Well, this week has been interesting I suppose.
I’ll start off with Tuesday. In the morning, a member made us breakfast. It was a typical American movie breakfast. Eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, orange juice. There were some other things too, dulce de leche etc. which is just Argentine food. Anywho, that day we had our meeting fireside thing whatever you call it with Elder
Atchukitis (spelling?). A member of the 70 (first one on the list!) He got lost (hah) and so we started 30 minutes late. Hes from Brazil. We started off the meeting with the 3 sets of zone leaders that we had with us talking. He dropped the cane (is that saying in english?) on us because people werent baptizing every week, and basically how
poorly everybody was doing. Then after that, he gave a pretty good talk about contacts and lessons with members, and focused on always getting as many referrals from people as possible, and how to go about contacting them and things. Pretty good stuff. Then we ended at almost 6 at night, and so we didn’t get back to our area until 8 (every single train was packed full and we couldn’t get on.. so we had to keep waiting). Then there was a ward council at 8, so we went to that, and by the time that ended, we didn’t have time for anything else at all.
Then on Wednesday, we went to Silvia. We used something we learned from the day before, and ended up getting like 15 referrals. Started contacting them, and apparently we werent supposed to talk to family or something, so one of them got mad, but Silvia was completely cool with it. We started inviting EVERYONE we talked to to go to the baptism (it didn’t do much good though.. only members and friends showed up). Then that night, Mario called. The one who now doesnt want to get baptized. He wants us to have dinner at his house Sunday afternoon.
Thursday, we were supposed to do divisions since the other missionaries would be in our area for the baptismal interview... but we didn’t end up doing them. Something about wasting time. Not really sure. Anywho, one of the members gave us like 2 liters of ice cream, so we brought it to the church while we waited for Silvia to show up for the interview. While Silvia was being interviewed, I did “mini splits” with another elder, who has 1 less transfer than me. Which means he has been in the country for a whole 3 weeks! yeah! It went alright, we talked to some guy who talked REALLY fast, I dont think I have ever met someone who talked faster, and I was actually able to understand most of what he said. I was really surprised. Oh yeah, when Silvia walked into the church, she told us that as she was passing the bus stop, 2 people got off and one of them said you know that there is a baptism here on saturday? its at 7. Silvia was thinking thats my baptism!! but they didn’t show up so... Silvia passed the interview so... woohoo!
Friday... Didn’t do much today except invite a ton of people to the baptism. We had a lesson with an english teacher. She wanted practice talking english, and we wanted a lesson, so we taught her in english. What better way! Anyways, she spoke pretty good english, and understood everything that we taught her in english. First lesson in english, check.
Saturday... Today we were supposed to do almost 3 hours of service by cutting some branches and things for a member, but she cancelled in the morning. Today my comp went tronky(home sick, not wanting to work... etc.) and we ended up spending the first 2 hours of the day at an inactive members house, and the next 3 hours at another less active member, where we ate lunch. Effective day so far, right? Then we stopped by the church (at this time it being almost 4 oclock) because we had to start the baptismal font. Good thing we started it 3 hours early, too. We got back to the church at 6:15 and the water was barely up past my knees. then.... BAPTISM time!
I’ll start off with Tuesday. In the morning, a member made us breakfast. It was a typical American movie breakfast. Eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, orange juice. There were some other things too, dulce de leche etc. which is just Argentine food. Anywho, that day we had our meeting fireside thing whatever you call it with Elder
Atchukitis (spelling?). A member of the 70 (first one on the list!) He got lost (hah) and so we started 30 minutes late. Hes from Brazil. We started off the meeting with the 3 sets of zone leaders that we had with us talking. He dropped the cane (is that saying in english?) on us because people werent baptizing every week, and basically how
poorly everybody was doing. Then after that, he gave a pretty good talk about contacts and lessons with members, and focused on always getting as many referrals from people as possible, and how to go about contacting them and things. Pretty good stuff. Then we ended at almost 6 at night, and so we didn’t get back to our area until 8 (every single train was packed full and we couldn’t get on.. so we had to keep waiting). Then there was a ward council at 8, so we went to that, and by the time that ended, we didn’t have time for anything else at all.
Then on Wednesday, we went to Silvia. We used something we learned from the day before, and ended up getting like 15 referrals. Started contacting them, and apparently we werent supposed to talk to family or something, so one of them got mad, but Silvia was completely cool with it. We started inviting EVERYONE we talked to to go to the baptism (it didn’t do much good though.. only members and friends showed up). Then that night, Mario called. The one who now doesnt want to get baptized. He wants us to have dinner at his house Sunday afternoon.
Thursday, we were supposed to do divisions since the other missionaries would be in our area for the baptismal interview... but we didn’t end up doing them. Something about wasting time. Not really sure. Anywho, one of the members gave us like 2 liters of ice cream, so we brought it to the church while we waited for Silvia to show up for the interview. While Silvia was being interviewed, I did “mini splits” with another elder, who has 1 less transfer than me. Which means he has been in the country for a whole 3 weeks! yeah! It went alright, we talked to some guy who talked REALLY fast, I dont think I have ever met someone who talked faster, and I was actually able to understand most of what he said. I was really surprised. Oh yeah, when Silvia walked into the church, she told us that as she was passing the bus stop, 2 people got off and one of them said you know that there is a baptism here on saturday? its at 7. Silvia was thinking thats my baptism!! but they didn’t show up so... Silvia passed the interview so... woohoo!
Friday... Didn’t do much today except invite a ton of people to the baptism. We had a lesson with an english teacher. She wanted practice talking english, and we wanted a lesson, so we taught her in english. What better way! Anyways, she spoke pretty good english, and understood everything that we taught her in english. First lesson in english, check.
Saturday... Today we were supposed to do almost 3 hours of service by cutting some branches and things for a member, but she cancelled in the morning. Today my comp went tronky(home sick, not wanting to work... etc.) and we ended up spending the first 2 hours of the day at an inactive members house, and the next 3 hours at another less active member, where we ate lunch. Effective day so far, right? Then we stopped by the church (at this time it being almost 4 oclock) because we had to start the baptismal font. Good thing we started it 3 hours early, too. We got back to the church at 6:15 and the water was barely up past my knees. then.... BAPTISM time!
We ended up having about... 40 people, more or less at the baptism. The water was warm, which was good, ended up being just below my tie. I got the baptism done right on the first try, spoke clearly. All in all, it went very well. Then right after the baptism, my comp didn’t feel like staying too much longer (read: he didn’t want to stay). So we left without talking to anybody. Yeah, Silvias friends wanted to talk to us... and we werent there. Goodie. Good thing this is the last 2 weeks!
Then Sunday. This week again, there were only 4 of us in priesthood class. Then an investigator of ours showed up halfway through, and he had a lot of questions. So many in fact, that the teachers for the next 2 hours couldn’t even get through the entire lesson. Oh well, at least he showed up. Then right after sacrament was over, he left.
Not even the whole meeting... just the passing of the sacrament. Maybe we’ll be able to talk to him sometime this week. who knows. We went to lunch at Mario. He didn’t really say anything about baptism, but he did ask us a lot of questions about what has been going on at church recently. So at least we know he is interested. Then we had
divisions with some members. I went with a 16 year old priest. That doesn’t really talk all that much. That marks the first time that I have ever taught lessons more or less by myself to actual investigators. And it went surprisingly well. I was able to understand more or less what they were saying, and if they ever didnt understand what i was saying (which was only once i think) my priest friend told them in real castellano.
So here is the last picture that I have of who I baptized.
Then Sunday. This week again, there were only 4 of us in priesthood class. Then an investigator of ours showed up halfway through, and he had a lot of questions. So many in fact, that the teachers for the next 2 hours couldn’t even get through the entire lesson. Oh well, at least he showed up. Then right after sacrament was over, he left.
Not even the whole meeting... just the passing of the sacrament. Maybe we’ll be able to talk to him sometime this week. who knows. We went to lunch at Mario. He didn’t really say anything about baptism, but he did ask us a lot of questions about what has been going on at church recently. So at least we know he is interested. Then we had
divisions with some members. I went with a 16 year old priest. That doesn’t really talk all that much. That marks the first time that I have ever taught lessons more or less by myself to actual investigators. And it went surprisingly well. I was able to understand more or less what they were saying, and if they ever didnt understand what i was saying (which was only once i think) my priest friend told them in real castellano.
So here is the last picture that I have of who I baptized.
As you noticed in this picture and the others, I am way taller than basically everybody there. Thats more or less the story of Argentina, except for about 10% of the male population. Tomorrow, we have our interview with the president. wow, that was a quick transfer. It could have felt like last week I was in there with him. As far as another baptism goes for this transfer... I dont know how likely it is, unless we baptized a girl who was apparently already baptized but nobody can find her records. Technically that is a convert baptism that would count for us. Cheap, I know.
David Bednar is going to stake conference? Really? Are you kidding me... He came to our mission during the past July... but I wasn´t there, obviously. That is kind of annoying, hah. With my knowing President Allen, I probably could have talked with him for a bit! haha. Anywho... until next week.
-Collin
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