Happy Thanksgiving

San Martín, basically the George Washington of Argentina

My Thanksgiving feast

The Casilda sign

Our Christmas tree, standing atop it´s throne of toilet paper, perched above the stove

First off, happy Thanksgiving! Ate the least this Thanksgiving than any other of my entire life. Our lunch appointment bailed, as usual, so we called this less active family who always feed us when we ask. So they gave us some take out food. So, my Thanksgiving feast was a handful of salad, four tiny dry chicken breast, and two dry hamburger patties (we don´t have any sauces because our fridge doesn´t work cuz we don´t have electricity), some popcorn I made, and some gluten free cookies I bought for way more than they were worth.

So transfers came in this week. 25+ newbies came this transfer, and another 25+ will come the next. So pretty much the entire mission will be somehow involved in training. As far as this transfer goes, Elder Yaques..... stays in Casilda for another transfer! And Elder Brown....... also stays! 3 transfers together. Four and a half months. That´s a really long time. Most people aren´t in an area for that long, much less with the same companion. Super uncommon. It´s fine with me though, we get along pretty well. He reminds me a lot of my brother Zach, except even more outgoing. So I´m pretty excited to work with him for yet another transfer. During the last transfer, we thought for sure one of us would leave, so while were working on the Plan of Action for December and trying to think of more ways to find new investigators, we realized one thing we have yet to try is singing. So we joked a bit and said that if we stay together in Casilda we would contact with singing Christmas and other hymns. Then the transfers came in. And we are staying together. So this transfer is gonna be really unforgettable.

Yesterday we contacted for about 5 hours straight. So 5 hours of straight walking standing, and climbing stairs. My legs were killing me when we got back to the pensh. Luckily, we have an elevator, we we didn´t have to scale even more stairs. Found 4 new investigators though. We feel really solid about 3 of them. The other was a young woman who seemed more interested in the prospect of having two good looking young men come back to her home to talk to her than what we will be talking about.

Awesome contacting moment though. We were contacting in what are called the Fonavis (these run down arpartment complexes). We passed this little kid playing in the dirt, and he told us his mom was there. He told us this like three times, so we asked which house was his, and he pointed and told us the door wasn´t locked and to go on in. But, that would break many rules, both legal and of the mission. So we went up and knocked. The kid ran up from behind us, opened the door, ran in to his mom yelling "Moommmm! There are some men at the door!" and ran back out to where he was playing and as he passed us said "She´s coming." Really unique start. When she got to the door we started talking about the plan of salvation, and Elder Yaques started talking about how families can be eternal, and that she could live forever. At the moment he said that, this lady´s 8 and 7 year son and daughter that were in school arrived home at a sprint, and gave her big hugs. I think her 8 year old said "I love you" or "I missed you" or something like that. Might have been the 7 year old. It was awesome. She invited us to come back Friday morning and is gonna read the pamphlet of the Plan of Salvation. I don´t think this all happened in the timing that it did by accident.

During the last week of every transfer, everyone has to deep clean their pensh, and the Zone Leader´s come and inspect the pensh´s of the District Leader´s, and they in turn inspect the pensh´s of all the Elder´s in their district. We cleaned and got inspected Friday. So we had to devote the whole morning to cleaning, and postponed our studies for the afternoon. After we finished cleaning, I felt pretty empty and kinda down. So I said a prayer to find out what I needed to do to pull out of this, and felt like I should read a verse of the BOM before we left. So I did. Was one of those moments when the scripture is exactly what you need, whether or not you have already read it dozens of times. Testimony really grew in that moment.

That´s all I got for this week. Take care!

Elder Brown

2 Nephi 4:28-30