, all of the members are going to invite tons of friends and family and we are hoping that we can help all of the people to get to know the inside of the church, and we are going to relate it to the plan of Salvation. Everyone will be given a certain amount of tickets, they can play all the games they want, and depending on how well they do on the games they will receive a ticket of a different color, at the end of it all the different colors will represent the different prizes that they will receive, the prize will represent the three kingdoms of glory. It's going to be great!!

And!! Just to make this week even better than ever, we had exchanges, you are not going to believe with who! With ELDER CORDEIRO!!! WHOO!! Yup! With my old companion from back in Villegas Elder Cordeiro! It was super great, he's a district leader here in our zone so we got to go on exchanges and be companions again for a day! It was super awesome, we got to remember a few of the fun and crazy things we did back in Villegas and we got to see how much we have both grown and changed!! It was great!!

On Thursday, we had a super Family home evening in the ward, Elder González and I, we put on a little musical show, we put on santa hats and we were able to sing a Christmas hymn for part of the ward. And we planned with those who were there what kinds of activities we can do as a ward to help the other people get to know the church through the Christmas season!!

And, the week's fun doesn't stop there, on Friday we had interviews with our mission president! Presidente Calquín! He's super awesome, I can see that he really loves every one of the missionaries and has lots of desires that we can become even great than we are! And in the same day we received a little bit of training from the assistants to the president, wow, I mean WOW! We did a practice of a whole lesson, it was super great, we learned a ton from what they taught us!!

And, I think I told you last week that we were going to have a baptism, well..... The investigator didn't come to the interview again! NOO!! So close! But we understand, he's 81 years old, what can you expect? We're hoping that this week we can get things together and he can be baptized this weekend. 

Anyways, it's been an incredible week, full of miracles and fun! This week is the last week of the transfer, so probably my last week with Elder González, but I'm still super excited to keep working hard here with my new companion if I get one!! Anyways, until next week, we'll be seeing us!! I'm still in search of a camera, so we'll see what we can find. Anyways! Chau chau!!

-Elder Slack

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 6: When your plane leaks, just tape it!

Hey Hey! I´m alive!!

Sorry this computer is a little bit hard to use, because some of the keys on the keyboard are moved around. But I will try my best.

Anyways, I had a long flight last week, it was crazy, we went to the airport in the morning by trax and we hopped on, it was a short 3ish hour flight to Atlanta, and then we had essentially no layover time, which was nice because we didn't have to wait. We got off at the airport and hurryed over to our next flight and got on. The next flight was pretty interesting. We all boarded, then when one of the flight attendants went to shut one of the overhead packaging things, it started spitting water out of the handle, and this was right before we were about to take off. And so she shut it, and it's spitting water everywhere, and people were getting wet, so she reopens it and it stops. Then to fix it? What do you do? Well just tape it of course! It´s a several million dollar plane and we´ll just tape the plane why not. So the flight attendant put some paper towels and tape all over it and it held the water for the rest of the flight, very interesting solution I thought, but it worked I guess.

Over that 9 hour flight, I slept for probably 2.5 hours or so. I was pretty tired all day the next day. But we got off and I met my mission president, his name is President Thurgood, and he´s from Idaho. And we met the rest of the new missionaries going to our mission who all already spoke spanish and had gone to the Argentina MTC, because they were all from around south America. We ate some interesting pizza and some amazing empanadas and interviewed with the mission president, each one individually.

Then we met our trainers!! My companion is named Elder Tolentino. He´s from Peru and he´s about 4´ 11´´ I would guess, he´s awesome though, really great missionary. And he only knows a little bit of English, so I´ve been learning spanish amazingly fast. Legit, the gift of tongues is so real. I can understand so much spanish, it´s easier to understand than to speak. But I can understand the majority, I´d say probably 75% of what people are saying, or if I don't know the words I can fill in the blanks usually. And I can communicate with a lot of the people pretty well, no where near perfect, but well enough. I usually only talk if I have something directed at me, or if it´s my turn to talk in a lesson. But all is well!

Turns out, my mission is about half as big as I thought, apparently back in July they split the mission, so now there is a Buenos Aires East mission that was 6 of the stakes of our mission, and we got 2 stakes from the West mission, so we don't have the ocean in our mission, which is alright I guess. But bonus, We have the Buenos Aires temple in our mission!! So our mission president said that we'll get to go there probably 4 or 5 times during our mission, which I´m super excited for! Temple in spanish!

Here in Argentina is completely different than I thought it would be. My mission is Buenos Aires South, but majority isn't in the city, they've got a lot of cars and buses and public transport and stuff, but also, in the area that I´m in they've got a ton of dirt roads. Only the main streets are dirt. Also, there are a ton of "wild dogs" that run around. They aren't like rabid or whatever, they are just a bunch of strays. They have no owner and kind of go and do what they please, so many of them. They'll travel in packs of 5 or 6 sometimes and kind of just run around looking for food or other stuff, they usually don't bother you even if you come up and try and pet it, they'll just run a way. But the other day, I saw this sweet dog, It wasn't a stray dog, it was in someone's house, but it looked like a lion almost, it had like this huge mane, and was all tan, and it´s face looked slightly feline, but it was a dog it was the strangest thing!

Also, the music here is interesting, sometimes I'll hear american music, and I'll be like, "Hey I know that!" but majority of the time the Argentines listen to their music, and it's kind of like polka music with some interesting bongos and lots of Spanish. very interesting indeed.

Also, I´ve found it a slight benefit to being a white boy around here, there are a few people who want to yell at me as they drive by. Either by yelling at me "White boy" or some other things, it´s kind of cool. I almost feel like I'm a celebrity here in Argentina! And I´ve had one person tell me, that after they met me. "Wow, I´m going to be popular now, I know a person from America" needless to say, that made feel pretty cool. 

My spanish is progressing amazingly fast, but I'm struggling hardcore with rolling my R's, I can buzz my tongue and make noises, but I can't for the life of me use it in words. Whenever we're walking I keep trying repeatedly to say the word "perro" which is dog. And my tongue just doesn't want to say it. It's quite disappointing. But I continue to work on it. On the other side of things, they want all of the Latin missionaries that speak spanish to learn English, and my companion is struggling with the words juice, and jewish. He can´t say his J´s.

Something I found out the other day, apparently in spanish, a rooster no longer say´s cock-a-doodle-doo. Apparently it´s kí-ki-di-ki. Just a little fun fact of the day.

But other than that the work is going great, I really love it here, the people are very nice, but the conversations are a little different. They talk a lot about where they are from, which country, because there are a lot of people from Paraguay here. And they talk about the different accents of spanish, here it´s castellano. Where the ll makes a zsh sound. kind of. It´s interesting. But all is well, we are fed lunch almost everyday, which is way nice. And we walk a ton. But I love it!

The driving here, just crazy, we ride in buses sometimes and when we ride around I get a bit afraid, because people essentially just do what they want. In our bus the other day, this light had been red for 5 seconds and he just felt like going, so he did.

It´s fun, all is well! But, I´ll see you all next week, hopefully those who want this are getting it, Paz Fuera!  (peace out) 

Elder Slack

Just tape the plane

Again, me with my trainer, Elder Tolentino and President and Sister Thurgood

Living in Argentina