Jan 2014 - Scott & Ann

1-6-2014 

On New Year's Eve we had another BBQ, this time it was pig and cow with the Jara family. After that we hosted a New Year's Eve party at the chapel. It was lightly attended for the first four hours while people came and went eating and playing games.  But then at a quarter after midnight, everyone showed up.  Fortunately we still had two full cakes left and a piñata that the kids loved.

Argentine Piñata - a huge balloon filled with candy!

On New Year's Day guess what we did?  We ate ASADO, again!  This time it was with the Estrella and Vera families.  What a great way to start the new year.  We had pig, cow, and lamb this time and ate until we rolled out the door.  Its a funny thing that for nine months we have searched for the highly acclaimed "Argentine Asado" and have been unable to find it until now, and now it is everywhere we turn.  It could take months to work off the last week!

We spent the afternoon picking current berries in the Alarcon's garden.  They have tons of current bushes.  They harvest the berries and sell them to a famous "Casa de Te" just down the road where they use them all year long to make cakes and pastries.  It was just like being home again working in the garden.

On Friday, we had a wonderful lesson on the Plan of Salvation with the Alarcon sisters.  They were deeply touched to understand where their deceased mother and father are right now and have asked us to do temple work for their mother when we go to the Buenos Aires temple next month with the branch.

Saturday morning was our YM/YW combined district activity.  We hiked the "Llama Trail" next to La Hoya (a famous ski resort in Esquel).  We saw a mother llama (guanaco) and a baby llama (chulengo) on the trip and hiked a great distance to where we almost reached the snow.

1-12-2014 

We worked a lot with family history this week.  One by one, we visited everyone who is going to the temple next month and gave them the new pamphlet called "My Family."  We worked with them to start filling out the pages with information about themselves and their ancestors and then we created log-ins to www.lds.org and www.familysearch.org so they could enter the information and create their family trees.  The Jara family already has five deceased family members on the dad's side that are approved and ready to go to the temple.

Mario "Erni" Jara decided during the week that he wanted to be baptized on Saturday.  He had attended church more than what is necessary over the past three months so all he had to do was finish up a few lessons on the commandments to be ready.  Erni's entire life has changed since he came to Trevelin and it has been a miracle to see.  The first week in October he and his girlfriend had a fight and she told him that he couldn't see his daughter anymore.  He left the city with the intention of committing suicide and wandered around for a couple of days until he bought a bus ticket to Esquel thinking that he may see out his father and talk things over.  Once he arrived, we were in the middle of giving lessons to his father's new wife and their daughter (Analia and Micaela) and he listened in on our lessons from a distance with a lot of skepticism.  Little by little he came a closer to the table and participated more each visit until one day we suggested that he start from the beginning and take the missionary lessons so that he would at least know what his father believed and be informed about what the Mormons believe.  He said that he had studied just about every major religion in the world and was yet to find one that he really felt was God's true church, but that he had never looked into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was willing to see what was different in our teachings from all the rest.  Our first lesson was about the Restoration and we gave him a Book of Mormon.  He later told us that he took the book with the intention of reading it to find all of its errors so he could prove to us that it was not true.  We set up weekly lessons with him and taught him the Gospel from the beginning. Before long, he realized there was something to this and really started doing his part to read and pray.  His prayers were answered over and over and he gained a testimony.  He is now in the Book of Helaman in the Book of Mormon and gets up early every day to read because he loves it so much.  He was baptized on Saturday - January 11, 2014 - and it was a very special day for the branch.  It was a very spiritual baptismal service and a strength to the entire branch.

The Young Men had an activity of food from other countries and we made Ceviche from Ecuador, Peanut Butter Sandwiches from the USA, and an Eggplant dish from El Salvador.  Each young man had his favorite but the one they really loved was the eggplant. 

The main speaker for church didn't show up yesterday so President Estrella asked me if I would give a twenty-five minute talk just as Sacrament Meeting was starting.  Sure thing...president...whatever you need!  It went well, in fact, even than the talk I prepared for hours and gave in our Ward Conference.

1-20-2014 

We reorganized the home teaching for the ward this week and did more work on family history for the families of those going to the temple.  We have a little snag with the temple trip - apparently the reservation didn't really get tied down and now they want to charge us twice as much as we were originally told to fly to Buenos Aires.  We are looking at other options including a bus and we may end up holding off until April so we can get cheaper flights.  We should know this week.

We are finding a few new investigators here and there.  One twelve-year old girl we befriended a few months ago named Macarena came to our movie night on Saturday where we showed "Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration."  She also came to church the next day.

1-27-2014 

This week we took Gustavo to his home town to gather family history data so he can do temple work for his deceased ancestors.  A month ago, he asked his sister to help him gather information from their parents (she lives with their parents) so he could baptize their dead relatives - she freaked out and told him no.  We collected a bunch of scriptural references from the Bible that he could share with her regarding baptisms for the dead and he went back and shared them with her and his mother.  He explained how everyone of Heavenly Father's children that have ever been born on this earth will have the opportunity to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ (whether in this life or in the spirit world) and choose to follow him.  In the end, Gustavo's family understood and he now has a lot of information along with the photos we took of tombstones at the cemetery.  Things are moving along for his family's temple work now.

We postponed our temple trip until April because there was a problem with the flights and the cost we were originally quoted.  We plan to go on a bus in April and it will be a twenty-six hour ride.  This will work to our advantage because it will allow some people who were not quite ready to go in February to be part of the trip.

On Thursday the sister missionaries called to tell us that the husband of a member had died the day before.  From our previous experience with funerals we knew that it was all but over, but we made some quick calls and discovered that the viewing was over and that the cemetery service was scheduled for five o´clock.  It was about four at the time so we made a few adjustments to our appointments and ran over to the cemetery.  We arrived a half-hour early and watched a few children and grandchildren gather.  When they saw us they thought we were tourists, but once they realized we were missionaries they asked us to offer a prayer.  We took the opportunity to dedicate the grave. 

We spent a lot of time this week helping a widow in our branch.  She is 77 years old and struggles with the shower because of her size.  We installed support bars in her bathroom and shower along with a new hand-held shower and a special shower seat so she can sit while showering.  She has used it twice and is really happy!

We also fixed water heaters and unstopped plugged toilets this week for two of our elderly investigators.   

We are working hard to transfer everything in our heads and in our computers to the branch before we finish and spent a lot of time this week organizing and updating forms and systems to be put on the computer at the church where everyone will have access to them after we leave.

Dec 2013 - Scott & Ann

December was a great month because much of the work we started last March finally came to fruition.  We had five people get baptized this month and our attendance at Sacrament Meeting averaged 56 (there were 12 members in attendance the first week we arrived in March).  Everyone (missionaries, members, local leaders) has worked so hard to help this little branch grow and become stronger and it has been a miracle for us to see it happen and be part of it. 

9 Dec 2014 

The sister missionaries in our branch had a baptism this week.  Candela is a little girl who came to her first "open chapel" activity on April 20th and we have worked with her off and on since.  Her mother is also taking lessons from the missionaries and gave her permission to be baptized.  Her aunt and uncle are members so she should have good support in that way.

The sister up north who retrieved the birth certificate for the Jara family got really busy and forgot to send it in the mail.  We called her on Thursday (the day we expected the document to arrive in the mail) and said we were all excited about the wedding on Friday and the baptism on Saturday and needed to know how much we owed her.  At that point she confessed that the document was not even in the mail yet.  We had her send it express and are hoping to receive it today or tomorrow.


Yesterday was the branch Primary program.  The kids were wonderful and we even had a little girl wander in off the street who jumped up there and participated the entire time.  Of course, she just mouthed the words because she didn't know any of the songs, but it was inspiring to see someone feel the spirit of what was happening and want to be part of it. 

We had 58 people at church yesterday which is really awesome attendance for our branch.

16 Dec 2014 

What an awesome week! 

On Tuesday, the Jara's document arrived in the mail.  We immediately went with them to get registered at the Civil Registry for the marriage.  They were married on Thursday and we had a nice little ceremony where we threw rice and took a lot of photos.  After that we took them out for pizza and ice cream.  

Next we got geared up for patriarchal blessing and temple recommends and issued a calling to Mario Jara (the dad) to be our Branch Mission Leader.  Waste no time!  On Saturday Mario baptized his wife (Analia) and his daugther (Micaela - 9 years old).  It was a beautiful baptism and they are truly converted because they have been trying to get to this point now for about six months and during that entire time they just kept studying full speed ahead.  

Today, they were both confirmed in church, again by Mario.  The are being kicked out of where they live now because the landlord doesn't like Mormons - they will have to find a new place by the end of the year.  They live in the most humble of circumstances - you can even see outside through the cracks in the wood wall.

We met a girl at the grocery store who is a cashier.  She speaks a little English so we try to go through her line when we can to help her practice.  We offered to teach her some private English classes and spent about five hours with her last week helping her prepare for her English finals and oral exam at the school she attends.  She is 28 and just finishing her fourth year of law at the university.  She is a very bright girl.  We were a little sad to hear that school was coming to an end, thinking that we would not be able to see her much over the summer, but then she said she wants to continue meeting with us and that she wants to hear our lessons about the Scriptures.  Excellent!!!  Her first lesson will be this coming Tuesday.

The mom and dad of the little girl (Ambar) we baptized in July are both taking lessons right now and want to be baptized this month as part of the "White Christmas" we are planning.  We have spent a lot of time with him helping him understand the Gospel and gain a testimony.  He is a very good man and is attracted to the Church and the Gospel because of what it can do for his family - he sees what good it has done for his kids and now he wants to be part of it.

We had 59 people at Sacrament Meeting today.  The missionaries are so good at helping round up the members and investigators for church - today we even had two less-actives come that have not been in the church for years, along with a ton of investigators.  Our Gospel Principles class was so full that we honestly didn't have room for another person and they started sending people to Gospel Doctrine after the room maxed out around 22 people.  That is exciting!

12-23-13 

The Young Men were scheduled to go camping this week, but with the rat problems this year we determined it was too dangerous to chance Hantavirus so instead we rented a cabin on a river.  Five YM showed up.  We roasted hot dogs over a fire and they stayed up until four in the morning talking.  We fished the next day on the river.  It's the closest thing they will ever get to a Boy Scout overnighter. 

On Saturday, Paola Toro and Juan Caniu were baptized.  They were the first people to greet us when we arrived in Trevelin.  That first evening we were in the grocery store (La Anonima) purchasing cleaning supplies and she ran up to us and was very excited to see missionaries in their town because she had two young boys that were members and wanted them to get involved.  We have worked with them for nine months and it took the effort of everyone (missionaries, members, their own children) to get them to this point.  It was an exciting day for everyone.

12-30-2013

We had a pre-Christmas dinner with the Caniu family on Monday night.  They had the house decked out with a strand of lights outside and a decorated tree inside.

On Christmas Day our district got together for a little party at our chapel.  We had barbecued lamb (asado) and exchanged gifts.  After that we went to President Christian Giorgi and his wife Dana's house for another BBQ - this time it was goat and spent the afternoon with the two of them.

The day after Christmas we had Christmas Dinner with Elena and Amelia Alarcon.  They are the best cooks we have met in Argentina and we are always amazed at what they bring out of their kitchen - just like home!

On Saturday, the YM had a cycling activity.  Only one young man had his own bike so we ended up renting the others and completed a twelve-mile trip in the country towards Lake Futalaufquen.  It is some of the most beautiful countryside around.

On Sunday we made the transition from Missionary branch leadership to local.  President Walter Estrella was sustained as the new branch president and I was released.  He and his family have been here in Trevelin now for five to six months.  When they came here, they both said, "We have no idea why or how we ended up in Trevelin."  We all knew why and knew that The Lord had guided them here to help strengthen this branch.  President Estrella called Mario Jara as his first counselor and me as his second.

Nov 2013 - Scott & Ann

11-25-2013 

We have only had two hot days so far and keep wondering when summer will get here.  We still have our heaters turned on and use them every day.  It is still very cold here and very windy which makes it feel colder than it probably is. 

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the Caniu (Ambar, Ignacio, & Irving) family.  They are the only ones who celebrate in our area because they picked up the tradition three years ago from the missionaries.  Turkey is next to impossible to find, so we had chicken.  It was a nice dinner of cold finger-food like hotdogs in a blanket, chicken strips, ham roll-ups, and an apple salad.  

We had a wonderful FHE where we had a scavenger hunt based on scriptures where the people had to hurry around and gather items in each scripture and race against other teams.  But the real lesson was on service.  We had four stages situations where people could stop and help someone or just keep running to help their team win.  In the end, we gave them more points for stopping to help just once than if they had collected everything listed in the hunt.

One of our best investigators (Jara Family) is finally a few days away from getting the birth certificate they need to get married so they can get baptized.  They have been waiting over three months now for all of the documentation to come together.  Working with this family has been one of the highlights of our mission.  The document should show up soon!

We have worked really hard to get everyone who is worthy a current temple recommend along with patriarchal blessing recommends for those who are ready.  We spent two full days doing nothing but interviews so we could have things ready for our mission president to sign when he came to town.  It is nice to get things like this ironed out and updated because in a little branch like this they tend to get overlooked, especially when the temple is so far away that most people have no real hope of attending any time soon.

We had a district conference and Gustavo Painenao was ordained an Elder.

11-18-2013 

We had a great charla fogonera (fireside) last night and focused on how to gift a Book of Mormon.  A few of our members are catching the vision.  We have the goal for everyone to give a friend a Book of Mormon or invite someone to hear the Gospel message between now and Christmas - Elder Ballard's challenge from the last conference.  We are hoping for a White Christmas (a baptismal service the week of Christmas) this year.

11-11-2013 

This week we had a gas shortage.  Apparently the truck drivers went on strike and people were coming from all parts to buy gas in our city because the others were out.  Of course, it didn't take long before there were super long lines and car wrecks created by all of the chaos.  We waited an hour in line to buy gas this week and were grateful to get some because many people waited only to be turned away after it ran out.

We are working with Gustavo and helping him get prepared to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood at the end of this month.  We opened the missionary portal for him this week so he can start on the medical portion of the paperwork.   

We had a ward service project to dedicate the grave of a member who passed away a year ago.  He is the grandfather that everyone is related to here and the one they all talk about and want to be like.  When he died, nobody bothered to tell the branch president and since they bury people within twenty-four hours here it all happened so quickly that he his grave was not dedicated.  In our ward council we discussed it and the plan was to take everyone (adults and children) to dedicate the grave.  Then the Primary president said that we should not take the children to the cemetery.  I pushed her on it because I couldn't see any reason why the Primary children would not benefit from the experience too.  Then she explained that in the public cemetery, not everyone is buried in a coffin or a cement box and that with the amount of water they get in this area there is a lot of shifting and movement of the ground.  She said that it was possible to go this time of year, after the heavy rains, and see things poking out of the ground.  That did it - I agreed that the kids were better off at the church drawing pictures of Jesus than to be subject to nightmares the rest of their lives.  The dedication went well, and thankfully we didn't see anything disturbing.

We had a new family move into the branch on Friday - they are from Bahia Blanca (the coast near Buenos Aires).  They should be a great help to us because they have two Melchizedek Priesthood holders in their family.  We also found a less-active fellow named Saul Casanova who let us and has agreed to have the Elders over this week to teach him the Gospel so he can understand how it really is and get prepared for the last phase of his life.

11-4-2013 

We are starting to make the transition between us and the members on a few things now and this week we started with FHE.  For probably the first time in six years a family in the ward (rather than the missionaries) was in charge of the lesson, game, and treat for FHE.  It was one of the best we have ever had and everyone loved it.  We are getting about 25 people a week out to FHE and it has been a big boost for many of the recently reactivated members.  

We baptized Silvia this week.  Her sons, along with a sister, parent-napped her and hid her so she could not be baptized last Saturday, but once she resurfaced she said she still wanted to be baptized so we went ahead and had a service on Tuesday.  She is a sweet lady. 

The Elders and Hermanas in our branch are working hard and continue to turn out miracles just about every day.  We  are so grateful to have their help because we could not accomplish the amazing progress that is happening without them.Gustavo Painenao, who was baptized in July, has read the Book of Mormon twice now and will be receiving the Melchizedek Priesthood at the end of this month.  We are starting his missionary paperwork this month too.  He is excited.

We hosted a treasure hunt for our combined activity on Saturday and it was great.  We gave them scripture clues which led them from one location on the church property to another and eventually ended at a fruit tree with a treasure of candy.  We then had a lesson on real treasures and talked about families, Jesus Christ, temples, and scriptures.  There were five young-women investigators who came to the activity and we were excited that some young women are finally coming out to our Mutual activities.

We have had an average attendance at Sacrament Meeting over the past four weeks of 50!

Oct 2013 - Breanna & Zachary

Oct 2013 - Scott & Ann

10-28-2013 

On monday for Family Home Evening (FHE) we created a Jeopardy game.  It was really fun for the ward members and our attendance at FHE has doubled - we now average around 24 and we can't afford to feed everyone.  We think we will just heat up more water and pass more MATE around to get them full.

We found a really cool (new) fast-food restaurant that offers the traditional pizza, pasta, and empanadas but the awesome thing is that every Thursday they celebrate with international recipes and this last week we had Chinese food - how cool is that? Previous to that we have had Hungarian goulash and Arabian chicken.  Thursday is practically our favorite day now!

We have a new investigator - his name is Mario and he is the son of a member.  He recently came to town to live with his dad and start a new life.  We got to know him through teaching his dad and now he has asked if we can teach him too.

We taught the YM how to play American Football this week.  We couldn't find a real football anywhere so we ended up purchasing a rugby ball for $35 and making do.

Our branch had a baptism this week.  Eliesar and Silvia were scheduled to be baptized on Saturday evening.  We had zone conference all day and when the Elders finally got back to Trevelin to round everyone up for the baptism, Silvia was missing.  She and Eliesar are brother and sister and live in separate homes on the same parcel of ground.  Eliesar had no idea where she was and had not seen her all day.  Silvia's two sons have had concerns about her being baptized because they are of another religion. One of her sons was at her house the night before trying to talk her out of it and must have "arranged" for her to take a little vacation so that she couldn't be baptized.  We will see when she shows up again.  Eliesar decided to move forward with his baptism and not wait for his sister to surface.

10-21-2013 

On Monday we got together with the District and had a BBQ called Choripan. After that, we went to see the tulip fields that are in bloom.  

The father of one of our part-member families told us this week that he wanted to take lessons and be baptized.  That was good news because for the past two years he has not allowed his wife and children to attend church or even have scriptures in their home.

We pulled off a nice Mother's Day for the branch with flowers (real and homemade), cake, alfajores, and a nice thought on paper with a bow.  

We had 68 people at church yesterday.  Thirteen of them were from the district, so if you back those out we really had 54 of our own.  That is a miracle to have so many people.  Nine of those were investigators!  The Mother's Day songs that the Primary kids sing were fabulous and it was a great Sacrament meeting. 

10-14-2013 

We received our new missionaries - an Hermana Solorzano from Ecuador and an Elder Finch from West Jordan.  We now have a trio with the Elders.

We continue to visit less-active families in the branch to teach them and encourage them to become active again.  We are finding good success with the Plan of Salvation lesson when we just draw it out on paper and then walk them through the scriptures that apply to each section.

One of our less-active young men was sustained to receive the Aaronic Priesthood (Sharo) this week and we are happy with his progress.  His entire family has come back to church and are a great support to the branch.

10-7-2013 

We have a young lady (Daiana) who wants to be baptized, but can't until she gets married to her novio (boyfriend).  She is diligent about reading the assignments.  This is the girl whose baby we gave a name and a blessing to about two months ago.  We had a great lesson with her this week and are excited to see her progress.  Gustavo, her novio, says they will get married in December so we will start to help them get prepared.

We were able to watch conference in English over the weekend - it was a real treat.  We spent two hours trying to invite and round up people to go see conference and in the end took a woman who was going to take the bus anyway.  It is sad that something so great as conference is not appreciated and treasured for what it really is.  We will keep working with our members to help them grow their faith.

We find ourselves being more direct with people as we realize we have been teaching some of them for two to three months now and need more action on their part to really progress.  We also realize that we are under seven months now to finish and want to reach more families in the time we have left.   We are sifting our current pool and constantly reevaluating what they need and where our efforts are best spent.

Sep 2013 - Breanna & Zachary

Sep 2013 - Scott & Ann

9-30-2013 

This week we had the normal stuff - activities and lessons.  We went to the local lake with our district on P-day last Monday.  We did a little reprioritizing of our members and investigators to make sure the frequency of our visits are appropriate and achieving intended results.  This will now allow us to squeeze a few new families into our teaching pool as we lessen the number of visits with those who don't need as much attention now.

On Wednesday we found a new investigator - the sister of a member who happened to be visiting her sister when we dropped in to tell them about some of our youth activities this week.  Ann showed no fear and went in for the contact while I spoke with the member for a few minutes.  Next thing I knew we were tying down a time to take the Elders to her home for an introduction.  It was exciting especially since we had prayed specifically that morning to find someone new that we could invite to hear our message.

We had a lot of lessons this week on the Plan of Salvation.  We knew this lesson was coming up with the Gough family so we read Preach My Gospel and studied the recommended scriptures and made a lesson plan. Turns out that we taught that lesson (or parts of it) to five families within a three-day period.

We made pancakes for the Alarcon sisters, but the ingredients really are different here and they just didn't turn out quite like the ones we make at home.  We know that Thanksgiving is approaching and don't want to be mistaken for wild turkeys so we are increasing the exercise.  It doesn't seem to make a difference though, we both weigh more now than before we increased the mileage.  We are thinking that the controlled substances need to be sugar, meat, white bread, pasta, cheese and a host of other things, but that doesn't leave us much to eat rather than beans and rice of which we already get plenty. :)

Lujan Silva invited all of the missionaries over to her home this Sunday for dinner as a going-away meal for Hermana Obando who has been here with us for six months and will be finishing her mission and going home next week.

9-16-2013 & 9-23-2013 

We have been blessed with a new family from Buenos Aires that is active.  We just made him (Walter Estrella) a counselor in the branch presidency and his wife (Teresa) a counselor in the Relief Society presidency.  He knows a lot about the MLS and will be a great help to the branch.  We can see things lining up so that when we leave next year the branch will be strong enough to press forward and continue growing. 

We had a great service project at the "old folks home" last week.  We provided a program with music, singing, stories, skits, and food.  We fed them pizza and sandwiches and it was touching to see the missionaries and branch members feed the people who were not able to feed themselves.

On Saturday we had a three-hour talent show.  It included paintings, drawing, ceramics, woodwork, etc along with the traditional singing and playing of instruments.  We (the missionaries) did a skit called "A Day in the Life of a Missionary."  It involved working together where one companion worked the arms of the missionary and the other worked the legs.  We had to wake up, prepare for the day by shaving or putting on makeup, exercise, and eat breakfast.  It was funny because the person working the arms could not see anything while trying to shave and feed the other companion.

We are working a lot with the less-actives and with the Elders and Hermana's investigators.

One of the biggest challenges we have in this area is people living together.  There has only been one marriage in the entire city so far this year (2013).  We know that because we are working with a couple that plan to get married next week so she can be baptized.  When they went down to the city to see how long the wait would be they just laughed.  Apparently, there is no line and therefore no wait and they can be married the same day they walk in and pay the fee.

We discovered a new game for FHE.  We set up two chalkboards on opposite sides of the chapel and played Book of Mormon Pictionary.  They loved it!

We have had so much rain lately that it has had a negative effect on the economy of the city.  The streets were turned into rivers and many homes were flooded.  When it rains like that everything just grinds to a halt and nobody goes to work.  When we go into stores now everyone is complaining that business is slow due to the heavy rains and that nobody has any money to spend.  In a few weeks things will get back to normal, but right now it is very common to talk with people (even branch members) who say they are working today for the food they will eat tomorrow.

The spring blossoms came out this week so there is hope that the nightly frostings will end soon.

9-9-2013 

Last night we invited three young single adults to go with us to Esquel to see Elder Nelson speak by satellite from BYU Hawaii.  At the last minute two of them bailed on us because one had to go to a doctor's appointment the next morning around ten o'clock and the other had to go to work at seven thirty in the morning.  As we were driving to the devotional we asked the kid (Gustavo) in the car with us what time he had to get up in the morning to go to work at the panaderia.  He said four thirty! Amazing how he had to get up earlier than the others but still considered it an honor and a privilege to go listen to an apostle and was willing to make the sacrifice.  He has only been a member for two months.  We love people like that!

We finally updated the MLS with the current address and phone number of all the member we know - we also marked all of them on a huge map.  It was a big job that we started almost six months ago and we are happy to have it done. Now we will go out and start looking for more people on the branch list that we have not met yet.

We found four bullet holes in the church windows this past week.  The police came and documented.  Nothing will really happen because there is no proof, even though everyone knows it was the kid next door who shoots the neighbor's dog with his pellet gun all the time.

A few weeks ago we almost burned down the church.  After an interview, I left the office and just pushed the vinyl chair off to the side.  We had Sacrament Meeting and then brother Vera went back to the office to give someone a blessing.  When he opened the door the room was full of smoke.  Apparently the chair had pressed up against the heater and was being melted.  We were lucky because another five minutes and we would have had a chair on fire which would have caught the drapes on fire and then the ceiling.

We have a new mission rule that all lessons, be it with investigators or less-actives, must have a member present.  It should help to get the members more involved in the work and help them establish friendships with investigators more quickly.

We did a service project for the Uribe family and helped them lower their ceiling so they could build another room in the attic.  It felt good to put on jeans but painful at the same time to see that they don't fit like they used to.  We really enjoyed the physical labor and want to find more.

It just rains and then it rains some more.  We are looking forward to summer with the warm weather. As a branch in a district, we don't have a bishop's storehouse to send members with needs to so we go to the grocery store a lot to buy food for members who are trying to get through the winter months until the tourists return in the Spring.  Each time we haul out of there with a grocery cart FULL of food.  The people who work at the grocery store must think we eat at TON because we are in there a couple of times a week.

9-2-2013 

Our branch baptized a boy (Eric Aguero) who turned eight earlier this week.  His grandfather was the branch president before we arrived and his mother is less-active. He is one of our most faithful members and has been since we arrived.  Sometimes he has been the only kid in Primary on Sunday!

We dropped by Elena & Amelia Alarcon's home (Dionisio's daughter) to give Elena a birthday gift and we ended up having two-hour party with TONS of desserts.  At first they brought out the hot chocolate and cake, but then they just kept coming out of the kitchen with plates full of various pies and desserts - the table was full - you really could have fed twelve people with the amount of food the brought out for us.  After eating about five pounds each they sent us home with a heaping plate of cake and pie for the next day.  That ended up being our dinner that day - how cool is that to have cake and pie for dinner?

The next day was a whirlwind with taking the Hermanas to Esquel so they could take a bus to Neuquen for the transfers, a baptismal interview for Eric, interviews with the new family that just moved here from Buenos Aires, a meeting with the Jara family and reviewing their plan to send the dad to his hometown to personally pick up a birth certificate so they can be married, a lesson with Gustavo Painenao on patriarchal blessings, and a FHE with the Uribe family where our friendship is deepening and progress is being made.  We ate on the road and had Lays Potato Chips and Doritos for dinner!  Thats two nights in a row now of really healthy dinners around nine o'clock at night.

Friday was spent picking up the Hermanas and the new Elders and showing them around a bit.  The new furniture for the Hermana's apartment arrived but it will all have to be put together. We also have a new family where the man is a member, but his wife is not.  They have two cute little kids (6 & 1) and have invited us back next week - we are hoping the wife will be interested in taking the lessons.

Saturday was spent putting together Sauder furniture for about seven hours.  Two book cases, two desks, and two closets.  The mortgage company gave us years of good practice to prepare us for this moment.  Our hands still hurt from driving in so many screws.  Finally we rented an electric drill from a guy who was doing work on the house next door or we would still be there trying to put them together.  The ten bucks was well worth it!

We had 45 people at church yesterday and spent the evening with the missionaries splitting the town into two areas along with the fifteen families and lunch appointments.

We  are excited to have Elders and know they will be a great help to us in getting things up and running in the branch.