Day 209

hola familia!
congratulations mollie! good job graduating. this week has gone ok but it wasn´t the best. i did visit primeros pinos with my district and that was awesome. a little cold there because we hiked down into the valley and then i built an asado for everyone. it was a little difficult to build a fire with all of the wind but i am an eagle scout :) and our chorizos were delicious. i included some pictures. hna sosa fell into the river and she got sick but other than that it was pretty fun. (i told her not to stray too far but she didn´t listen...pobrecita) i also learned how to make canalones and they are delicious. you guys can google it to see the deliciousness. the members teach us and we make them food. good deal because then they are more willing to come with us for lessons with investigadores :). this week in my english class, i felt so dumb because i was teaching incorrectly and i was corrected by one of my alumnos... i am forgetting english and now i am sad. i was teaching the short form of ´´there is´´ and ´´there are´´ in the negative and i said it was ´´ there is´nt´´ and ´´there are´nt´´. i´m so ashamed... i heard someone whisper ´´oh, poor elder...´´ but then the rest was ok. so sad. but this next week, i am going to give a prize to the person with the coolest sentence in english using the things we are practicing and i think i am going to buy simpsons stickers or something as the prize. that would be cool, right? my class is expanding and we have at least 5 people every week. it´s hard teaching people with the different levels of knowledge but we make it work. i am going to start teaching piano this saturday to a girl that really wants to learn. can you guys send me stuff to teach piano? i don´t want to give books away, just to use and demonstrate the different notes and timing.
this week, something really big and awful was supposed to happen on the 20th here in zapala and there were rumors that an earthquake or a volcano would explode and kill us all so some were scared. they believed something would happen because some psychic on the radio said something and people made a big deal but nothing happened.
right now there is some drama because my bishop from the ward is ticked that pablo was baptized in the other ward and they are very upset with our zone leaders. i no longer care and i´m more preoccupied with some of our new investigators. we found ruben this week, and he is very worried about his arrepentimiento. he feels like he can´t ´´get rid of the load on his back´´ and the churches he has attended can´t help him. he has a drinking problem but he wants to stop and take the necessary steps to quit. we met with him again yesterday and he really wants to come to church. he can´t read very well so reading the Book of Mormon is a little difficult for him, but he feels like it will be good for him and his family. he is 21, his wife is 23, and they have 2 small children. i feel like nobody here is progressing very well and i have been thinking of ways i can help them better but they aren´t doing their part. we are finding a lot of new people to teach but we haven´t found too many that are excited to do a whole lot. one day we were searching in the carpeta de area and found one family that the missionaries taught a long time ago, and we went looking for them at night and found them again. it is another young couple, she has 25 and he has 23 and works in the army so his schedule is a little difficult. they didn´t want to get married before when the other missionaries taught but i think that they are ready now. i think i will be able to see them get baptized while i am here because they have testimonies of the church and the members have had them over a lot for noches de hogar. they are mauro and samanta and we are praying for these families a lot.
helaman 12:1
it is interesting how we forget about God when things are going well but we always remember Him when they aren´t. we should always put our trust in Him!
lately i wanted to buy a tape recorder to send my voice but i can´t find anything very cheap. my limit is 100 pesos but i don´t think i will be able to buy it... you know what would be awesome to send? hand warmers!!! that would be so cool. right now i am just putting my hands in my pockets when it gets cold and some hand warmers on really cold days would be very nice. and candy! reeses pieces! i miss peanut butter...and more pictures of course! some pictures of the family, maybe some of the area where i live, i don´t know but i love getting ´´fotos´´. i love you guys! have a great week!
elder summers

Day 202

¡Hola Familia!
pablo was finally baptized yesterday. we didn´t go because we didn't hear about it until after the baptism when our zonies called us. pablo was baptized in a different ward. it has been a very busy week and i´m getting tired... we had lots of lessons this week and we found 16 new people. i really want to baptize this transfer so i can send e´suarez to his house happy :). i´m doing my best to help him finish strong this transfer and i think that we are going to meet our goals.
thank you for sending the cookie recipe! i am going to use it soon because i really enjoy cooking. the other day we learned how to make facturas. it takes a long time to cook them because we need to let the dough rest a lot (and we didn't allow it much time) and our facturas didn´t turn out too well but they were still pretty good. we made an apple cream to put on the facturas and sprinkled some coconut arriba. buenísimo. things are going well here in zapala and the district is going to primeros pinos today. i bought lots of chorizos and we are going to eat sandwiches there. im not sure where it is but i heard it is very beautiful and we are going to have a great time. its about a half hour drive and a member is going to bring all 6 of us in his van. it's going to be pretty fun and im excited to go. the district is working very hard and i think we all need this today. i don´t have any pictures today but last week we went to cerro michacheo again. apparently, if i climb the hill 3 times and tap the cross at the top, i am ´´condemned´´ to stay here in zapala and marry an argentine woman. me falta una vez, no mas :) ¡jajaja!
on saturday, our dog followed us all day. she actually came into a house with us but the family didn´t say anything. i´m pretty sure our dog is mormon but it didn´t say anything during the lesson. it never testified! fa! she just stood there next to me and then for other houses she just waited outside. we had to defend the dog from all of the others that tried to attack it and it was a pretty interesting day. yesterday the dog followed us to church and waited outside for 3 hours. i´ll have a picture with the dog next week but i think we will be better about leaving the dog behind during the day. it was pretty funny.
mollie- congratulations! i can´t believe you are graduating this week! i will be thinking of you on wednesday hoping everything goes well. are you guys going to go out to eat? you should eat a nice big doughnut, or a chipotle burrito for me. you don´t have to do that on wednesday but sometime this week. and send pictures!
this week, i enjoyed reading alma 44:4. for me, that chapter is one of the coolest in the BoM when Moroni´s armies are surrounding the lamanitas and moroni declares that God helped them to defend themselves.
4 Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are afaithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith.
I really love this scripture because it reassures me that He will always help us with our challenges if we stay faithful. this week, we were invited to la iglesia evangelica and it was just us and the pastor. we talked about our religions and our similarities and then things got a little tense because he said that there are no prophets and there is no need for a book of mormon because we have everything that we need in the bible. it was awesome how i always knew exactly what to say and i really feel like I did have that support from God. the way that scriptures popped into my mind or my wording was perfect for the moment is another testimony to me that we have that authority from God and i am grateful for this opportunity to defend it. when i read alma 44:4, i thought of that time we spent with ´´pastor daniel´´ and i know that i can never deny our faith.
now i have to go, but i want to tell you all that i love you and that i know this is the true church of jesus christ. ¡disfruten la proxima semana y cuidense!
con mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers

Day 195

¡Feliz Día de Madre!
Hey! it was so great talking to you guys last night and it gave me an extra boost to work harder here. it was kind of weird speaking English again but i enjoyed it. last night was really awesome for me because after the call we went to a member´s house and learned how to make tortas fritas. pretty easy but it´s really fun too. i´ll have to teach you guys too someday, but can i buy packages of fat in the united states? i´ve never seen it before but i guess we could use the fat from meat. the meat here can be pretty fatty and i get to dissect it like a little surgeon at lunch time. i´m getting better eating the meat and i LOVE it. speaking of cooking, how do i make chocolate chip cookies? we have an awesome horno and i would really like to use it soon. after that we went back to the house and we just sat at our desks and talked until midnight. i asked him about his vision for his last month here on the mission and we are determined to make it the best he has had in the last 2 years. i really expect to see the miracles this week to have baptisms this month and i know we can do it. we also talked about our goals and we made some plans for our bautismos and increasing church attendance.
i´m so happy everything went well with annie´s baby! wow! now i have another little niece and i´m so excited to meet her. its going to be awesome to meet all of my new nephews and nieces when i get home.
i don´t have too much to say this week because we talked yesterday... today, i think we are going to go on a picnic on top of the hill we climbed a few weeks ago. i´m not too excited because i just wanted to go back to the house and eat. we have a nice big table for everyone in our district to sit and eat together but the sister missionaries want to climb a hill far away with tons of flies at the top. should be fun but i think we would enjoy lunch more in the house. i took pictures to show off! we have 2 rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. there is a third room but that has all of the owner´s stuff and the door stays locked.
lately, i have been thinking a lot about the heart and what it means to be ´´pure´´´. i really love that word, pure, because of all of the good images and feelings associated with it. i want my heart to be pure everyday and i want to help others feel the same. i loved reading this scripture in the book of mormon a few days ago:
helaman 3:35
35 Nevertheless they didfast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the dpurifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God.
how do you think we can yield our hearts to God? really, to purify the heart, we need to align our desires and goals with those of our Heavenly Father. we can´t know what He desires of us if we don´t talk to Him and ask.
i love you guys and i will send fotos!!
elder summers

here are pics of me talking with my wonderful family, some of my wonderful house.
have a great week!

Day 188

¡Hola Familia!
i swear that the time is going faster and faster every week. even faster for my companion because he only has 6 weeks left on his mission. i celebrated 6 months on my mission and i´m feeling good! on wednesday, we had a good time burning my tie and my comp took pictures for me. e´ suarez never burned anything so when he finishes his mission, he is going to burn tons of stuff, like some old messed up suits, shirts, pants, and his sleeping bag too. i´m pretty sure that i´m going to burn my sleeping bag too but so far it is in really good condition. it´s losing the ´fluff´ but it still keeps me real warm at night.
e´ suarez and i had to move this week too but we upgraded to a beautiful, spacious house all to ourselves for 1,200 pesos every month and we have a dog (that lives outside)! we are renting the house from a less active family that is living in bariloche for the next two months and then they are going to come back and finish the pension that they are building for the missionaries. it is incredibly nice of them and i´m going to be really happy for the next 3 months (at least) of my mission! i didn´t take pictures of the house yet because our stuff is still in disorder but i promise to take pictures soon. this week, an older couple from the mission office came to zapala to buy us tons of new stuff (including beds and desks that we are still in the process of building) and we didn´t have time to unpack everything yet but we are going to clean everything really well. we slept in the house for the first time last night and it was freezing because we didn´t know how to turn on the heater but the son is going to come over tonight and teach us. i´m so happy :). it´s been quite an adventure building the stuff but it´s been pretty fun too. we are about 5 blocks from our old apartment and two new sister missionaries are coming later today so we cleaned our old place really well this morning. it´s all ready for them.
i got some good news and some bad news. pablo finally is going to be baptized this saturday but it doesn´t count as my baptism because pablo doesn´t want to come to our ward and the zone leaders set the baptismal date. i´m pretty ticked and my comp and i have talked a lot about punching the guy in the face. i´m thinking he probably won´t even invite us because we haven´t heard anything from him. brian wasnt baptized but we met with his parents and the bishop. his parents set his fecha for june 25 because they want his older siblings to come see the baptism. the only bad thing is that my companion will be in his house a few weeks before that. other than that we are really excited for brian!
a lot of our work was in the ward but now we have been reassigned only to the branch. that means we now have a little area and we are losing almost all of our investigators. we now have 5 with some work to do with the menos activos but we have lots of support from the branch (rama) and we will be able to go on divisions with the members. now we are going to have to find tons of new investigators this week and we pretty much already knocked every door in the rama. otra vez!
i´m pretty excited for mother´s day!! sunday! the best time will probably be after 6 my time. i´m not sure what my companion is thinking about for his time, but we are planning on going to the church and calling from there. i will just call the house from the church and you guys can call that number back? i´m going to buy a small calling card. i´m so excited to talk to you guys!! i have tons of pictures that i have to send and i´m going to start downloading them. i love you guys!
¡hasta domingo!
elder summers