Rosario Argentina Mission: And So It Begins

We are embarking in the service of God (D.& C. 4:1) as of March 18, 2019. Sarah Whitehouse, our neighbor, gave us the above traveling companions yesterday as a going away present, along with some items to decorate our future apartment in Argentina.

We were set apart yesterday, March 17, 2019, by our stake president, Cabe K Atkinson. It was a very beautiful, spiritual experience. In his blessings we were given promises and warnings. We felt the love of the Lord with us that hopefully we will pass on to the people of Rosario.

We have been loving our experience at the MTC. It has been busy, but filled with spiritual experiences and plenty of learning. Monday we met all the senior missionaries being trained this week - 101 of them. 3 single sisters and 49 couples. I big chunk of the couples were called to work the Mormon Pioneer Handcart Mission, meaning up in Wyoming at Martin's Cove or Sixth Crossing, etc. Many of them were stay-at-home couples that would be serving full-time while living at home. Only a handful were couples called to serve out of country. Among them our good friends, Brett & Marilyn Garrett from our old 3rd ward. They are going to Rosario as well. They will be working in the mission office.

Here are the group photos they took of the group.

We are the fourth couple from the right in the photo above. Snelgroves are the fifth couple from the right.

The McCleans are the fifth couple from the right. Elder McClean served in the same mission Dave did when he was young, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Halls are the first couple on the left and Jones are the first couple on the right.

The first couple on the left have been called to the Guatemala Quetzaltenango mission, where Cindy served for 5 months at the end of her younger mission. Hegenmeyer is his last name. He served under the same mission president but after Cindy returned home.

They organized us into districts, which had been pre-assigned and had picked district leaders to serve. Dave's name was called out and he has had the opportunity to serve in that capacity. Four couples make up a district. Our friends the Garretts were assigned to our district! We were surprised and pleased. That meant we would see a lot of each other during the week.

Our morning class instructor has been Brianna Peterson. She is from American Fork, and served in Seattle, WA. Here is a photo of our district with her. Sister Peterson has been home from her mission about 18 months.

L-R: Rhoades, Jones, Garretts, Halls Instructor in back middle - B. Peterson

Our afternoon class instructor has been Joseph Holland. He is from Portland, OR and served his mission in Thailand. Here is a photo of our district with him.

Instructor on right back row - Joseph Holland. He has been home from his mission only about 7 months.

They both have been excellent instructors. We have been learning from Preach My Gospel and having teaching simulation activities. We even had a lesson on technology where they taught us how to use the Gospel Library app and some of the cool features it has along with mentioning other church apps that we will find useful to use on the mission.

We participated in an awesome FHE on Monday night where we watched a video recording of a talk by Elder Bednar given at the MTC a few years back on Christmas Day. It was called "The Character of Christ" and it was an extremely powerful presentation. It was life-changing for me. It would be hard to convey here the message and spirit of it, but the topic was how we need to put off the natural man, which is inward looking (i.e. selfish and self-centered) and put on the character of Christ, which is outward looking (i.e. always thinking of others and not about self), but taught in a very, very powerful way.

We also participated in the Tuesday night devotional. We joined the MTC missionary choir. We got one practice for an hour and then we performed. We sang "This Is The Christ" and what a powerful spirit was felt as these hundreds of full-time missionaries sang "I too can testify, this is the Christ". We listened to Claudio Costa speak about how to effectively involve members in missionary work.

We were assigned to a couple, Elder & Sister Snelgrove, outside of our district as our "others", which meant they were our investigators - which is not a word used by the church any longer. The Snelgroves are older, probably in their early 70's, from West Valley City, UT. This is their second mission, but first away from home mission. We've done a couple of teaching sessions with them so we could practice the principles we've been learning for inviting others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.

I was pretty nervous prior to the first practice lesson. I wasn't confident I could receive inspiration about what their needs were, or what invitation to extend to them, or what doctrine to teach them or how to go about doing it. I was extremely distressed about it. But the spirit is so strong at the MTC and the teachers give such great counsel that really helped us as we proceeded to prepare a lesson. Fortunately, I felt some very strong promptings during the preparation and as I prayed, which of course we followed. When we taught it to them the spirit was felt strongly and when we finished, Sister Snelgrove was very moved and exclaimed, "I really needed to hear that" (which is what the spirit told me regarding some scripture verses that we used in our lesson). I was so very grateful to find that I could be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to make a difference in someone's life. Hopefully that will continue as we move out to the mission field, where the spirit won't be so concentrated and the "others" will not be so spiritually attuned. But it was a real confidence booster for me.

We did a follow up practice with them the next day and then a second lesson where we had less time to prepare prior to teaching. But again, I felt inspired about how to proceed and the lesson went well and seemed to be well suited for their needs. We taught them on the topic of Self-Reliance using 2 Kings 4:1-7 which teaches and illustrates so many self-reliance principles. We did this because the Snelgroves have been called to a Self-Reliance mission in London, England. They in turn taught us a lesson that we can use as MLS missionaries as their first mission was a stay at home MLS mission. So we really feel there was inspiration involved in pairing us with the Snelgroves to work with them this week and we have really learned to love them.

One of the activities we enjoyed a lot was viewing the large murals in the new buildings at the MTC campus. They give public tours of these murals on Mondays and we would highly recommend taking time for the tour. They were beautiful. Below is a photo of Dave viewing one of them.

There are two of these on each floor, six floors in all. We took photos of them all and hope to create a slideshow for the missionaries in Rosario, many of them do not come to the Provo MTC and do not get to experience them in person.

Friday was the hardest practice teaching experience. It was with a volunteer from the community, Sister Read. She was an older widow who has been volunteering for two years. We only had 15 minutes to get to know her, 10 minutes to plan and then we had to teach for 20 minutes. She was a talker and it was hard to get some good solid information about her in 15 minutes. It was extremely difficult to plan a lesson in only 10 minutes. But we did the best we could and inspiration came during the teaching process and at the end Sister Read iindicated it was a lesson she needed to hear. We taught about being a missionary to her grandchildren, particularly a 27 year old grandson that is less than active due to being rejected for serving a full-time mission due to his weight a few years back which has soured him towards the church.

We finished up the week completing a challenge we were given to testify of Christ to someone we knew. We decided to try out our Marco Polo app and send a video to our son-in-law, Kelan and our daughter, Marie. Kelan let us know that it was exactly what he needed that day. We sure did feel the spirit guiding us tons during this first week of our mission. Let's hope it keeps up that way.

Here is a photo of a slide that recapped all of our MTC activities for the week.

And here is a photo that recaps what we will be doing now.