¡Hola Familia!
¿Cómo andan? mama- i was very impressed with your castellano. how did you learn? i don´t like ´´che´´ and its not very common but i encourage you to keep learning! when i step off the plane in two years i am going to have lots of problems speaking english so you could help me a lot. a few days ago we had divisions with the zonies and one of my zone leaders asked me to pray in english. after the prayer he told me that i pray like a four year old child because i used a lot of spanglish and it was a little slow. it was funny though. writing in english is way better.
transfers today!!!! 21 missionaries are going home honorably today and we are losing many from my zone. i´m glad to say that i have another 6 weeks with elder suarez and things are looking bright for this next month. i can see our first baptism coming very soon! my companion has lots of connections with the mission office and we obtain lots of juicy information from the elders there, in neuquen, so lots of missionaries call us. a few days ago, elder suarez told one missionary that i knew in comodoro (un kpo elder leyton) that we was leaving comodoro in this transfer but he didn´t really know anything. elder leyton said goodbye to everyone, packed his bags, and the members were giving him a barbeque when his zone leaders called him and said he was going to stay another 6 weeks. he was a little upset with my companion for a while but i think things will be ok now. it was really funny to get a phone call from him though...but usually in the nights, we have conference calls with other zones and we talk about the stuff we are doing in our areas. its pretty fun but i don´t think its the best thing to be doing.
the weather this week has been a lot better and it has been really hot again. i think i prefer the cold but the sunny days are nice. i don´t think it will get too cold this winter but we are going to see. pablo is still alive!!! he was just in neuquen but he never answered his flippin´ phone. aaagh! but its ok though because he finally made the decision to start coming to church. he attended a different ward this week and our zonies told us that he was there and he had a nice big smile the whole time. smells like wet baptismal clothes! yay! with brian, we met with his parents and his 12 year old sister is listening to us too. the mom is against it and doesn´t want brian to be baptized for another few years but we had a nice discussion with her and we are hoping to baptize him a lot sooner than that. brian comes to church every week and is sister is attending too. our other fecha is for april 2 with a woman named alicia and i just hope everything goes well. i´m so excited for the general conference too! we have our sessions a little later and i think that i will be able to watch it in english with one of my zone leaders, elder rozier from california. we are the only gringo mormons in all of zapala! today we went to pick up elder rozier at 4 in the morning because his companion just finished the mission and we are going to stay together until the other zone leader comes tomorrow afternoon. i don´t mind having three of us and today is going to be awesome.
elder rozier helped us clean our little apartment and it was really intense because we haven´t cleaned it very good in a while but now it is nice and fresh. everything is in order and we feel like new missionaries! im getting kind of hungry now so im thinkin´ this email will be a little shorter this week... here everything is going well but the finding is a little slow. the members aren´t very dependable and its hard to get them to come for lessons, or bring friends for the family home evening lessons. we ask for references every time we are with them but they never have anybody so we are going to work on animating the members for missionary work. maybe the baptism of pablo will spark the ward missionary flame! this is my fourth transfer on the mission and i´m so excited for it. i will have 6 months on the mission and i will have watched my first general conference in argentina. i think i will buy a bunch of facturas for the event. facturas are like mini donuts with cream, 12 for 10 pesos en la anónima but i think i might be able to find cheaper in one of the kioscos in the street. have i mentioned the siestas here in argentina? nobody is outside around 2-4 o´clock and people get ticked if you interrupt their naptime. i heard people get killed for that in spain but maybe that´s just a rumor. thankfully, i don´t think we will get killed here so we are going to keep contacting throughout the naptime but we don´t find anything in that time. in comodoro, elder escobar and i went to the pension for the hour of study that we are allowed to have after lunch, but elder suarez is not the best reader and he doesn´t like to study very much. speaking of studying, i finally finished the new testament and i have about 150 pages left in the old testament. it has been an awesome experience reading all of the scriptures and it has helped me to gain a greater appreciation for them, and for the church. there´s nothing in the scriptures that contradict anything that we believe and i´m glad for the opportunity to defend the church with the scriptures. i love when people use scriptures to try and prove that we are wrong because i have almost always been able to show them why we are correct. i have only been left confounded 2 times, and that was with an adventista pastor (that studies in the university for years) and with a jehovah´s witness (that sits and studies the bible all day, every day) because they presented new stuff that i have never thought of before. being on the mission has helped me grow a lot in my understanding of the gospel and to grow a lot personally as well and i hope to continue progressing everyday. it has been a wonderful opportunity and i have a strong testimony of the truth of this gospel. i´ve had a few trials the last few months but i´ve slowly been overcoming them and i feel so much better here in argentina. by the way, my walk is not strange! i have a swagger, no más. the package in the box will be fine. i haven´t seen anybody have to pay anything for their packages in boxes and it will arrive ok. packages are always welcome here :D
thanks for all the support and i love you guys a lot!
con una sonrisa gigante y optimista,
elder summers
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
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
Monday, February 28, 2011
Day 117
¡Hola Familia!
it has been another great week but the work has been really frustrating. our families are failing and we now dont have many people to teach, which is disappointing because we have two huge areas. right now we are focusing on having noches de hogar (FHE) with families in our wards and they promised that they are going to bring their non member friends that will be willing to listen to us. yay! im really excited for it. our first one will be tonight so you should pray for us.
this week, we had the opportunity to take a bus at 430 wednesday morning to get to neuquen for a conference with e´aidukaitis. he is a 70 and is from brazil. i loved his accent and his enthusiasm and the conference was very good. i have to say that he dropped the cane really hard but he dropped it with love. he told us that on his mission, he entered a church and baptized the whole congregation, then he asked us what was impeding us from inviting everyone to be baptized and was wondering why we werent finding very many people. after that conference, we took another 3 hour bus ride to zapala to start fresh. our goals to find, teach, and baptize have doubled and we are working even harder. during the conference, i felt this strong yearning for my first baptisms and i know that they will come soon.
Pablo finally finished the book of mormon and he prayed to know if it was true. he has a strong testimony of it and he knows that everything we have taught is true. now he just wants time to feel better about his situation. we gave him a blessing of strength and comfort so he can feel better and overcome his challenges because he told us that when he starts coming to church, he is never going to stop. he just feels like a hypocrite right now because he isnt 100% but i know he will feel it soon. he wont commit to a date but definitely is progressing. its coming!
our other families told us that they dont want to listen to us anymore. they felt good when we were with them but when we arent, they have family that tells lots of lies about the church. it makes me really upset because everything these people learn about our church comes from their churches. im really getting sick of these other churches here. the catholics here are only catholics because of tradition and they have no idea what they believe. the jehovahs witnesses are very hard and all they want to do is bible bash. i only have hope for the evangelicos but they only go to those churches because they dont have to do anything there. as long as they accept Christ they are done. it makes finding very hard because they tell us they dont want to change and they are very comfortable with where they are but we always make it very clear that we arent there to convince anyone, just to share a message and they can ask God if its the truth. i believe that we can have baptisms every week and i think that they are going to start very soon. we found a list of incomplete member families for our ward and branch and if you can believe it, we have stacks of papers. WOOOO!!! im pretty excited to start looking for those people instead of clapping every door. clapping can be fun but a lot of people are annoyed with me because i am from the US. apparently, because i am north american, i am corrupt and all i say is a big fat lie because all north americans have ruined the world. bah. our area books with records of past investigators are garbage and we threw away lots of the records because there was no way we could find those people again. the missionaries in the past all did a very bad job so we are working on building up our progress reports to look real pretty and be more useful.
i got my package and i was really excited to get all of those pictures but i didnt get any pictures of my mamita... thank you for all the candy. it helps calm down the kids in my ward because they are crazy. during the meetings, it is funny for me because nobody really sings the hymns but the guy conducting and he doesnt sing very loud. it doesnt help with the kids playing the hymns because they dont play perfectly but i started singing really loud for everyone and now they sing along with me. awesome. there about 30 people in each ward but the ward has tons of kids climbing everywhere and screaming. yikes. yesterday during sacrament meeting, a kid ran up to us screaming that the bathroom exploded so we went to check it out. a pipe burst and water was everywhere but i was able to shut off the water and fix the broken valve. what a stud i am, no?
my comp and i passed the sacrament too and one of the members told me that i have a bounce to my step and that i dont walk like a real missionary because my walk isnt very serious. that broke my heart. but my comp told me that he has never noticed anything and he walks next to me everyday.
i bought misself un balón this morning just to practice in the pensión and i am getting a lot better with my control. awesome. we play futbol with the members every friday at 7 until 915 and we run back to the house to be home by 930. we follow all the rules ;). have you guys googled where i live? you can probably find it on google earth, right? i live on trafúl and we walk up and down the street called 12 de julio everyday. that way you guys can see where i go. oh! i also learned how to dance salsa but i couldnt do too much because you need a girl to do it but im pretty good with my feet ;) x2. the people dont listen to salsa very much here. the majority of music that i hear in the street is cumbia or regetón (sp?). cumbia is very loud and has a rhythm like a train and then regetón is the music for people to dance very dirty. so i hear... i understand almost all of the lyrics now and i really like salsa music. it is a shame that there isnt much of it here but that is ok. i want to buy a voice recorder to record some of the stuff that i do with my comp. that would be really cool, verdad? then i can send it to you guys and listen to my voice instead of reading my emails.
e´aidukaitis also talked about having more faith to find people. we show our faith through our work. our diligence in the work is the test of our faith, and when we have enough faith we can do anything. por eso, es muy importante. i like DyC 8:10 and 1 nefi 10:19. those scriptures pretty much say what i just said but even better. i know that faith is really important in this work and it is the first principle of the gospel for a reason. we find people everyday that are perfect and golden but then they end up living in other areas of zapala. shoot. we are praying to find more investigators that SPECIFICALLY live in our area. that should help us this week. this week is going to be a huge turning point in my mission and im really excited to get started.
i know that i need to take more pictures but now i feel awkward whipping out a digital camera in front of these people because they dont have very much. there will be more pictures of us next week, i promise. this is a reminder for more pictures if they have not been sent already... thank you! i love my family muchísimo!
con una sonrisa grande y mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers.
it has been another great week but the work has been really frustrating. our families are failing and we now dont have many people to teach, which is disappointing because we have two huge areas. right now we are focusing on having noches de hogar (FHE) with families in our wards and they promised that they are going to bring their non member friends that will be willing to listen to us. yay! im really excited for it. our first one will be tonight so you should pray for us.
this week, we had the opportunity to take a bus at 430 wednesday morning to get to neuquen for a conference with e´aidukaitis. he is a 70 and is from brazil. i loved his accent and his enthusiasm and the conference was very good. i have to say that he dropped the cane really hard but he dropped it with love. he told us that on his mission, he entered a church and baptized the whole congregation, then he asked us what was impeding us from inviting everyone to be baptized and was wondering why we werent finding very many people. after that conference, we took another 3 hour bus ride to zapala to start fresh. our goals to find, teach, and baptize have doubled and we are working even harder. during the conference, i felt this strong yearning for my first baptisms and i know that they will come soon.
Pablo finally finished the book of mormon and he prayed to know if it was true. he has a strong testimony of it and he knows that everything we have taught is true. now he just wants time to feel better about his situation. we gave him a blessing of strength and comfort so he can feel better and overcome his challenges because he told us that when he starts coming to church, he is never going to stop. he just feels like a hypocrite right now because he isnt 100% but i know he will feel it soon. he wont commit to a date but definitely is progressing. its coming!
our other families told us that they dont want to listen to us anymore. they felt good when we were with them but when we arent, they have family that tells lots of lies about the church. it makes me really upset because everything these people learn about our church comes from their churches. im really getting sick of these other churches here. the catholics here are only catholics because of tradition and they have no idea what they believe. the jehovahs witnesses are very hard and all they want to do is bible bash. i only have hope for the evangelicos but they only go to those churches because they dont have to do anything there. as long as they accept Christ they are done. it makes finding very hard because they tell us they dont want to change and they are very comfortable with where they are but we always make it very clear that we arent there to convince anyone, just to share a message and they can ask God if its the truth. i believe that we can have baptisms every week and i think that they are going to start very soon. we found a list of incomplete member families for our ward and branch and if you can believe it, we have stacks of papers. WOOOO!!! im pretty excited to start looking for those people instead of clapping every door. clapping can be fun but a lot of people are annoyed with me because i am from the US. apparently, because i am north american, i am corrupt and all i say is a big fat lie because all north americans have ruined the world. bah. our area books with records of past investigators are garbage and we threw away lots of the records because there was no way we could find those people again. the missionaries in the past all did a very bad job so we are working on building up our progress reports to look real pretty and be more useful.
i got my package and i was really excited to get all of those pictures but i didnt get any pictures of my mamita... thank you for all the candy. it helps calm down the kids in my ward because they are crazy. during the meetings, it is funny for me because nobody really sings the hymns but the guy conducting and he doesnt sing very loud. it doesnt help with the kids playing the hymns because they dont play perfectly but i started singing really loud for everyone and now they sing along with me. awesome. there about 30 people in each ward but the ward has tons of kids climbing everywhere and screaming. yikes. yesterday during sacrament meeting, a kid ran up to us screaming that the bathroom exploded so we went to check it out. a pipe burst and water was everywhere but i was able to shut off the water and fix the broken valve. what a stud i am, no?
my comp and i passed the sacrament too and one of the members told me that i have a bounce to my step and that i dont walk like a real missionary because my walk isnt very serious. that broke my heart. but my comp told me that he has never noticed anything and he walks next to me everyday.
i bought misself un balón this morning just to practice in the pensión and i am getting a lot better with my control. awesome. we play futbol with the members every friday at 7 until 915 and we run back to the house to be home by 930. we follow all the rules ;). have you guys googled where i live? you can probably find it on google earth, right? i live on trafúl and we walk up and down the street called 12 de julio everyday. that way you guys can see where i go. oh! i also learned how to dance salsa but i couldnt do too much because you need a girl to do it but im pretty good with my feet ;) x2. the people dont listen to salsa very much here. the majority of music that i hear in the street is cumbia or regetón (sp?). cumbia is very loud and has a rhythm like a train and then regetón is the music for people to dance very dirty. so i hear... i understand almost all of the lyrics now and i really like salsa music. it is a shame that there isnt much of it here but that is ok. i want to buy a voice recorder to record some of the stuff that i do with my comp. that would be really cool, verdad? then i can send it to you guys and listen to my voice instead of reading my emails.
e´aidukaitis also talked about having more faith to find people. we show our faith through our work. our diligence in the work is the test of our faith, and when we have enough faith we can do anything. por eso, es muy importante. i like DyC 8:10 and 1 nefi 10:19. those scriptures pretty much say what i just said but even better. i know that faith is really important in this work and it is the first principle of the gospel for a reason. we find people everyday that are perfect and golden but then they end up living in other areas of zapala. shoot. we are praying to find more investigators that SPECIFICALLY live in our area. that should help us this week. this week is going to be a huge turning point in my mission and im really excited to get started.
i know that i need to take more pictures but now i feel awkward whipping out a digital camera in front of these people because they dont have very much. there will be more pictures of us next week, i promise. this is a reminder for more pictures if they have not been sent already... thank you! i love my family muchísimo!
con una sonrisa grande y mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Day 103
Hola Familia!!!
I am very upset that you guys did not get my email last week because the computer told me that everything was ok. very upset... well that means ya´ll get a double dosage!!! yay! First off- happy valentines day!! we dont celebrate that here... and happy birthday to brandon and annie!! and i think my parents have their anniversary this week so congrats!!! and i received an awesome package from the murri family so could you guys let them know how awesome it was and how much i appreciated it? my new comp has never tasted skittles. can you believe that? apostasia... so i am in zapala now and it is incredible. i love it so much and i think that there is no comparison between comodoro and zapala. here there is no trash, a lot less dogs, everyone here is incredibly nice to us and lots of people let us into their homes! the people even stop to listen to us in the streets and sometimes have discussions with us about the church. most of the people give us their addresses and times to visit them, and that never happened in comodoro. my companion, elder suarez es un capo and i love being here with him. he is very ´´chill´´ but we still get lots done. my last companion was very stressed all the time and we always walked like someone was chasing us but now things are just normal. e´ suarez has a lot of videos from the church that we watch with the less active members and it has been awesome in the lessons. he is very good at explaining things and the lessons go very smooth.
we are in charge of half the city of zapala so we have a branch and a ward so that means that we are in church for 6 hours a day!! yahoo!! it really is pretty cool, surprisingly, and i really enjoy being in the church. i dont have to play the piano in either of the sacrament meetings because one woman there teaches and we actually had a 5 year old girl play one of the songs (simplified of course). pretty neat and she did pretty well! that means i´m off the hook for a while but i´m there if they need me. in the branch they asked me to speak for 10 minutes. yikes! i just started talking (in castellano of course) about the savior and more about the atonement and what it means to me and i ended up talking for 15 minutes with my scriptures and everything. i am now a stud in spanish. my comp does not speak a lick of english and i know that after a solid week of talking to him, i am way faster and i no longer have to translate things in my head and i can just speak. k-po. (cool). life is good! we spend the mornings either contacting down town or visiting less active members and then we spend the night knocking doors finding new families or teaching lessons. being in charge of so many people is a little intimidating because of so much we have to do but we manage. it takes about 45 minutes to walk from one side of our boundaries all the way to the other but we live in the middle of everything, about a 10 minute walk to the chapel. this area is huge but i love the people here!!!
the people tell me that i speak very well and they thought i was from uruguay because there are some whites there. they are very surprised that i have only been in the country for 3 months! here in zapala, it is pretty hot, but there is some wind too. its not as bad as comodoro but some people tell me that in the winter it gets worse than comodoro. i think they are exaggerating (sp?). there are lots of snakeys here zapala, especially in the church and there moms want me to come back to argentina after my mission and marry them. snakeys are girls that want to date missionaries, and here i already have quite a few. fa! we found 2 new complete families this week and i feel pretty good about them. i will provide more details later if things progress this week. we also have some investigators ´´de oro´´ that i know will get baptized this transfer. pablo is a really tall guy that used to play futbol for boca and now is learning about the church. when i started talking to him, he only had the first discussion about the restoration of the gospel but this week he has had us over many times and even made us lunch on saturday. he wants to learn more and his girlfriend was baptized 2 weeks ago. the other people that we are teaching are the children of less active members or the less active members ´´partners´´.
one day as we were walking, i felt so dumb because we saw one old man that had one leg and i greeted him just like i greet everyone. i asked him ´´¿como anda?´´ which literally means ´´how do you walk´´ but people say it to say ´´how are you?´´ he flipped out and just started yelling at me calling me a dumb gringo and telling me that my life is so easy and i have no right to come to his country and talk to him. it was pretty bad but i apologized and we just kept walking.
a lot of the streets arent paved completely so there are lots of rocks in the road so we sometimes play futbol with the rocks and we have to kick them in between the other guys legs while we are walking. im pretty good at it and im winning. we dont play all the time, just when there arent other people to talk to. there are a lot more trees here and i love it. here i can bring my backpack everywhere and i have no worries of someone robbing me. awesome. anything else? hmmm. i found a street called ´´maipu´´. that was awesome. there are lots of small people in maipu.... you guys know yann tierson? my companion has an mp4 with lots of his songs and we listen to his music every morning. im not sure if its the best music but it is pretty tranquilo. just piano, accordion, violin, and that kind of stuff. you should look up his music and tell me if its good. there are not many missionaries here in zapala. one companionship is hermana misioneras and another is elderes. my comp is the district leader and the rest of the missionaries in the zone are at least an hour away in junin de los andes. yes, i can see the mountains sometimes but they are very far away.
i love you all! dad- you asked for a scripture and i really like mormon 9;21. i read that a few days ago and it is about praying without a doubt. im out of time because this ciber is very expensive...
i´ll do better next week.
chao!!
Elder Summers
Day 96
Hola Familia!
I have bad news this week. Both of us are being transferred today. my companion e´ escobar is going to be a zone leader in the most beautiful part of the country (Bariloche) to replace his trainer that finished his mission today. i have been assigned to serve in Zapala and i am getting on my bus this afternoon at 4. the bus ride should last all night and then i am taking another bus in neuquen at 11;30 to get to zapala. zapala is in the province of neuquen and i have heard it is near the mountains and is very green with lots of fruit. lots of heat too but we are getting close to the fall season. e´ escobar gave me a beautiful scarf as a going away present (argentina colors blue and white) and i bought him a box of 24 grandote alfajores because those are our favorites. i got a beautiful tie for 24 pesos (like $6) and i am going to give it to my ward mission leader in the bus terminal because he is coming to say goodbye to me.
my new companion is e´ suarez (sp? no sé...) and i have heard that he only has 3 transfers left and is very very trucho. aaagh!!! but i am excited to get things goin´ in zapala! i am pretty pumped but we have 6 fechas here in abasalo and the rest of the families are soon to follow! aaagh!!! otra vez. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!! i am really disappointed that both of us are leaving and we won´t be able to see the baptisms. i took lots of pictures yesterday with the families and they promised us that they are going to be baptized this month. it was very emotional yesterday and we announced that we were leaving in our testimony meeting in church. there were a lot of sad people and i was surprised how much of an impact i have made on some people. some that i never would have expected... but they have seen how much i have grown in this area. muchos ven mi progreso pero pocos mi sacrificio. i am very grateful for e´ escobar and all of his hard work to help me. they told me yesterday that when i arrived i only had a smile and never talked to people but now i have my ´´personality´´ again. i will always remember this area and all of the people i have met. guess who is replacing me? elder campos from the ccm!!! i wrote him a little note and left it on my desk about all the cool people he should talk to and who will make him the most incredible meals. i don´t know if i have mentioned yet, but we found some less actives that are cooks and that really enjoyed us over so they made us some really good food every wednesday. wednesday quickly became my favorite day of the week. they weren´t home yesterday so i couldnt get a picture with them (flia Lepicheo)... shoot.
but my futbol skills are getting a lot better. i am very fast and i am getting more control of the ball! last week we were playing futbol with other missionaries and a whole gang of chorros came up to us wanting to play too. it was the elderes vs the chorros and after an intense game, we beat them. i was almost as good as them and they play futbol every day, all day. i should have played in high school!
we went to check on favoricio again and found out that he was killed in a car accident with his family right after i talked to him. i talked to his friends that were also there that night and they were very upset. they let us in and we bore our testimonies about the next life and left them with a prayer. they told me that after i left he said that he had no idea why he called out to me but he felt something very strong and that he really wanted to go to church because he felt something there. he kept saying my name over and over ´´elder summers´´ and when he left, he was pretty drunk. the only person that survived the crash was the 3 year old son but his lungs were crushed and i was told that he was in too bad of a condition to live much longer. it was so sad and it really made me wonder why i had that last chance to talk to him. i think that his friends, adriana and mario are going to be baptized and i am upset that i cant be here for them. i left good notes for the next elders to find them again.
we had a battle with some adventist missionaries a few days ago. they invited us into their house to eat some food and we figured nothing would escalate too bad. everything started very nice and they were very kind. they gave us some really good empanadas and then asked us why we werent christians. apparently we arent because we have church on sunday and not on the ´´real sabbath´´. we just explained why we went to church on sunday and they started getting really upset because we confounded them with their own words very easily and we were just about to leave when their pastor showed up and just destroyed us. this guy studied in college to be a pastor and he was a lot more knowledgeable then those dumb guys. we were basing everything on the law of moses and how Christ fulfilled the law but the pastor came in and said how the sabbath was a law with adam before that law existed so it is a celestial law and we had nothin´. it was a good experience though. i can handle those guys pretty well and i know that studying the scriptures everyday prepares me. i have now finished the old testament and i am almost done with the book of matthew and the book of mormon again. good stuff. i love my scriptures. i love how the jehovahs witnesses always quote the same scriptures and i have been able to tell them that they quoted them wrong and i told them what they really said. it was such an awesome moment and they can feel our power when we talk to them. i have had lots of experiences with those guys because they always attack us and tell us we are in ´´las tinieblas´´. its just fun for me now.
you guys are so lucky to have the temple so close! take advantage of it as much as you can because my ward is planning a temple trip to uruguay right now. ouch! you just had the super bowl??? wow!! i did not hear anything about it and i wasn´t ever thinking about it. that´s crazy how fast that came. were the commercials any good or were they garbage? the pizzas that we eat here are all home made with ham and cheese on it. its ok but the sauces they use kind of taste funny and they cut the pizzas into squares. but the cakes here are so awesome! yesterday, some members made us a cake because they heard we were leaving and it had dulce de leche and peach slices in it. it was so delicious. but i am so excited for my new area! we are going to take the bus back to the pensión and then we are taking a taxi to the bus terminal. my bus leaves in 4 hours from now!!! my companion is leaving for bariloche at 9;30 tonight. sorry, i cant find the right símbolo for the time on this keyboard... everything is going awesome and i am so pumped!! i am going to start sending some pictures now
I love you guys so much!!!! remember to send more fotos for me!
¡¡Con un abrazo grande!!
Elder Summers
I have bad news this week. Both of us are being transferred today. my companion e´ escobar is going to be a zone leader in the most beautiful part of the country (Bariloche) to replace his trainer that finished his mission today. i have been assigned to serve in Zapala and i am getting on my bus this afternoon at 4. the bus ride should last all night and then i am taking another bus in neuquen at 11;30 to get to zapala. zapala is in the province of neuquen and i have heard it is near the mountains and is very green with lots of fruit. lots of heat too but we are getting close to the fall season. e´ escobar gave me a beautiful scarf as a going away present (argentina colors blue and white) and i bought him a box of 24 grandote alfajores because those are our favorites. i got a beautiful tie for 24 pesos (like $6) and i am going to give it to my ward mission leader in the bus terminal because he is coming to say goodbye to me.
my new companion is e´ suarez (sp? no sé...) and i have heard that he only has 3 transfers left and is very very trucho. aaagh!!! but i am excited to get things goin´ in zapala! i am pretty pumped but we have 6 fechas here in abasalo and the rest of the families are soon to follow! aaagh!!! otra vez. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!! i am really disappointed that both of us are leaving and we won´t be able to see the baptisms. i took lots of pictures yesterday with the families and they promised us that they are going to be baptized this month. it was very emotional yesterday and we announced that we were leaving in our testimony meeting in church. there were a lot of sad people and i was surprised how much of an impact i have made on some people. some that i never would have expected... but they have seen how much i have grown in this area. muchos ven mi progreso pero pocos mi sacrificio. i am very grateful for e´ escobar and all of his hard work to help me. they told me yesterday that when i arrived i only had a smile and never talked to people but now i have my ´´personality´´ again. i will always remember this area and all of the people i have met. guess who is replacing me? elder campos from the ccm!!! i wrote him a little note and left it on my desk about all the cool people he should talk to and who will make him the most incredible meals. i don´t know if i have mentioned yet, but we found some less actives that are cooks and that really enjoyed us over so they made us some really good food every wednesday. wednesday quickly became my favorite day of the week. they weren´t home yesterday so i couldnt get a picture with them (flia Lepicheo)... shoot.
but my futbol skills are getting a lot better. i am very fast and i am getting more control of the ball! last week we were playing futbol with other missionaries and a whole gang of chorros came up to us wanting to play too. it was the elderes vs the chorros and after an intense game, we beat them. i was almost as good as them and they play futbol every day, all day. i should have played in high school!
we went to check on favoricio again and found out that he was killed in a car accident with his family right after i talked to him. i talked to his friends that were also there that night and they were very upset. they let us in and we bore our testimonies about the next life and left them with a prayer. they told me that after i left he said that he had no idea why he called out to me but he felt something very strong and that he really wanted to go to church because he felt something there. he kept saying my name over and over ´´elder summers´´ and when he left, he was pretty drunk. the only person that survived the crash was the 3 year old son but his lungs were crushed and i was told that he was in too bad of a condition to live much longer. it was so sad and it really made me wonder why i had that last chance to talk to him. i think that his friends, adriana and mario are going to be baptized and i am upset that i cant be here for them. i left good notes for the next elders to find them again.
we had a battle with some adventist missionaries a few days ago. they invited us into their house to eat some food and we figured nothing would escalate too bad. everything started very nice and they were very kind. they gave us some really good empanadas and then asked us why we werent christians. apparently we arent because we have church on sunday and not on the ´´real sabbath´´. we just explained why we went to church on sunday and they started getting really upset because we confounded them with their own words very easily and we were just about to leave when their pastor showed up and just destroyed us. this guy studied in college to be a pastor and he was a lot more knowledgeable then those dumb guys. we were basing everything on the law of moses and how Christ fulfilled the law but the pastor came in and said how the sabbath was a law with adam before that law existed so it is a celestial law and we had nothin´. it was a good experience though. i can handle those guys pretty well and i know that studying the scriptures everyday prepares me. i have now finished the old testament and i am almost done with the book of matthew and the book of mormon again. good stuff. i love my scriptures. i love how the jehovahs witnesses always quote the same scriptures and i have been able to tell them that they quoted them wrong and i told them what they really said. it was such an awesome moment and they can feel our power when we talk to them. i have had lots of experiences with those guys because they always attack us and tell us we are in ´´las tinieblas´´. its just fun for me now.
you guys are so lucky to have the temple so close! take advantage of it as much as you can because my ward is planning a temple trip to uruguay right now. ouch! you just had the super bowl??? wow!! i did not hear anything about it and i wasn´t ever thinking about it. that´s crazy how fast that came. were the commercials any good or were they garbage? the pizzas that we eat here are all home made with ham and cheese on it. its ok but the sauces they use kind of taste funny and they cut the pizzas into squares. but the cakes here are so awesome! yesterday, some members made us a cake because they heard we were leaving and it had dulce de leche and peach slices in it. it was so delicious. but i am so excited for my new area! we are going to take the bus back to the pensión and then we are taking a taxi to the bus terminal. my bus leaves in 4 hours from now!!! my companion is leaving for bariloche at 9;30 tonight. sorry, i cant find the right símbolo for the time on this keyboard... everything is going awesome and i am so pumped!! i am going to start sending some pictures now
I love you guys so much!!!! remember to send more fotos for me!
¡¡Con un abrazo grande!!
Elder Summers
Monday, January 24, 2011
Day 89
¡Hola Familia!
this week i received both of the paquetes (packages) that i have been waiting for! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! i look so studly in my glasses and when the people look at me in the street, they no longer think of me as some fetchin´ gringo. they think ´´oh my goodness, i want to learn something from him´´. yes, they have already made a huge impact here. by the way, abásalo is a small town outside of comodoro rivadavia and it is kind of like the ghetto part of the area. other than that, i also received the package from jacie and it was the best-est most awesome package ever!! i loved getting it and i loved the pictures and the scripture mastery cards! they are very useful and i am very grateful. i already received some little pictures from my mission president that i can use but i think the pictures you sent are way better. the pictures of me made me a little discouraged because i was way chubby before my mission. i think i will still show them i guess... please send me more pictures! now i only have one (now old and outdated) picture of the family and a bunch of jacie´s family, so if the rest of you guys want to be represented, you should send some pictures of yourselves (preferably with me or whatever). oh! and please start putting dates on the dear elder letters because the papers i receive do not tell me when the letters were sent.
there is one woman that we are teaching right now, Cecilia, that is accepting everything and wants to come to church. her mom was baptized years ago but has not been to church in a long time. cecilia has a son that is 8 years old (santi) that tells us all the time that he wants to be a missionary too and that family is very cool. she is waiting for an answer to her prayers about the church so the last time we talked to her, we just helped her to recognize the different ways that God answers prayers to know the truth. we are just waiting now. maxi is a stud because he came to church again this week without his family but he is very enthusiastic about the church and he is really helping his family. we set fechas with maxi´s older brother, nico, and nico´s friend, leo, for the 12th of febrero and we should be able to set a fecha with maxi for the same day or a week sooner. the family is really cool and they accept everything we have taught and they are actually reading the folletos y el libro de mormón! there are tons of inactive members that we find all the time. there are about 100 priesthood holders in our ward but only about 15 are active. we found one man, hno lepicheo, that is a chef, and he has been making us lunches about once a week. yummmm. milanesa con huevos y jamón y los mejores papas fritas que he probado en mi vida! me encanta. is there another temple in construction in Argentina? i have heard that there is another temple in cordoba but i am pretty sure there is only one temple in buenos aires. this morning i cut e´ escobar´s hair and i did an awesome job. i am coming to know i have thousands of hidden talents but i never imagined cutting hair would be one of them...
i talked to pte peterson this week because he came to the zone and we all had interviews with him. i asked him if he could send some bigger missionaries to my ward because my comp and i are the same height and we aren`t the biggest, but pte made it sound like he was thinking of transferring us both to send in new elders there. i sure hope not because things are just starting to come around!!! my last companion in the mtc, e´ page, is officially in argentina and i really want to see him again. pte peterson told me that he is in trevelín in the mountains and he wanted the pte to say hello for him. my companion and i have officially made a weekly tradition to go to Grido Helado every monday to buy 2 half kilos of ice cream and then we go to the beach to eat them. i discovered coco dulce de leche and bariloche chocolate. amazing. momma- there are sister missionaries in this mission but not too many. there are none in comodoro but i think they are all more in the northern areas. that is awesome to hear people are getting their mission calls. shouldn´t jeff alldredge be getting his mission call really soon? the missionaries here from different religions get really angry with people when they don´t want to talk with them. one jehovah´s witness was talking with a woman from our ward when we walked up and said hello but we didn´t stay because we had servicio to move a bunch of dirt for a family that is building a house. the next time we talked to that hermana, she told us that the jehovah´s witness said ´´i was just about to talk about jehovah when those mormons showed up, now, i am sorry but i can´t do it.´´ she then said ´´well if you can´t have love for mormons, you cant have love to teach anyone so you must not have the truth. please leave.´´ i was impressed with her. i love bearing testimony with them because they don´t believe jehovah is jesus so i say things like ´´and i know that the great Jehovah, the lord Jesus Christ, lives and loves everyone of us.´´ it is great to see their faces twist because there is nothing they can do to respond.
lately it has been really hot so my comp and i leave the window open at night and because there is a ton of dust and sand everywhere, we find tons of little footprints of a cat all over the pensión in the morning. in the kitchen, the trash was ripped apart and spread everywhere because the cat wanted the meat that we threw away. the trash system in argentina is a mess because everyone has these little metal baskets in front of their houses that they are supposed to put their trash. nobody does it and there are diapers flying everywhere in the wind. we dont have big garbage bags, just little plastic bags to fit in this little basket so we have ´´trash corners´´. its bad but we do pretty well to contain it and keep our place looking tidy but it is hard when those dumb cats spread it around. my comp wants to catch that cat and feed it to our starving dogs. we have two that guard our pensión and i named them Tontito and Amigo de Tontito (Dummy and Friend of Dummy). my comp likes those names a lot. here, to tell people that they are stupid is VERY strong and people get very offended. i thought that was interesting because in the US it isn´t that bad.
there are 2 main futbol teams in argentina- boca and river. these teams are very popular and people get killed here because they are fans of different teams. here in abásalo, people are mainly fans of river so when people ask me which team i am for, i say am for river. people here are not respectful at all. when they ask me how to say ´´you are a (bleepin´ bleep)´´ in english, i tell them you say ´i wish i was missionary too´´. it is really funny to hear them shouting those things at me as we walk away because they think they are cussing me out. fetchin´ chorros... so dumb. i am pretty comfortable speaking castellano and i it is a lot easier to speak with people now. i feel like i am in my element now and things are going great. i have definitely come a long way in the last 3 months and i like looking back in my journal to see the challenges i used to have. the last few weeks i have been focusing on teaching people, not lessons and it has been incredibly easier to understand people. when i open my mouth, i dont think about how to conjugate verbs or about using proper grammar, but i just talk to the people and say the things they need to hear. after those lessons, i feel great. i LOVE being a missionary and it is so much fun! thank you for the packages, they were so awesome! now i just need some pictures from mis papás, shane, annie, jamie, and mollie. there is this one old woman in my ward that asks if i have more pictures from my family every week and i am ashamed to tell her that i still dont have pictures. i regret not bringing any from home but i´m working on sending my own pictures from the mish... but it is a little difficult to whip out my camera right now. there´s a lamanita next to me that is watching me pretty close right now so the pictures will wait for next week.
¡¡Con mucho amor de su misionero favorito!!
Elder Summers
this week i received both of the paquetes (packages) that i have been waiting for! thank you! thank you! thank you! thank you! i look so studly in my glasses and when the people look at me in the street, they no longer think of me as some fetchin´ gringo. they think ´´oh my goodness, i want to learn something from him´´. yes, they have already made a huge impact here. by the way, abásalo is a small town outside of comodoro rivadavia and it is kind of like the ghetto part of the area. other than that, i also received the package from jacie and it was the best-est most awesome package ever!! i loved getting it and i loved the pictures and the scripture mastery cards! they are very useful and i am very grateful. i already received some little pictures from my mission president that i can use but i think the pictures you sent are way better. the pictures of me made me a little discouraged because i was way chubby before my mission. i think i will still show them i guess... please send me more pictures! now i only have one (now old and outdated) picture of the family and a bunch of jacie´s family, so if the rest of you guys want to be represented, you should send some pictures of yourselves (preferably with me or whatever). oh! and please start putting dates on the dear elder letters because the papers i receive do not tell me when the letters were sent.
there is one woman that we are teaching right now, Cecilia, that is accepting everything and wants to come to church. her mom was baptized years ago but has not been to church in a long time. cecilia has a son that is 8 years old (santi) that tells us all the time that he wants to be a missionary too and that family is very cool. she is waiting for an answer to her prayers about the church so the last time we talked to her, we just helped her to recognize the different ways that God answers prayers to know the truth. we are just waiting now. maxi is a stud because he came to church again this week without his family but he is very enthusiastic about the church and he is really helping his family. we set fechas with maxi´s older brother, nico, and nico´s friend, leo, for the 12th of febrero and we should be able to set a fecha with maxi for the same day or a week sooner. the family is really cool and they accept everything we have taught and they are actually reading the folletos y el libro de mormón! there are tons of inactive members that we find all the time. there are about 100 priesthood holders in our ward but only about 15 are active. we found one man, hno lepicheo, that is a chef, and he has been making us lunches about once a week. yummmm. milanesa con huevos y jamón y los mejores papas fritas que he probado en mi vida! me encanta. is there another temple in construction in Argentina? i have heard that there is another temple in cordoba but i am pretty sure there is only one temple in buenos aires. this morning i cut e´ escobar´s hair and i did an awesome job. i am coming to know i have thousands of hidden talents but i never imagined cutting hair would be one of them...
i talked to pte peterson this week because he came to the zone and we all had interviews with him. i asked him if he could send some bigger missionaries to my ward because my comp and i are the same height and we aren`t the biggest, but pte made it sound like he was thinking of transferring us both to send in new elders there. i sure hope not because things are just starting to come around!!! my last companion in the mtc, e´ page, is officially in argentina and i really want to see him again. pte peterson told me that he is in trevelín in the mountains and he wanted the pte to say hello for him. my companion and i have officially made a weekly tradition to go to Grido Helado every monday to buy 2 half kilos of ice cream and then we go to the beach to eat them. i discovered coco dulce de leche and bariloche chocolate. amazing. momma- there are sister missionaries in this mission but not too many. there are none in comodoro but i think they are all more in the northern areas. that is awesome to hear people are getting their mission calls. shouldn´t jeff alldredge be getting his mission call really soon? the missionaries here from different religions get really angry with people when they don´t want to talk with them. one jehovah´s witness was talking with a woman from our ward when we walked up and said hello but we didn´t stay because we had servicio to move a bunch of dirt for a family that is building a house. the next time we talked to that hermana, she told us that the jehovah´s witness said ´´i was just about to talk about jehovah when those mormons showed up, now, i am sorry but i can´t do it.´´ she then said ´´well if you can´t have love for mormons, you cant have love to teach anyone so you must not have the truth. please leave.´´ i was impressed with her. i love bearing testimony with them because they don´t believe jehovah is jesus so i say things like ´´and i know that the great Jehovah, the lord Jesus Christ, lives and loves everyone of us.´´ it is great to see their faces twist because there is nothing they can do to respond.
lately it has been really hot so my comp and i leave the window open at night and because there is a ton of dust and sand everywhere, we find tons of little footprints of a cat all over the pensión in the morning. in the kitchen, the trash was ripped apart and spread everywhere because the cat wanted the meat that we threw away. the trash system in argentina is a mess because everyone has these little metal baskets in front of their houses that they are supposed to put their trash. nobody does it and there are diapers flying everywhere in the wind. we dont have big garbage bags, just little plastic bags to fit in this little basket so we have ´´trash corners´´. its bad but we do pretty well to contain it and keep our place looking tidy but it is hard when those dumb cats spread it around. my comp wants to catch that cat and feed it to our starving dogs. we have two that guard our pensión and i named them Tontito and Amigo de Tontito (Dummy and Friend of Dummy). my comp likes those names a lot. here, to tell people that they are stupid is VERY strong and people get very offended. i thought that was interesting because in the US it isn´t that bad.
there are 2 main futbol teams in argentina- boca and river. these teams are very popular and people get killed here because they are fans of different teams. here in abásalo, people are mainly fans of river so when people ask me which team i am for, i say am for river. people here are not respectful at all. when they ask me how to say ´´you are a (bleepin´ bleep)´´ in english, i tell them you say ´i wish i was missionary too´´. it is really funny to hear them shouting those things at me as we walk away because they think they are cussing me out. fetchin´ chorros... so dumb. i am pretty comfortable speaking castellano and i it is a lot easier to speak with people now. i feel like i am in my element now and things are going great. i have definitely come a long way in the last 3 months and i like looking back in my journal to see the challenges i used to have. the last few weeks i have been focusing on teaching people, not lessons and it has been incredibly easier to understand people. when i open my mouth, i dont think about how to conjugate verbs or about using proper grammar, but i just talk to the people and say the things they need to hear. after those lessons, i feel great. i LOVE being a missionary and it is so much fun! thank you for the packages, they were so awesome! now i just need some pictures from mis papás, shane, annie, jamie, and mollie. there is this one old woman in my ward that asks if i have more pictures from my family every week and i am ashamed to tell her that i still dont have pictures. i regret not bringing any from home but i´m working on sending my own pictures from the mish... but it is a little difficult to whip out my camera right now. there´s a lamanita next to me that is watching me pretty close right now so the pictures will wait for next week.
¡¡Con mucho amor de su misionero favorito!!
Elder Summers
Friday, January 21, 2011
Day 82
¡Hola Familia!
Another week of amazing-ness. i told my companion a lot this week how fast the time seemed to go. these past few weeks have just flown by!!! last monday, we never went to play more futbol, but we took a bus with another district to go to the beach. it was so awesome there but we couldnt go in... that was kind of a downer. BUT- we are planning on going again to play some futbol and eat some vaca loca (sandwich place that is incredible with eggs and milanesa, and every amazing thing imaginable). should be great. one time on the bus, it was only me and e´ escobar in the back of the bus with 3 lamanitas (we call them that sometimes because they are darker than the other people and they arent the nicest) ahead of us. we watched them very closely and they were so dumb with all of their hand signals and they would turn around a lot to watch us. we knew they wanted ´´all the money that we carried with us all the time´´. at one bus stop, as the doors starting closing again, we jumped off the bus and just ran away. it was intense but it was pretty fun too. we looked back and they all stood up on the bus to follow but there was nothing they could do. i felt like jason bourne or something. i also had some samuel the lamanite experiences as well this week. one time we were walking down this hill and this dog starting attacking me but a huge rock the size of my fist pegged the dog in the neck. we looked over and there were some punks throwing rocks at us but we just walked away and none of them hit us. the dog started pursuing us again because it was possessed or something and i heard it whelp again as we left. awesome.
there is a book that my comp is reading right now called the ´´teachings of the prophet joseph smith´´ and he tells me that i should get it in english because there was a lot of stuff in there that blew his mind and he would make loud noises when he read something awesome. i want to read really bad so i am going to ask pte peterson if i can get it in english or something but i think i could be fine reading it in castellano too... i saw a 3 legged dog and a puppy kill a cat together. that was something i will probably never see again and my comp really enjoyed watching it. that puppy was so brave.
ihadthe opportunity to give a woman a blessing of healing this week. when we talked to her, she was crying and miserable saying her heart was really hurting and the doctors dont know what is wrong with her. her eyes were very heavy and she had difficulties breathing. i asked her ´´do you have faith in Jesus Christ?´´. she said she did so i offered to give her a blessing of healing and she accepted. in ten minutes she was a completely different person and she was laughing as we left the house. she hasnt come to church though and she wont get married to her ´´partner´´ because she was married before and she doesn´t want to be married to anyone else. we had 3 investigators come to church yesterday!!!!!!! that was HUGE!!! rosa and her daughter came, rosa wants to be baptized but her ´´partner´´ is already married to a woman in peru with 2 kids and he wont get divorced to marry her. maxi also came. he is 14 and he came to church all by himself. his dad was baptized like 20 years ago but is now menos activo his family is very cool and none of them are members. yet. i taught the lesson for him all by myself because my comp went to teach a different class for sunday school and i had direct the class for investigators. i just starting talking about the espiritu santo and everything just went from there. i surprised myself with how well i was able to do it and i am glad i had the help from my father in heaven. now, maxi wants to baptized but we havent taught his family anything so far. it was so awesome. we had divisions with other elders in the area next to ours. elder perez stayed the night in my pension while my comp stayed at the other place. we worked a whole day together but the day was very strange. pte peterson asked us to complete a survey online so we went to a ciber close to e´ perez´s pension and we had a little extra time before our next cita. he wanted to play a quick prank on his comp so we snuck into their pensión and we hid all of the valuables and money and rifled through everything to look like they were robbed because they left their window open. we met up with the other elders and we all went to their place together but his comp didnt really do anything. my comp was very upset and ran to tell the family that pay rent to but we already told them what we did so they were in on it. e´ perez hid in the bathroom because he couldnt keep a straight face and i was left by myself to deal with them. he pretended to call pte peterson and then my comp wanted to say a prayer before e´ perez finally told them anything. it was great. mom- we email pte peterson every week and i sometimes get personal emails from him to see how i am doing because he knows how abásalo can be. i actually have an interview with him on wednesday because he is coming to comodoro this week and i am excited to see him again. still no glasses but my zone leaders made it sound like i got lots of stuff in la bolsa del correo this week. i hope i got my packages today... we will see. dad- i am actually doing very well with my journal writing and i have written in it every day on my mission so far. i have another journal that i write in everyday for my goals and for the things that i learn during my study time everyday. it is awesome looking back because i can remember those days perfectly when i read in my journal. wasn´t evita´s name eva duarte before she was married? we live off of a street called eva duarte and our chapel is on the corner of that street and huergo. oh- and i do at least 50 really good pushups everyday when i wake up so i can be extra buff when i go home. my comp is a beast in the mornings and he is very serious when he works out. that is not a time for jokes... i have read a lot with my study time. so far on my mission i have read the book of mormon, d&c, the pearl of great price, almost half of the old testament, our search for happiness by e´ ballard, and i am reading Jesus the Christ right now. almost done. i have learned so much and i am just ´´thirsting´´ for more knowledge. i found lots and lots of scriptures and i am working on including more from the new testament along with the BoM in the teachings. i am getting very good and my companion is really good at explaining everything. i have learned so much from him and i am grateful to have him as a friend. oh, how much would a roundtrip flight to costa rica cost? i told him i might go to his wedding if he converts his girlfriend and marries her in the temple after the mission. i am so excited for the bolsa because i can feel lots of love coming in the mail. we will see... i feel like i have made tons of progress here. in church, the people have watched me progress and tell me how much better i have become because my first week i didn´t talk very much. now i almost understand everything and i can say pretty much whatever i want. the natives tell me i am very good at conjugating the words i can use por and para a lot better than any of the gringo missionaries they have ever talked to. i take that as a compliment even though i dont consider myself a gringo. lately, i have been surprised how much these people will tell the missionaries because they are ´´men of God´´. there are lots of people here with lots of problems and it is so sad to sit and listen but we do our best to comfort them and demonstrate how the gospel will actually help them. i am grateful for this chance to be a missionary and i know that it has changed me already for the rest of my life. i love abásalo and these people (aunque hay muchísimos chorros y lamanitas) and i love to serve them. i know that the Savior lives and i see His hand in everything. thank you all for all of your support and i love you all!
¡¡¡Con una sonrisa y mucho amor!!!
Elder Summers
Another week of amazing-ness. i told my companion a lot this week how fast the time seemed to go. these past few weeks have just flown by!!! last monday, we never went to play more futbol, but we took a bus with another district to go to the beach. it was so awesome there but we couldnt go in... that was kind of a downer. BUT- we are planning on going again to play some futbol and eat some vaca loca (sandwich place that is incredible with eggs and milanesa, and every amazing thing imaginable). should be great. one time on the bus, it was only me and e´ escobar in the back of the bus with 3 lamanitas (we call them that sometimes because they are darker than the other people and they arent the nicest) ahead of us. we watched them very closely and they were so dumb with all of their hand signals and they would turn around a lot to watch us. we knew they wanted ´´all the money that we carried with us all the time´´. at one bus stop, as the doors starting closing again, we jumped off the bus and just ran away. it was intense but it was pretty fun too. we looked back and they all stood up on the bus to follow but there was nothing they could do. i felt like jason bourne or something. i also had some samuel the lamanite experiences as well this week. one time we were walking down this hill and this dog starting attacking me but a huge rock the size of my fist pegged the dog in the neck. we looked over and there were some punks throwing rocks at us but we just walked away and none of them hit us. the dog started pursuing us again because it was possessed or something and i heard it whelp again as we left. awesome.
there is a book that my comp is reading right now called the ´´teachings of the prophet joseph smith´´ and he tells me that i should get it in english because there was a lot of stuff in there that blew his mind and he would make loud noises when he read something awesome. i want to read really bad so i am going to ask pte peterson if i can get it in english or something but i think i could be fine reading it in castellano too... i saw a 3 legged dog and a puppy kill a cat together. that was something i will probably never see again and my comp really enjoyed watching it. that puppy was so brave.
ihadthe opportunity to give a woman a blessing of healing this week. when we talked to her, she was crying and miserable saying her heart was really hurting and the doctors dont know what is wrong with her. her eyes were very heavy and she had difficulties breathing. i asked her ´´do you have faith in Jesus Christ?´´. she said she did so i offered to give her a blessing of healing and she accepted. in ten minutes she was a completely different person and she was laughing as we left the house. she hasnt come to church though and she wont get married to her ´´partner´´ because she was married before and she doesn´t want to be married to anyone else. we had 3 investigators come to church yesterday!!!!!!! that was HUGE!!! rosa and her daughter came, rosa wants to be baptized but her ´´partner´´ is already married to a woman in peru with 2 kids and he wont get divorced to marry her. maxi also came. he is 14 and he came to church all by himself. his dad was baptized like 20 years ago but is now menos activo his family is very cool and none of them are members. yet. i taught the lesson for him all by myself because my comp went to teach a different class for sunday school and i had direct the class for investigators. i just starting talking about the espiritu santo and everything just went from there. i surprised myself with how well i was able to do it and i am glad i had the help from my father in heaven. now, maxi wants to baptized but we havent taught his family anything so far. it was so awesome. we had divisions with other elders in the area next to ours. elder perez stayed the night in my pension while my comp stayed at the other place. we worked a whole day together but the day was very strange. pte peterson asked us to complete a survey online so we went to a ciber close to e´ perez´s pension and we had a little extra time before our next cita. he wanted to play a quick prank on his comp so we snuck into their pensión and we hid all of the valuables and money and rifled through everything to look like they were robbed because they left their window open. we met up with the other elders and we all went to their place together but his comp didnt really do anything. my comp was very upset and ran to tell the family that pay rent to but we already told them what we did so they were in on it. e´ perez hid in the bathroom because he couldnt keep a straight face and i was left by myself to deal with them. he pretended to call pte peterson and then my comp wanted to say a prayer before e´ perez finally told them anything. it was great. mom- we email pte peterson every week and i sometimes get personal emails from him to see how i am doing because he knows how abásalo can be. i actually have an interview with him on wednesday because he is coming to comodoro this week and i am excited to see him again. still no glasses but my zone leaders made it sound like i got lots of stuff in la bolsa del correo this week. i hope i got my packages today... we will see. dad- i am actually doing very well with my journal writing and i have written in it every day on my mission so far. i have another journal that i write in everyday for my goals and for the things that i learn during my study time everyday. it is awesome looking back because i can remember those days perfectly when i read in my journal. wasn´t evita´s name eva duarte before she was married? we live off of a street called eva duarte and our chapel is on the corner of that street and huergo. oh- and i do at least 50 really good pushups everyday when i wake up so i can be extra buff when i go home. my comp is a beast in the mornings and he is very serious when he works out. that is not a time for jokes... i have read a lot with my study time. so far on my mission i have read the book of mormon, d&c, the pearl of great price, almost half of the old testament, our search for happiness by e´ ballard, and i am reading Jesus the Christ right now. almost done. i have learned so much and i am just ´´thirsting´´ for more knowledge. i found lots and lots of scriptures and i am working on including more from the new testament along with the BoM in the teachings. i am getting very good and my companion is really good at explaining everything. i have learned so much from him and i am grateful to have him as a friend. oh, how much would a roundtrip flight to costa rica cost? i told him i might go to his wedding if he converts his girlfriend and marries her in the temple after the mission. i am so excited for the bolsa because i can feel lots of love coming in the mail. we will see... i feel like i have made tons of progress here. in church, the people have watched me progress and tell me how much better i have become because my first week i didn´t talk very much. now i almost understand everything and i can say pretty much whatever i want. the natives tell me i am very good at conjugating the words i can use por and para a lot better than any of the gringo missionaries they have ever talked to. i take that as a compliment even though i dont consider myself a gringo. lately, i have been surprised how much these people will tell the missionaries because they are ´´men of God´´. there are lots of people here with lots of problems and it is so sad to sit and listen but we do our best to comfort them and demonstrate how the gospel will actually help them. i am grateful for this chance to be a missionary and i know that it has changed me already for the rest of my life. i love abásalo and these people (aunque hay muchísimos chorros y lamanitas) and i love to serve them. i know that the Savior lives and i see His hand in everything. thank you all for all of your support and i love you all!
¡¡¡Con una sonrisa y mucho amor!!!
Elder Summers
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