Day 124

¡Hola Familia!
this week has been a little frustrating... we searched for everybody on our lists and none of those people wanted to talk to us. we clapped tons of doors and still nobody. pablo hasnt called us back in a week but we have been calling him everyday and now we are really worried about him. we pass by his house sometimes and we dont get an answer so thats a little sad. we did find one woman, mariana, that is interested and we are trying to get her family more involved. she is 21 with a 1 year old kid and she´s is about to have another baby in may. all of our other investigators, we have decided to back off and just find news. marcelo has been an investigator for a long time. he is a doctor and he has read the book of mormon, jesus the christ, day of defense, and many other books but he is afraid to ask God if the church is true. very frustrating this week because we have stopped visiting other families because they don´t want to listen to us anymore. i don´t understand how we aren´t having that much success when we have a huge area full of people but nobody is listening... this week should be better.
my companion is peruano and brazilian tambien and he has been teaching me some portugues! awesome. i can now speak spanish with a portuguese accent, how cool is that? i still haven´t mastered the castellano accent because their words are more slurred together and its a little lazy. i speak very well and it´s awesome to have conversations in the street and be able to walk away knowing that i just understood every word that they said.
in argentina, every day they have siestas from 12-4. a siesta is a nap and during the afternoon, nobody is in the street and all of the stores are closed. when we clap doors, the people get ticked with us because they are sleeping and i don´t know how we can use those precious hours to find more people. we eat our lunch at 1 everyday but afterwards we have lots of time until the people emerge from their houses. aaaugh!!! fa.
i am now in charge of sharing the scripture with families during the lunches everyday because i really enjoy doing it. i share a scripture that really stood out to me during my morning study and it leads to awesome discussions in our lunches to build up the members. im going to take a picture of my agenda with all of the scriptures i found. one that stood out to me for the week was 1 corinthians 15:10. it is the apostle paul writing to the corinthians and he is talking about his missionary work and it says-
´´but by the grace of God i am what i am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not i, but the grace of God which was with me.´´ he is talking about how he wasn´t worthy to be an apostle because of his persecution of the church before but now he is working very hard to make up for those things but we all have the grace of God with us through the Atonement. we can show our gratitude through our hard work, and that is my purpose to be able to show how grateful that I am here in Argentina.
hey! that´s awesome that you found where i live. do you like it? it´s a lot like colorado but the mountains are further away. the chapel is on trannack and zeballos about 10 blocks away, mas o menos...
Dad! Happy Birthday! i bought you a cake to celebrate, and we sang feliz cumpleaños too. it was awesome so i took a picture of your cake. it´s too bad that you had to celebrate on a fast sunday... yesterday it was really rainy so we just ended our day watching the rain from our house and we ate the cake. great day. its really cool that you found so many family names to bring to the temple and i am so jealous because i can´t go with you guys. you´ll just have to find some more for me to come along in twenty months. ¿listo?
my clothes are doing fine but i have a few more rips. not a big deal. my shoes are lasting but the inplants are getting ripped up. we had to walk tons this week and now i have huge blisters on my toes but everything is ok right now. i have been wearing my glasses everyday because it is faster and easier but i wore my contacts today for the first time in 3 months and the world seems clearer. interesting how different it feels. my comp is sick right now but we are still working really hard and things are going very well. its interesting with my comp because he has 14 weeks left on his mission so it´s cool to ask him for advice with things, to see how he teaches certain principles and concepts, and how he interacts with people. elder suarez is my ´´padrastro´´ (step dad) and i´m learning lots of cool stuff. sorry jamie- you told me not to do the whole dad-son trainer thing on my mission but i think that it is funny. we have a goal to break the mission record in contacting people in a week. the record is 702 in a week but we are going for 1000. that´s like 150 everyday when our normal number is about 35. right now in the ciber, some people are filming a movie and it´s very interesting. they have asked us to be silent and they have lots of cool equipment but i have a feeling that it won´t be a blockbuster...
i weighed myself in a farmacia and i weigh 67.7 kilograms, i´m not too sure how much that is but i think it is about 140 right? life is good, i´m eating a lot, but we are also walking tons too. ok, i think that is sufficient for the day and i will start sending some pictures too. i love you guys! enjoy this week and keep me in your prayers to find new people!
con una sonrisa grande y mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers