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)

Baking!

A butterfly

Cookies

Found a place that sells Skittles!
Found a new hobby... baking! Baking is such a blast! It´s super chill, really easy, and, you always get a treat or something delicious at the end! So far we´ve only made some cookies, but, cakes and banana bread our in the near future. Who knew that baking was so rewarding?

In other news, Domingo and Liliana both came to church yesterday! It was so sweet! It got kinda scary after the first hour though. Liliana went to the bathroom and started singing, and a lady, not knowing who it was and thinking it was her friend and wanting to make a joke, said, "What a terrible singing voice!" So, Liliana grabbed Domingo and they left. Luckily, that lady has a good heart, and came up to Elder Ostler and I, explained what happened, and asked us if we could try to catch them before they got on the bus so she could apologize and we could get them back in church. So we went to the bustop, and found them there. The lady apologized, and they walked back to church arm in arm. So we found her a friend :).

Anyways, don´t have a lot of time today, but hope you all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Ether 12:27

Good News and Bad News

So it started raining on March 31st, and it has rained every single
day since. No one really knows when it´ll stop. Everyone says
something different. Some people say it´ll keep going all year, some
say it´ll stop Wednesday, other´s say Thursday. We´ll see I guess. All
I know is that it´s really hard to clean and dry clothes.

Some of the good news. we´ve had a pretty great week. From what I´ve
seen, the most miracles in a companionship happen the last week their
together. This last week was the last week in the transfer, and
miracles were pouring down. When they called on Friday night to say
who was going and who was staying, I was positive they were about to
say that one of us was out. But, we´re both staying another transfer
in Empalme. I´m pretty excited. I like Empalme.

The bad news. Rewind to 8 weeks ago. Juan José is GOLDEN. Reads the
Book of Mormon for 4 hours a day. Invites friends to read with him.
Invites friends to go to church. Totally golden. Fast forward to three
or four weeks ago. Juan José gets accepted into school. Gets super
prideful and totally blows us off and throws away his Book of Mormon.
Later gets kicked out and super sick. Fast forward to two Saturday´s
ago. We talk with him and he basically blames all his problems on me
and the fact that I came to Empalme and that Elder Ostler´s old comp
left. So, we decide to fast for him that God will humble him and he
will be more receptive to us and listen to us more. Monday night, we
stopped by, and he was super sad and depressed looking. He told us
that his best friend died. Best friend for literally the last 27
years. Wow, fasting is really powerful. So we, naturally as
missionaries would do, got excited. Outward, we mourned with one that
mourned, and had a solid lesson with him that night. He recieved
everything perfectly and completely. We stopped by twice more that
week, and each time he seemed better and better. We stopped by last
night, and told us he is done with "Everything Mormon". So, we talked
him out of that, and got him to agree to read 3 Nephi 11. Then some
Jehova´s Witnesses showed up, and he kicked us out so he could talk
with them. That man worries me.

In much, much better news, a less active guy yesterday told us he
wants to get active again. Yesterday morning, we decided to stop by a
less active guy´s house to see when we could come help him build his
new house again. He told us, "Just today I talked to Bishop and told
him that I want to become active again. I want to return to the
Gospel. Not the church, but to Jesus through the Gospel and the
Church." I was so, so excited to hear that. It was awesome.

Other great news, we finally got somebody to come to church!! Liliana
and Domingo have been so clutch. Liliana is Domingo´s nurse. Domingo
is a less active old man that got baptized when he was young, and then
went inactive when he moved. This guy has gone through a lot in his
life, and it has taken a toll on his mind. However, he is still a
capo. We showed up late to church because we went to grab some people
before heading over to the busstop. Nobody felt like getting up and
going with us, and the bus system here is really terrible. So we
showed up a few minutes late, and, lo and behold, there was Domingo.
Sitting there next to a member in priesthood. It was awesome. That day
in church, D&C 18:10,15-16 got a whole new meaning for me. It is true.
The worth of a soul is great in the sight of God, and, if we should
labor all our days (or, in my case, 8 weeks) and bring save it be one
sould unto God (or sacrament meeting), great shall be your joy with
him in the kingdom of our father (or in the chapel). It was an amazing
spirit. That really made me appreciate a whole lot more what I took
for granted in Casilda, that is, investigators in church at least once
or twice a month. I am super grateful that we couldn´t get anyone to
come for 7 sundays, but, that the eighth, some one did. I felt full of
joy.

Sorry no pictures, this computer keeps spazzing out when I put in my
flashdrive. Had some other cool experiences, but, I don´t have much
time to write about them. Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Brown

Alma 26:27