Juan's

Time sure flies. It´s really weird to be writing again. I honestly feel like I just wrote the last one. This week has been totally packed. It flew.

So on Monday, I had a great find. Not a golden investigator who wants to get baptized right away. Not a stash of cash that someone had left in our pensh. I found something I had totally taken for granted, and even disliked: Soymilk. I have not tasted milk in 6 months. I had really started to crave it. I had looked for it for my first few months here, but, after a few months with no luck, I gave up hope. But, on monday, we went to a Supermarket, one that we go to almost every single week, and passed the juice section, and I saw something I had never seen before, a blue carton. I looked up, and thought it would be just a new flavor of juice, but, IT WAS SOYMILK! 😅 So I can eat cereal now and get some variety in my breakfast, besides just straight eggs every day. There is still hope for Casilda.

Later that day, after P-Day ended, we felt like we had to go visit a friend of the Branch Pres, Juan. But, we couldn´t remember where exactly he lives. So, we went to President´s land that is a few blocks from where his friend lives to ask. When we got to his land where he´s building a house, lo and behold, we saw his friend laying bricks. It was pretty sweet. We were able to set up a lesson with him for the next day and have a nice chat with him and do a bit of service. Then we went to visit a less active family and set up an appointment for saturday.

Tuesday, we met with Juan. He is so prepared. He gave up smoking already, prays night and morning, and reads the book of mormon. He says he can feel something empty in his heart and feels that we have what he is looking for. And he´s already friends with all the members in the Unit. So he is totally set.

Also on Tuesday, the Zone Leaders told us everyone need 2 fans in their pensh, and  that it is reembursable (I have no clue if that´s spelled write). So we went to buy a fan. I brought my Chase Bank card, and didn´t think there would be any problem at all. Boy was I wrong. We blew through the entire staff at that store. Every single employee tried without success to use that card. Literally took 2 1/2 hours before I just said "I´ll just take it to the bank and take out some money." I waited to do so for a while cuz the banks here charge like 6 bucks to take out money. So that was a last resort. I guess 6 bucks is worth not waiting literally all day though.

Wednesday we had our Gira Misional. I have no clue what that means in English. Something like Mission orientation or direction or something along those lines. It was a big meeting with half the zones and a member of the 70. It was great. Then we watched a broadcast for all the missionaries and learned some good stuff. Saw my MTC comp and another elder from my MTC district, so that was pretty sweet.

Thursday, we contacted a referral we had recieved and set up an appt with them. Walked a ton and all of our plans fell through. So walked a lot and contacted a lot.

Friday had a Daniel in the lions den experience. We were walking down this dirt road, and some young teenage kids spooked some horses into charging straight at us. However, literally 4 or 5 feet in front of us. They just stopped running and began calmly walking. And we could just walk peacefully among the horses. The kids jaws totally dropped. It wasn´t as cool as pacifying lions would be, but, it was still pretty sweet.

We talked with another Juan who is also totally ready to go. It was great.

On Saturday we taught a bomb lesson to the less active family we had visited earlier in the week. We read Alma 34 with them (cuz Pres. Zanni told us we should), and we felt an amazing spirit of humility and of repentance. My testimony of the Savior had been growing a ton throughout the week of the Atonement and the freeing power that it has. So Elder Walker (who already has a powerful testimony of the Atonement, even though he still doesn´t speak spanish that fluently) and I were able to bear our testimonies and hopefully we instilled the sincere desire to repent and come to Christ again.

Pres Cabrera´s friend and his girlfriend came to church! :D It was so awesome to finally have investigators in church again! It has been toooo long. It was sweet.

This week has been really tough, but it has taught me a ton about what Jesus did, and is still doing. I am so grateful for his sacrifice and what he did for me. My testimony of him and the Atonement grows so much all the time. I truly love hime and his Atonement, and hope all of you can appreciate and love him too. If you are feeling the weight of sin, and want out, but don´t know how, read Alma 34. It is so powerful. Then repent. Repenting is honestly the awesome-ist thing there is. It always leaves us feeling so fresh and so nice. Don´t be scared to do it. JUST DO IT. You won´t regret it. You will feel so great! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Brown

Alma 34

Pictures

Elder Walker and Elder Brown

Pretty typical dirt road in Argentina. Flat with a soy farm

Suitty (Sweety) Orange and Pritty (Pretty) Lemon

The Christmas eve pork asado, lechón

The Christmas asado

End of the year ward activity with the unit mission leader

End of the year ward activity with the unit mission leader

New Years Eve from the roof

2nd Comp

Finally got a second comp, now that I am about to hit the 6 month mark of the mission. His name is Elder Walker, from Huntsville, Alabama. He is a total capo. He was a proffessional white water kayaker (kayakar?) before coming out. He had deals with GoPro and everything. Went to Africa all the time to kayak the Nile and other big rivers out there. Pretty funny guy too. And yes, he has played the "Alabama just won the championship" card to more than one person.

Learning a ton though. Literally all of our appointments have failed this last week, but the spirit has burned stronger than before. We basically have been doing nothing but talking to people on the street and contacting. I have learned that the more you testify of something, the more your testimony of that thing grows. It´s tough walking around in 95 degrees with 95% humidity all day every day, but the time flies. And, at the end of the day, the spirit is totally worth the hours of walking and sweating and getting cussed out and kicked out. I feel kinda the way that Jacob did and described in Jacob 1:19, that my garments are clean of this people. It´s real tough, but totally worth it.

In other news, I burned boiled eggs. When I woke up at 7 on monday, I put some eggs in water in the pot and put it to boil (cuz they always take forever to cook). Then I went to work out, then to shower, then to study. By this point, I had totally forgotten about the eggs. I read something interesting, and looked up to ponder, and saw smoke rising from the pot, like pure black smoke. I ran over to the pot, opened it up, and out came a mushroom cloud of black smoke. When it cleared, I saw two cracked, totally black eggs sitting at the bottom of the smoke stained pot. The water had evaporated and the eggs had totally burnt. Haha I haven´t felt so tonto in a long time.

Anyways, don´t forget to read your scriptures and say your prayers. I know it sounds really cliché, but that´s because they are super important. Those two things can and will get you through whatever trial or difficulty or problem you could ever possibly have in this life. It´s really awesome and amazing.

Elder Brown

Sanford

This week totally flew by.

We went to a little town about 15 minutes away from Casilda, Sanford, to contact. The people there are even crazier than the people here in Casilda. We also found a 19 year old girl who told us she had talked with the missionaries once before in her sister in laws house, and really liked it and wants to meet with us. I hope that was the spirit of God giving her that desire, and not the spirit of a 19 year old girl who would love nothing more than to have 2 great looking 18/19 year old guys come visit her in her house. We´ll see though. We made plans to go back on Friday.

Speaking of great looking young men, transfers came in this week. Elder Brown..... Stays in Casilda for another transfer! 6 months in the first area 🎉. Pretty solid amount of time. Elder Yaques.... goes to Rosario Norte as Zone Leader! I will miss him. I can´t believe we were together for 4 1/2 months, and it passed so dang quick.

Sorry I don´t have a whole lot of time. They gave us a time limit to email. I´ll write a better letter and send pics next week.

Elder Brown

Helaman 7:16-18

Tattle Tale Week

So the less actives down here always crack me up. They love giving references. We got like 5 from this one guy on Monday. His name is Washington (that is a common first name down here). We had been looking for him for 3 months. But we stopped because every address everyone gave us was bogus. On Monday though, I felt like what we had planned wasn´t what we should do. So I told Elder Yaques, and he said "I feel like we should go over to Pres. Cabrera´s land, right now." (Our branch pres has a piece of land he´s building on.) So we went, and our branch pres was there. He gave us some instructions on how to get to Washington´s house. So we followed his instructions, and finally found this guy. These were the first words out of his mouth, "Sorry we moved and were hiding, it´s just what everyone does. Everyone that goes inactive hides. It´s just what you do. It´s just a part of the cycle of being a member of the church. You get baptized, are active for a while, then you go inactive and move so that nobody knows where you live. Then you get active again, then go inactive and move again. That´s just the way it is. It´s been that way for 30 years since we got baptized in Uruguay. For example, over there..." and he proceeded to rat out like 5 less active families that we had been looking for and had to stop looking for, for lack of a valid address. So we´ll hit them up and see who else we can get addresses for.

We also went on splits this week. While we were on splits, Elder Yaques (who stayed in our area with Elder Wagstaff) went to visit a less active 15 year old, Agustín. He lives in the Fonavi, and in the Fonavi there are no addresses. People just say "The green door on the second floor of the stairs in the monobloc next to the Hasperht´s." In other words, it´s impossible to find people, but, Agustín gave really specific directions on how to find 2 less active families and another 15 year old the missionaries were teaching about a year ago. Found all 3 :). Now we just gotta get him (Agustín) active again.

So I got sick of sleeping under a blanket during the summer to escape the mosquitos, so I decided to take a page out of Tanner´s book, and ate a spoonful of garlic before I went to bed. Didn´t put on bug spray or anything. I was able to sleep above the blanket, and didn´t get bit once 😁. Unfortunately, the garlic had some negative side affects. My breath was the worst thing I have ever smelt. It forced Elder Yaques under two blankets to avoid the smell. I don´t recommend that anyone do it, no matter how bad the mosquitos are, your breath will be worse.

New Year´s was nuts. Down here, it´s not cold at all, so people go outside and go crazy for New Year´s. We had to be in our pensh at 7 pm on the 31st, and couldn´t leave until the 2nd. Luckily though, we were allowed to sleep with other missionaries. So the other Elder´s in our district came over. It was pretty fun. There were a ton of fireworks going off that night, and we found out the main reason why we couldn´t leave. It wasn´t for physical safety, but our spiritual (I´m sure the missionaries in the city Rosario had to stay in more for there physical safety). It would not be a good idea to allow all 130 or so of us 18-24 young men to be out on the street during this time. Lot´s of temptation.

Anyways, this week was just an overall blast, and I learned a lot about following the spirit and about love. I am pretty grateful for this opportunity I have to serve a mission. I strongly recommend serving a mission if you´re considering it. It is totally worth it in every aspect. It´s a blast, you make eternal friends, and you learn a ton. You learn things you didn´t know that there are to learn. It´s awesome!

Elder Brown

P.S. Sorry I haven´t sent pics for a few weeks, the computers in this Cyber´s have less computing power than my ipod shuffle.