Short on Time but not on stories

Tons to tell, no time to tell it.

Long story short, this week was awesome.

Got a new comp, Elder Sanchez. He´s from Chicago, but all his family is from Mexico, so he came to the mission knowing Spanish, so hopefully my Spanish speaking abilities improve. Elder Ostler went to Rosario.

I guess I kinda knew somebody was getting transferred, we´ve seen too many miracles as far as progression goes for it to be otherwise.

I think one of the coolest things from this last week was teaching Sis. Gutiérrez last night. She went to church last week, and every time we stopped by since, she hasn´t been home. So we hadn´t seen her since. Last night though, we talked to her, and she bore a powerful testimony on how much she loved it and the spirit she felt there and throughout the rest of the week. It was awesome.

Sorry for the short letter, pretty short on time.

Love you all,

Elder Brown

Alma 37:35

Making Changes

Jorge Villega

Pres. said to shake things up and make changes. We decided to try and preach the way King Noah did

Sante Fe

That old guy is Domingo 

That massive pot was totally full of popcorn. Literally popped a full kilo of kernels

So first off, shout out to my cousin David Pauole for getting called to the second coolest mission: Argentina Sante Fe. That mission recently got split off from mine, so that´s why it´s the second. He almost got the coolest.

In other news, from the coolest mission, we had a less active come to church who we literally have been visiting for 3 months, and every week she say´s she´ll come, and she finally showed up! Hna. Gutiérrez finally came! And the best part, when she showed up, everyone in church went nuts and went over to greet her! I honestly have never seen that happen, even in the states. If someone you don´t recognize show´s up to church, go say hi to them. You never know if it´s someone who hasn´t been in years and is super nervous to be back. And, even if it is someone who is in your ward that goes every week, at least you´ll make a new friend.

On Saturday we had a ward mission activity. Our Ward Mission Leader got sick, so it was basically a missionary activity. We made TONS of popcorn and watched Meet the Mormons. Actually had a pretty decent turn out. Aside from the 6 missionaries, we had a solid 4 people show up. It was a pretty sweet activity.

So I don´t know how many of you remember me talking about Liliana and Domingo, but, as it turns out, Domingo is a professional swimmer and swam in the Olympics one year. Who knew?

My mouth has gotten super wimpy. Elder Pendleton (our district leader) made us some "spicy" food (prolly the equivalent of medium salsa in Chipotle), and I was dying after three bites. I drank soooo much water. I don´t think my mouth has hurt that much since I ate a Ghost Wing Pepper in Buffalo Wild Wings. Here in Argentina, nobody eats anything spicy, and so I´ve gotten kinda wimpy.

Testimony got strengthened that there are people getting prepared everywhere always. On Monday we ran into one of our old investigators in the street, and he told us they can´t meet with us right now (his wife is super pregnant and kinda sick because of it), but are still reading the Book of Mormon, and he takes the pamphlet´s to work to read when he goes on break. So that got me really excited.

Anyways, this internet café is about to close for the siesta. Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Alma 26:37

Good Intentions

Banana Bread

Service with Hno. Cabanilla

I got Elder Ostler back this week. Last week, he decided to serve me, and wash my garments. So, while I was in the shower, he grabbed all my garments, every single pair, and threw them in our wash bin. So, when I got out of the shower, they were all soaking wet, and had to spend half an hour drying my garments out in front of the oven. He had good intentions. This week, I shined his shoes. I thought they turned out rather well. When he pulled out his shoe trees (little wood blocks that more or less have a foot-like shape, which I had removed and re-inserted to shine his shoes) to put his shoes on, he got super mad at himself for putting the wrong tree in the wrong shoe. He went off for a solid 5 or 6 minutes about how dumb he must have been to mess that up. He showed me the two shoe trees. To my eyes, there is no difference at all between the two, not even a little "L" or an "R". But he sees the difference. Then something on his shoe caught his eye, and he rubbed his shoe. Then went off for another 4 minutes or so about how stupid he must have been to get "soot" (aka my terrible shoe polish) all over his shoes. I just about lost it. He also lost it when I told him the real story. I had good intentions.

So even 9 months in the mish, I still make embarassing errors in my Spanish. We were talking to the Villega fam, and they asked what kind of stuff we drink in the States if we don´t drink mate. I told them water, juice, gatorade, etc. Then I said we also drink cola. I have seen that on a few bottles, and figured they´d understand I meant something like Coke or Pepsi. I, however, had forgotten that "cola", literally translated, means "butt". They died laughing. It was a friendly reminder that, despite my best efforts, I am only going to get this language 100% down with the help of God.

On Saturday, we played sports with the ward for a ward activity, it was a blast.

Met a Rastafarian. Dude is a marijuana and Bob Marley worshiper. Not trying to bag on other peoples belief´s or anything, but, it seems like a pretty funny religion.

Trying to balance the fun with the work is a pretty big challenge. Integrating the two is even harder. I have definitely seen though, that when I am having fun, I have way more desires to share the Gospel, and people are way more willing to talk. If all we do is just talk about Jesus, people are gonna get bored, and aren´t gonna want to talk to us. We gotta have fun. It´s called the Plan of Happiness, right? So, we gotta have fun with this whole deal.

Elder Ostler´s sister got home from her mission in Brazil this week. That made me realize something: we are a part of something way bigger than us. Something with infinite and eternal impact. Also, it´s really weird and crazy to think that a ton of people just got their mission calls, and that all the people from school that were on their missions when I got my call, are about to go home. That´s insane.

Found some sweet new investigators, I´m pretty excited to work with them.

Elder Brown

D&C 18:15-16

Good Week

Really good week. Started it off making some AMAZING banana bread. Too bad it was made with wheat flour, because, not to be prideful or anything, we made some really good banana bread. Either that or I just haven´t really eaten anything flavorful in a while. 

Found a lot of new investigators, all of which are really awesome:

La Pandilla. Three 15 year old guys. Eusebio Locícero, Mauricio, and Jeremías. We met Eusebio on Sunday night on the way back to the pensh. It was time to be done working for the day, and so we started heading back. On the way back, we saw this high school kid, and, for some reason, I just started talking to him. He invited us to stop by his house on Wednesday at 5. We went on Wednesday at 7:30. We had some complications earlier in the day with some meetings, so we were late. Turns out, he doesn´t get out of school on Wednesday until 6 anyways, so it worked out in our favor. Apparently, all of his friends always go to his house everyday after school. When we showed up, most had already gone home, but there were still a few stragglers. We started teaching just Eusebio, but slowly all his friends (there was about 5 or so) trickled out of the other room and listened and talked to us too. A few had to go home or go run errands for their mom´s. In the end, we taught Eusebio, Mauricio, and Jeremías. All three accepted a baptismal date. All three accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. All three had read when we went back on Saturday. Unfortunately, none came to church yesterday. But, we´ll get them there next week.

The Córdoba fam. Family of 5. Adrian and Laura (parents), Facundo (16), Gastón (14), and Sara (3). Also on Sunday night, I felt like we had to go to a certain neighborhood. So, we started going. Along the way, Elder Ostler suggested we stop at a certain house of some Former Investigators. So we did. They invited us to come back the next night. We went back. When we got there, they looked super pumped to see us, and excitedly invited us in. We started teaching the Restoration, and the dad asked us to pause for a second cuz he had to go check on the asado. We didn´t think anything of it, we thought they were gonna just eat afterwards, until he brought the asado back in with him. It was awesome! The family is golden! They invited us to come back on Tuesday for another asado! They´re sweet!

Villega fam. The fam of Griselda Correa. Sweet people. There´s 11 of them. But only 5 are new investigators (Jorge already is an investigator, Griselda´s a member, and there´s a few kids under the age of 8). Really hilarious kids. All love us. Nobody in the family can read very well. They do their scripture reading commitments by having the daughter read out loud and they all listen.

Anyways, life is good and time is short and very limited. Every week seems to fly by faster and faster. Sorry I didn´t write a whole lot. Like I said, time´s very limited.

Elder Brown

1 Nephi 3:7 (really common and well-known and over-used, but, it´s really good)