Day 230

¡Hola Familia!
another awesome week. it was really sad for me to see elder suarez get on his bus this morning at 4 in the morning. i think that i am going to miss him a lot. this week, we went to visit a lot of the members so he could say goodbye and i am pretty sure i gained some weight with all of the food that they gave us. i ate tons of food, including some giant homemade hamburgers and french fries. que kpo, no? there were some more ashes but it didn´t get too bad. last monday, we had to stay in the pension all day but it rained that night and we were able to start again the next day. i actually heard another volcano explode a few days ago and now there is a nice blanket of ash on the ground.
this last week, i kind of felt solo because my comp was zoning out, and i had to plan this next week by myself because he didn´t feel like it was that important if he participated. he cut my hair nice and short yesterday, and the people here in el ciber told me that i look a bit older but definitely gringo. fetch. i don´t want to be classified as a gringo but i can speak like a latino. i love speaking with everyone and it has helped me to improve a ton speaking castellano.
i know that with my next companion, we are going to be a lot more involved with the planning because i heard many great things about him. i have been very lucky with the companions that i have had and i am very grateful for the opportunities that i had to be with them for a few months. por eso, i am really excited to meet my next comp because i know that we are going to be great friends here in zapala. at 4 in the morning, i met with my zone leader, elder pedersen, then we went to his pension to sleep for a few hours. i slept in until 8 because i spent the whole night talking with e´ suarez and helping him pack his things. me regaló muchas de sus cosas because he won´t need them anymore. this morning, i helped e´ pedersen clean his pensión and now after lunch, he´s going to help me clean my house! ja ja ja. i already cleaned the bathroom and everything, i just need to finish washing the dishes that we used last night and i want to switch desks so i can sit closer to my new mp4 that e´ suarez gave me. last night we tried mate for the first time and i really love it. i made a promise that i will never again drink it for the rest of my mission because we aren´t allowed to drink with members but i will have to bring some to my country when i finish the mission. e´ suarez just called me from neuquen and it was awesome hearing from him again. i hope everything goes well for him, and i would love to visit him someday in peru. i told him my doors will always be open for him when he comes to provo to visit me :)
officialy, i know that my dog is pregnant, and i am pretty sure she is going to have her puppies this transfer. my neighbor told me that i am going to have to cuidarla these next weeks and help her with the delivery, so that should be an interesting experience...
my new companion is named elder taylor and he is coming from neuquen at 5:30. i have only heard that he is a powerful missionary and that he is going to finish the mission in october, so i´m looking forward to the opportunity to learn lots from him. he is going to be the new district leader here in zapala, and we are going to receive 2 more missionaries for the ruca hueney ward with the hermanas. should be awesome! well, now i don´t have much more time. i have to go! oh! spiritual thought! this morning i was reading the book of mormon and i thought about the time at the bottom of the page that the people had before christ came. what would it be like if we knew how many years we lack until the second coming? would we change anything if we knew it was coming soon? would we relax a little if it was decades away. i think that we should do all we can to prepare the people for the second coming as if it was going to come this weekend. lots of things would be different. i love you guys! enjoy this next week, and i look forward to hearing from you on monday!
¡chau!
elder summers

Day 223

¡Hola Familia!
I´m down to my last week with my companion, elder suarez, and we are doing great. today is my comps last pday of his mission so we took a bus to san martin and arrived at 6am. it was really dark and nothing was open so we went down to the lake and we skipped rocks for a while until cenizas (ashes) started falling from the sky and a police officer told us we had to go inside. apparently the puyehue volcano erupted in chile and there was tons of ash. we took some pictures of the ash and it looks like a blanket of snow. we took another bus to get back to zapala because we heard it was going to get a lot worse and the high ways were going to close and we didn´t want to get stuck in san martin. we got back about an hour ago and now we are pretty tired but i guess it was a little adventure that we won´t forget. we are getting some ash here too and it is like fake snow. my mission president wrote us saying that we should buy sufficient food for 3 days if it gets worse outside and we won´t be able to go outside. it´s always good to stay prepared :)
this week went well but i don´t feel like anybody is progressing and we lost a few more investigators. it´s so frustrating because i wanted these last weeks with my companion to be very successful but we haven´t seen to much happening. we did see some little things everyday throughout the week so i guess some things will eventually add up but i wish that things would speed up a bit! fa! we had a ´´noche de cine´´ on saturday night (movie night) in the gym of the church with the big screen, and i made tons of popcorn (with the stove!) but only a few investigators showed up. we watched the joseph smith : the prophet of the restauracion movie and it was awesome. i really enjoy that movie and it gives you a greater appreciation for the prophet. it was an activity for the 3 wards in our district and we gave invitations to all of our investigators and people in the street too. we were a bit disappointed with the turn out but we enjoyed the popcorn. i also learned how to make ñoquis, and i love them! it takes a while to make everything with the meat salsa but it is definitely worth it. i think cooking will be a hobby of mine when i get back because i really enjoy it and people love the food that i make :).
we spent lots of time looking at doors again, and we had some trouble finding again, even though we reconfirmed our citas the night before when we call them. we are trying lots of new things to find new people so i guess we just need to be a little more patient but stay diligent all week. i think i am ready to be senior companion because i pretty much am already. before the lessons, elder suarez puts his hand on my shoulder and says ´´eres jefe, ¿dale? vamos.´´ now its kind of a joke between us but it has been really fun and i have really enjoyed this time i´ve had in this area. here in zapala, i feel like i have grown a ton and i love this area. one huge thing that i have learned here is that i should never be fixed on teaching one thing no matter what, but i should be flexible with the things that we teach and listen to things that the investigator really needs to hear. before in comodoro, we always had a fixed plan to teach and we entered the house and just taught the things that we planned. it´s always good to have a really good plan, and we make very detailed plans every week for every one of our investigators, but sometimes we feel like we need to go a different direction. elder suarez has been teaching me a lot and he has been a great example for me. i think that i am really going to miss him a lot when he goes home.
my scripture for the week is mormon 9:31
31Condemn me not because of mine aimperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been.
i have a greater appreciation of the book of mormon and there are so many things that we can learn from it everytime that we read it. tomorrow, i will finish reading the whole thing again, and it has been coming alive for me. i think about my own imperfections and things that i can do everyday to overcome them and be more like the people described in the book of mormon, but i think that even they felt inadequate sometimes and we can learn from their faith and diligence. i love being able to share stories with our investigators to show how much the book is actually worth, how it can be applied to everyone of us and to learn more of christ. it was written for that purpose. i have been thinking a lot about our work here, and we can learn so much every week when we analize what went well or what we should improve. there have been some things that i read that gave me revelation for our area and i believe that things are coming along. we weren´t able to meet the standard this week but we are getting closer!
a few days ago, we went to meet with a less active family but it was dark and we weren´t sure which was their house because in the barrio quinientos, all of the houses are very similar. one man in the army answered the door and invited us inside. we thought he was related to the family that we were going to visit... he said he was very interested in learning about the church but he didn´t have much freetime because of his crazy schedule. his name is angel and it was perfect timing finding him. we talked with him for about an hour and then found the other family two doors down but they forgot that we were going to come by and we caught them returning to their house. another ´´milagro´´ of the week!
the package you are sending sounds awesome and i am excited to receive it! thank you for taking the time to send me some ´´extra love´´! you guys are awesome and i love hearing about the things you are doing every week. it will be interesting to see how things are going to change next monday but it gives me another boost of ánimo hearing from you every monday :) i love you guys a lot and i am looking forward to hearing from you next week too!
con mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers

Day 216

¡Hola Familia!
Now i have 7 months on the mission! things are going well and the week went by very fast. wednesday was 25 de mayo, and that is the day that argentina declared independence from España, so it was a pretty big day. nobody opened their doors so we went to the parade in the morning. it was kind of strange because they had tons of stuff in the parade, like the army, garbage trucks, tractors from construction, little kids, gauchos (the argentine cowboys from the country and all of their horses), and the catholics even had their virgin mary display. it was an interesting parade. they also had huge speakers throughout zapala that played music from argentina and i learned that i really want to learn to play the accordion because that is a very popular instrument used in tango. very cool and i think i can learn to play it very fast. after, we had lunch with some of our investigators and they made us locro. it is like chicken noodle soup but with chorizo, bacon, tons of meat, and some vegetables. lots of calories and it was delicious. the weather is getting colder but i really like it. the sky is usually gray but at least their isn´t cold wind. we were pretty sure it was going to snow last night but it didn´t happen. i really love this weather because it is a lot like fall in Colorado and that is my favorite time of year. it´s not too cold if i wear my coat and scarf so i think i will be ok this winter, although i did hear that it will get colder in july.
we had some tough times this week because the people didn´t open their doors too much and it was kind of difficult finding our investigators again so we spent some more time with less active members. i think the week went very well because we had a higher attendance at church and we talked a lot about the atonement and how we should make goals to go to the temple for the first time. this sunday went very well. this next week, my goal is to meet the standard for the mission in all of the key indicators for lessons, new investigators, and contacts. i have only been able to do it once with elder escobar and we came close tons of other times but it is kind of difficult. we have to find 15 new people every week, have at least 8 lessons with members, and that is what gets us every week. we find about 8 or 9 every week, we have 4 or 5 lessons with members and it is tough to reach that goal. we want to meet the standard this week so my comp can finish his mission feeling completely exhausted :).
a few days ago, we were clapping doors and i stood under this tree when i felt little drops on my head. it was a bird. my comp says that here, that is really good luck, but i told him i never want that kind of luck again. that has never happened to me before but i guess that is pretty rare. i don´t want that happening ever again.
on saturday, i had my english class and a piano class. i am teaching a young girl with 10 years the piano and she is learning very fast. i taught her about the notes and rhythm, then started playing ´´i am a child of god´´. she is very smart and can play the whole song almost perfectly with her right hand! all of that with only an hour. ¡que k-po!
this week we also had our zone conference and i sent the foto of my zone that my mission president sent to me. the conference went pretty well and i really enjoyed it. we talked about the talk from elder oaks about our desires and how our desires should match those of our Savior. we watched the talk from elder holland that he gave in january in the mtc this year and it was very powerful. my mission president said that it was a talk that will change the whole mission. elder holland talked about john 21 when peter became the great apostle that he was. it really made an impact on me when i thought about the things that i would do if i was peter. the chapter is great and i loved listening to elder holland relate that story when Jesus tells peter that if he loves Him, he should feed his sheep. the discurso was very powerful and i have been thinking a lot about how we should show our love for the Savior by feeding His sheep. after that, i was asked to give special musical number so i sang and played ´´armies of helaman´´. it went very well and i felt pretty good about my performance.
our dog still follows us to church so we thought it would be funny if we dressed it up in a shirt and tie. we used an old shirt and tie that e´ suarez doesn´t use anymore and it was great. i took a picture in the house, but the sister missionaries took pictures of it at church when it was entering the gate that turned out very well. it can´t come in the church with us but it waits outside next to the door for 3 hours and it looked very classy.
im excited to receive your package soon! oh! and don´t forget to send pictures!
i love you guys
con mucho amor y ánimo
elder summers

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