One time for their salvation

Let’s see, this week was interesting but I am not allowed to talk about the interesting thing until I get home, so hit me up in two years.

Let’s see, we had divisions and that was nice. I went with Elder Chambers to a different place and we worked for like a day together. We taught a guy who killed a guy, so that is interesting. It was most likely in self defense and it was in prison so I don’t really think that much of it, especially since everything here is crazy and the police do not do much, that we see at least. Umm yeah so that was cool, the family he is in is really good and everything, he is married and has a kid and is a hair stylist guy. Interesting. Nah he is great. They are great, there is just a really long two or more year process ahead dif he wants to be baptized. But that is not my area so whatever.

In our area, we have found this family that runs a moto shop, so they are busy and rich because everyone and their dog has a moto. People here live in concrete houses and have motorcycles and smart phones, but I guess that is what I would probably maybe find important if I lived here maybe. But yeah they are great, and they have lots of questions and they live like right next to us, so it is great. Oh and also apparently, Macarena’s promise to the virgin changed, so she can be baptized if she wants. But she talks about being a missionary in the church in the future, so I think she will eventually want to. Cool. Um I think that is about it for our real missionary work. Oh actually we did a thing for a different zone. We went on splits with members and it was awesome. I went with Facundo. Jeff, Facundo is actually giving you movies! He was awesome. He was funny and told me lots of jokes in missionary work. My favorite thing that he told me was about knocking doors. "We knock once for their salvation, we knock twice for our salvation, and we knock three times to have sexy wives!" Haha what a guy. Definitely a little light in a pretty dim week. It was good. We also contacted some people, and that was good. Hopefully they turn out to be good investigators for El Carmen. Anyways, that pretty much brings us to today. We went to the throat of the devil. It was cool, it was just a lot of work to get there and back. But it was cool. There are lots of pictures that I have. Yeah, so that was that. It was good. This is some sort of thing to be doing haha. We get rejected and lied to a lot, which is interesting because why not just say no? But whatever haha. 

Yo se que, la verdad, la obra misional es dificil y tambien no es mi cosa favorita pero hay personas aca que necesitan el evangelio. Este es la manera ser libre de las cargas de vida. Yo se que Jesucristo es nuestro salvador y que nuestra obra aca sera importante. 

feat. our branch and elder Batman on a bus because my parents said something about a bus picture so hay esta

The Rise of Elder Robin

Let´s see, not much happened this week. We went to Salta because I had to do some paperwork for my visa, and we got to have McDonald´s there, which is not the same, but it was good and the office bought it, so bonus. We also had to wait a long time for a lot of things so at one point there were like 6 of us playing a game where you had to try and draw the same thing as everyone else with your eyes closed. That was pretty fun. And pretty weird. Not fun things become fun when your whole life is pretty much having three minute conversations that you don´t understand with strangers... But hey, it is the life I chose haha. Que va a hacer. So we went to Salta and that took like 2 days, so we missed a couple of appointments. All good. Oh on the bus we took, there was this weird and inappropriate movie, so that was awkward. 

Continuing, we returned to Jujuy and did the stuff we normally do. Tried to reset some soft baptism dates, and managed to get a new one with Juan Pablo Caile, which is kind of our only hope for a baptism right now. I definitely butchered part of a lesson with them this week, but luckily I have Elder Batman. He´s a stud, 10 out of 10 would recommend, and in like 10 months he´ll be single and available, just saying. Yeah so that happened, um what else... You hear lots of weird stories that you do not really believe at first about spirits and noises and stuff, but there is definitely some truth to them. The language is getting better, especially when God is in charge, I can really tell when He starts talking through me because I honestly cannot remember what I said after. Words just come and go. 

OH there was this fun game they played in the church that we saw for some holiday they have here about kids, which looked fun. They tie a balloon to everyone´s leg and everyone tries to pop everyone elses balloons. That is a keeper. It got intense, those kids go hard. This week was very cold too, Batman is a little sick (don´t overreact mothers) but he has been trooping it out this week. But yeah it has been cold and windy and dusty, oh also our hot water no longer works. R.I.P. my will to live in the mornings. At least we have mate. Otherwise I would not be having the best time. We see lots of weird things here too, well not weird but different. 

Cool. Well that is pretty much it as far as big events. I am really starting to love the people, it helps that I can understand a little of what they are saying. Thanks for all the prayers guys, God is hearing you all and blessing me for sure. I also read this scripture in 1 Nephi 21 verse 16 that says, Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.  I really like this scripture. It might have become my new favorite. It really just emphasizes how much Jesus loves us and understands our situations. Very powerful for me this week. We honestly run into lots of problems and it is pretty brutal. Just things that we would never think of suddenly pop up and become really big problems. 

We have some really solid members and families in our little branch of under thirty people. It is pretty great. Today, we had a pretty low key day. We went and had a lunch somewhere with our district and Bats still does not feel great. I liked it because we actually like relaxed instead of travelling and adventuring and so I will probably actually feel a little rested this week haha. It does mean my pictures won´t be as good though. Oh also today, Bats was being a translator for this guy who owns a moto shop and an Asian guy in China. It was pretty cool, and the people who run the moto shop might be new investigators. We have a visit with them on Wednesday.

Yeah this week was ok. I had my first Spanish dream though! Shout out to the young Sam Norman for being featured in the dream. I do not remember most of it, but I remember those two things!

Yo se que tenemos dificultades. Tener problemas es parte del plan de nuestro Padre Celestial. Para crecer, necesitamos caer. Y tambien, quiero testificar de Jesucristo porque El nos conoce individuamente y por nombre. El es como superamos muerte y obtener la vida eterna. El plan es hermoso y una manera ser libre de pecado. Que generoso es nuestro Dios! 

Peace out everybody! Take a warm shower for me, ustedes estan en mi corazon!  

PICTURES 

A picture of name tags

Argentine money

Me being cold in a coat

The planner cover bats made me about girls 

The planner cover bats made of Shia LeBouff

Weekly Thing

“It´s colder than a crossover from Allen Iverson” -The Beloved Elder Batman

That would be an accurate description of the happenings of this week. We had like 20 appointments scheduled, all of which fell through except like 4. And in 2 of those appointments, our investigators told us they did not want to be baptized and were being baptized in a different church, which is great and all just blindsided us. So that was fun, not really, it has been pretty rough since we were actually going to meet our goal for once and now we have like nobody to even teach. I guess we do have the Chaile family, which was probably the only good parts of this week. We taught them twice this week and the spirit was strong both times. They recently lost their dad because he did lots of drugs or something (I don´t speak Spanish) and the dad was the guy we gave a blessing to my first real day in Argentina. He died, but we have been teaching the family about the Plan of Happiness and helping them out and stuff so they are actually doing pretty good right now. We even went to the funeral last week. They are great. Also before one of our lessons with them, we were street contacting )talking to all the random people we find and knocking doors and stuff= and we came across some kids playing basketball and soccer after an hour of pretty solid rejection. So Elder Batman asked for the basketball, dribbled around a little, shot a 3 and on his first try made it. This doesn´t seem impressive, but it is for a couple reasons  A)Elder Batman is not good at basketball, which he acknowledges, he is a great quarterback though B) The basketball rims here are all outdoor and made in Argentina, which means they do not allow for the slightest shot error, you have to swish it C) We had just been tracting forever and were pretty tired. All these things aside, he made the shot, first try! And the kids went wild. They all wanted to talk to us after that, which was really good since that is a rare thing here. So we should be playing soccer with them or something sometime soon. Miracles really do happen haha.

Also clarification that I did not know last week, Elder Batman went to state for chess in 5^th grade, so it means nothing. He is still pretty good at chess, but apparently did not do high school chess, so not really state. My bad (mostly his for never saying it was in fifth grade.)

What else even happened…. Umm oh I can usually understand some of what everyone says now so that is neat. And I cut my hair and got a free Ronaldo jersey, bummer that it is Ronaldo but it was free so… Oh our kitchen tried to kill me this week too. I was making some chicken thing and our water heater thing disconnected a pipe and it put water onto the grease fire I was cooking with, but hey I only burned like some of one of my fingers and it is all good. Elder Batman says that I am doing better in stuff too so that is good. He has basically been single momming all the lessons and stuff for the last few weeks, but I have started to help more. Today is the Pday thing, and I think we are going to a dam or some place, I cut my hair this morning. I also found another magnet, so I put that in my slide on tag and boom, I have a magnet tag again. (I lost the real on when we took bikes for the first time, she gone.) Also there was an election this week, and we luckily live right next to the plaza, so they had parties and music and yelling and car horns for most of the hours of the week, so I miss sleeping. We gave talks in church also. That was ok. I did not like it, but hey, I don´t like a lot of the stuff I do.

Oh tambien, a few people think that we have a lot of free time as missionaries  becaue I have only really sent pictures of Pday HAHA… I wish. We wake up at 7, exercise for 30 minutes, shower and get ready for 30 minutes, have like a 10 minute breakfast, study)language, plan our day, scriptures, other stuff( until about 1pm here, then we study a little more and then we either go look for people, teach people, or do other churchy stuff until 930 at night. Then we journal, fill out papers, and try to go to sleep before 1045. So we don´t have all that much free time haha. On Pday (today) we wake up at the same time, and have like 12 hours to do laundry, clean the house, other lovely chores, and then do stuff we want to do like go places and write the fam and friends. So that is that.

Anyways, this week was pretty rough, but Salvation is no easy thing, so I don´t know what I expected. My favorite part of the week was getting to share my experiences with Noah and my grandpa with the Chaile family, because they were asking a lot about feeling the presence of people after they die, Elder Batman luckily enough for him does not have much experience with death, whereas I am pretty sure that at least one person has died that I know like once every 3 or 4 months over the last 5 years. But I got to tell them what I believe about that, which is that it exists and is really powerful because all of senior year, I played soccer, which should not have really been possible since I had quit all of club and exercise like 4 months before that. I know that there was strength with me that was not mine. I also know that Noah was with me.

Este evangelio es la manera ser libre de nuestro cargas y pescados. Yo se que jesucristo puede cambiarnos. El es un buen hermano mayor. Les amo y no me olvidan! ​

What is up everybody!

Boy this week was actually pretty long. Not sure why or how, but it was long. Lots of things happened though, good and bad. 

So we had a zone conference one of these days these week, they all blend together to be honest, and it was good. I almost fell asleep a lot because everyone only talked in Spanish, so I didn't understand much... But it is all good. There were testimonies of missionaries who are done after this transfer and that was pretty great, strong feelings for sure, good feelings for sure.

As far as investigators go, we have four potential people for baptisms set for next week because they did not come to church yesterday, which hurts a little bit because if they had come, we could have baptized them on Thursday, but all in God's time, right? So we will just have to wait and see what happens next Sunday. One of our investigators prayed to know the truth of the gospel and had a dream where a man clothed in all white came down and stood by her bed, which she took as her answer. Pretty cool experience, Jesus is definitely doing his part here. 

We also were contacting and met a woman named Isabella who asked us a question neither one of us had ever heard or thought of before. It was "Who made the Bible? Who got to decide what went in and what didn't?" So that was awesome. Not at the time, but I studied the HECK out of it, and really what happened was the Bible was translated like a billion times, little exaggerated but not completely, and sometimes books were added and taken out that were true and sometimes books were added or taken out that were not true.  I found Article of Faith 8, I think, which says that We believe the Bible to be the word of God as long as it is translated correctly. AS LONG AS IT IS TRANSLATED CORRECTLY.  I have become so much more grateful for the Book of Mormon because it was translated once by Joseph Smith directly through God, so there is only room for one man's mistakes, not millions of mistakes of millions of men. So that was cool. That woman we met who asked though will not let us come back so kind of a bummer. 

Also cool this week was me and my companion Elder Batman have really started to try and get to a really exact obedience, which is tough, but we are trying. We gave up a lot of things this week and the spirit was definitely more with us. 

And me and Elder Batman played chess, he 'went to state twice' for chess, but I beat him.... so. Also today we went and hung out with some more missionaries and played Uno and messed around and ate at like a 'rooftop' restaurant. Not much of a roof, but it was cool. And today we cleaned the apartment a lot. We don't have all that many things, like a trashcan, so I made a trash can today, I took a picture. 

Cool cool, hope all is great for all you, I love you all a lot, and I miss seeing lots of you and hearing your voices and just sharing time, but I know what I am doing is important and is what I am supposed to be doing.

Mediante nuestro fe and accion en este evangelio podemos llegar ser como Jesucristo y podemos tener familias para siempre. Jesucristo es nuestro salvador, el murio para nosotors. Para ser limpios de nuestros pecados, tenemos que utilizar el expiacion de Jesucristo. Les amo! Hasta proxima semana! 

Pictures just are not gonna work this week, sorry!