First Week is in the Books

Even though we only had a partial week in our area this week, it sure seems like we did a lot of things.  Many things were related to our temporal needs as there is much to do in setting up a new residence.  We are starting from scratch so there was much to buy.  Furniture, dishes, pots & pans, cleaning supplies, bedding, hangers, towels, food and more food.  It seemed we would go purchase a bunch of stuff and bring it back to the house and then we would realize more things we needed and it was back to the store the next day for those items.  After 5 days with shopping most of the days for something or other, we still are not fully stocked with all our needs, but we are closer.

The other temporal items that took up much of our time was getting set up with internet and phone service.  We spent four days working on that and didn't have a lot of success.  The best we did was get the internet scheduled to be installed on April 18th and get our phones from the states unlocked hoping to get a local chip for the phones but then found out they wouldn't let us since we only have a passport and are considered tourists at this point until we get our DNI, the national identity card.  Today Bro. Olmos, who works with the church operations & maintenance dept came to continue working on getting us set up in our apartment with furniture & appliances. When we mentioned what was going on with this, he made a call to the mission office and found out they can speed up the internet installation and then indicated to us that the chip from the mission office cell phone we were given, which is a free service for us, could be transferred to our cell phone from the states.  We tried it and lo and behold it worked!  We owe Bro. Olmos a batch of lemon bars.  Apparently he really likes those.  I'll have to learn how to make them here.  He deserves them, that's for sure!  We have Marco Polo access when we are in the apartment at this point, but nowhere else since the access is through our internet WiFi connection and not the phone service.  WhatsApp we have available as part of our phone chip.  It apparently is the popular way to do video/text/calls even in South America.  So if you access that app we can send you videos of places we go to.

Wednesday was our first day in our area, Venado Tuerto.  We met a lot of the missionaries working in this area as President Allred was doing interviews with them all day.  The exciting thing was  we met the Stewart & Milli Goesch, the senior missionaries currently doing the trek here at Kilgrumen.

We've had a lot of email and phone contact with them previously so it was great to meet them in person.  They are leaving the mission at the end of April and do not plan to return for another trek season.  To our surprise they indicated that the local Argentinian couple that were applying for their position (and we assumed had been called since we did not get the call) were called to serve in Nauvoo!  So there is still no couple called to replace them and they are quite a bit worried about that.

We will see them one more time probably before they leave as they come in to Venado Tuerto for General conference next weekend.  They have two more treks this month and then they will be going to Buenos Aires to report to the leaders there.  Their calling falls under the area presidencies jurisdiction.

During the week in the evenings we were able to meet with the district and branch leaders.  What a great start to be able to know the leaders right off the bat.  We remember in Cuzco it was hard to find out who the leaders were.

This is a photo of the District President - Fernando Riquelme - and his wife.  He works for the church.  Apparently the church owns a number of farms/ranches in the area and Pres. Riquelme is the controller over these farms.  His wife works with the Young Women in Branch 2.

There are 4 branches in Venado Tuerto - Branch 1, Branch 2, Branch 3 and Branch San Martin.  Branch in Spanish is Rama so we will probably refer to them that way.  There are also some additional branches in some outlying cities - Murphy & Rufino and a small group in General Villega where a latin senior couple have been working - los Morenos.  They will finish their mission at the end of June/July (one of the two).

We met the entire district presidency but I did not get a photo of the group.  Will need to get that and post at some point.  The Sunday after General Conference is the District Conference so I hopefully can get something then.  The leaders are very grateful to have us here to help them build up the membership. Their goal is to become a stake.  The statistics they gave us was the church requires there be 110 active full-tithe paying Melchizedek priesthood holders in the district before they can be considered for organization as a stake.  Currently they have 60 that qualify for that, so they are only about halfway there.  Sounds like we have our work cut out for us.  Not sure we can bring that number up enough in 18 months to make that happen but working in tandem with the full-time young missionaries miracles can happen!

We also met the leaders for Branch 1 & 2, which are the branches that meet in the building down the road from our apartment.

This is a photo of Branch 1 presidency.  From L-R is 1st Counselor Ruben Sanchez, Pres. Juan Palo Capdevila and 2nd Counselor Marcos Bolano.  Branch 1 is one of the weaker branches in the district and we've been asked to focus on this branch.  Branch 1 happens to be the area our apartment is in so that works out well.  Branch 1 typically has on a good Sunday 60 people in attendance.  Many of the district leaders come from this branch which leaves the branch a bit weak on priesthood leadership.  This branch has a pair of elders and had a pair of sister missionaries assigned.  The sisters were pulled out a few weeks back but Pres. Allred indicated at the next "traslado" -which is what the call transfers - in two weeks sisters will return to this branch.

This is a photo of Branch 2 presidency.  They were called about two weeks ago is what we were told.  From L-R  President Mauro Berta, 2nd Counselor Milton Scazzina, 1st Counselor Claudio Aguilar.  Branch 2 is one of the stronger branches in the district.  Attendance typically is between 80-98 each Sunday.  They have two pair of elders assigned to this branch and they are baptizing pretty regularly.  In fact we attended a baptism on Saturday where two young girls were baptized - a 10 year old whose parents are working towards baptism.  They need to get married but they are attending church and working with the elders.  The other girl, Perla, is a 13 year old whose older 15 year old sister joined the church when she was younger but has since gone inactive (she will be one of our prospects to work with).

We have not met the other branch leaders yet, but hope to do so this week or the next.  Branch 3 is the other weaker branch that we have been asked to focus on.  They typically have 60 in attendance each week as well.  The San Martin branch is one of the stronger units and typically have 80 in attendance each Sunday.  Murphy has about 40-50 active members.

What will make things difficult is that most of the wards have their own building and all meet at 10 am on Sundays.  Only Branch 1 & 2 share a building so Branch 1 meets at 9:00 am and Branch 2 meets at 10:30 am.  That makes it harder for us to visit multiple branches on Sundays, which would have helped us work more effectively.  We have General Conference and then District Conference the next two weeks so we have awhile to brainstorm on how to handle church attendance.

Thursday evening we had our first missionary opportunity.  We were in a small neighborhood store buying a few thing and a tall man in his 30's approached us with a big smile on his face.  He asked us if we were older missionaries for the church and said he had never met older missionaries.  We said we were and he introduced himself as Sebastian, an inactive member.  We got his name, address and phone number and told him we didn't think it was a coincidence that we ran into him, that the Lord has a purpose in this meeting.

Here is a photo of him.  Doesn't he have a great smile??  This is what we saw greeting us on Thursday night when we were new and strangers in Venado Tuerto.  I told him we needed a friend and hoped he would be ours.

We followed up with him on Saturday afternoon to invite him to church.  We had a very nice visit.  He told us his conversion story.  He was converted in 2003 when he was 18 living in Bahia Blanca.  He has been living in Venado Tuerto for 5-6 years now and has never been to church here that is why none of the leaders knew who he was.  He felt the spirit as he told us his story as he had tears come to his eyes.  He let us know the reason for his inactivity.  We talked to him about this and testified to him that God loves him (I could feel God's love for him as I spoke to him) and is aware of him and invited him to come on Sunday if he felt inclined to do so.  He wouldn't commit but said maybe.  We did not see him.  But we consider him our first friend in Venado Tuerto.

Sunday as we attended both Branch 1 & 2 we were able to bear our testimonies since it was fast Sunday due to General Conference next week.  I was inspired to share our experience with attempting to get a local phone line here and the frustration I felt when we found out we should have gotten a unlock code for our phones before we left the states.  I told of how I wished someone had informed us of that sooner because getting that code here in Argentina proved to be a long drawn out process.  I compared that to sharing the gospel and how at some future time everyone will acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ and many may feel the same way I did about the phones and wonder why no one let them know that sooner, especially their friends and family that belonged to His church in this life.

We also joined the district choir that is practicing for the District Conference in two weeks.  We heard they needed some help.  Out of the whole district there were 2 altos and 2  basses (the parts we sing).  We are learning How Great Thou Art and I Need Thee in Spanish.  It will be fun to sing with them.  The choir director belongs to

Also Sunday night Branch 1 holds a Family Home Evening for the entire branch.  We offered to present the lesson so we could let the members get to know us.  We prepared a PowerPoint presentation about us with 11 typical questions we get asked in the mission.  We set it up as a multiple choice quiz and let them guess the right answer and then we would reveal the correct one.  We included photos or pictures to make it more interesting.  And yes we used the TestOut Christmas photo for our introductory slide.

The questions were like how many kids we have, how many grandkids we have, what missions we've served, what Dave's job was before he retired, what musical instruments we play and yes, we did include a question about who knows how to grow giant pumpkins and showed off my photos at the pumpkin contest.  We had four members guess 6 correct.  That was the best anyone did.  We gave those members some lifesavers from the U.S. as a prize.

We then ended on a spiritual note and shared our mission scripture, which will be our spiritual thought for this post.  We let them know why we chose that scripture.  It made for a nice ending to the lesson.  Afterwards they played games and had refreshments.  Afterwards we had lots of members wanting to invite us over to have asado (BBQ).

But the cool part was a gentleman came up to Dave and talked his ear off because he used to be a volunteer fireman here in Venado Tuerto for 16 years.  We learned that his wife is a member but he isn't.  However, he has had the missionary discussions and he does attend church so he is pretty much a "dry-Mormon".  When I asked him wife why he hasn't been baptized, she thinks he may be afraid of making the commitment.  Perhaps with this fireman connection we can forge a relationship with him and get him to open up as to why he hasn't been baptized and help him overcome his roadblocks to making that commitment.

Speaking of asado.  We had our first steaks here.

They were delicious.  The amazing part was the price.  They were T-bone cut and we bought two steaks in a package that weighed .74 kilos.  1 kilo is 2.2 lbs so we bought about 1.6 lbs.  Guess what the cost was?  We figured the conversion came to $2.80.  I think we will probably be eating a good deal of meat at those prices.  The funny thing is the members all think meat prices are expensive.  Apparently, inflation has been a problem here in Argentina.  The Goeschs who served here this year and last year said the first year they were here the exchange rate was about 30 pesos to the dollar.  Now it sits at just under 43 pesos to a dollar.

But the frustrating part has been getting hold of Argentina money - pesos.  When we were in Peru we were able to withdraw $350 worth of "soles" at one time.  So far here in Venado Tuerto we have only been able to withdraw amounts about $50 US.  Each time we withdraw money we are charged a 10% fee  from the bank and then our bank charges about $2.50 in banking fees, so we don't want to have to withdraw money very often.  Luckily we can use our credit card in a lot of the stores and we have a credit card that doesn't charge any foreign transaction fees so that will help.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Mormon 8:22  "For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled."  We chose this as our mission scripture because as we thought of Moroni's circumstances as he wrote this verse, we were impressed with his unwavering faith in God's plan.  Moroni writes earlier in this chapter about his people being wiped out, his father killed, having no friends and being completely alone, constantly on his guard because he was hunted down by the Lamanites.  So despite his desperate and distressing condition, Moroni still could confidently testify that God is in charge and will come out victorious.  And so will we, if we will be faithful and follow Christ and his teachings no matter the circumstances.