Goodbye April

We finished April strong!

We started the week after Easter off with a great family home evening with a young couple that are committed to be baptized but need to get married – Enrique and Maria.  They currently have a 6-month old girl named Hannah.  The elders have been teaching them and they are coming to church.  When we got to their house, their Books of Mormon were on the table and they mentioned that they had just finished reading them.  They had a calendar on their refrigerator with a reading schedule, one chapter a day, that they are following.  When we asked them to share their story, they both talked about feeling the spirit and knowing the church is true.  It was so nice to see a potential eternal family here in Venado Tuerto.  The only drawback was when we asked them about their marriage plans they indicated they were going to get married in November.  That is like 6 months away!  We did not press them about it, but as we build a relationship with them, we want to encourage them to move their date up.  Enrique has really taken a shine to Elder Rhoades.  So perhaps, Elder Rhoades can twist their arms a bit. J

The following day was Elder Nerey’s birthday.  He is one of the zone leaders here in Venado Tuerto.  He is from Los Angeles, but looks and talks like a latino.  We have been impressed with the spirit he carries with him.  He mentions a lot that the mission has changed him a lot.  Well, we like who he has become!  I had forgotten it was his birthday so I did not make a cake for him, but I quickly walked to the nearest store and found individually wrapped “mini tortas” and bought enough for each one in the district to have, then at the end of the meeting, built him a pyramid cake and we sang to him. 

Elder Nerey is a great zone leader.  We've been impressed with his lessons that we've heard him give.

We are continuing to work with a new converts and have had a number of lessons with them.  We have assigned them to read sections of the Book of Mormon for each lesson, hoping to develop with them a daily reading habit.  We know this will keep them committed and growing spiritually.  If we go to the lesson and they haven’t read, we read the assigned reading with them.

With Maria, Guiliana & Dalila we assigned them to read from I Nephi 3-4, which they did and it allowed us to give them a great lesson on how the spirit works and can guide and help us in our lives.  The two daughters will be getting the gift of the Holy Ghost this coming Sunday.  Second visit we assigned them to read 2 Nephi 31-32 which allowed us to review the 5 commitments to the doctrine of Christ.  Our emphasis was on persevering to the end and that is now the step they are on.

We are working with Perla as well and went over the same reading assignment of I Nephi 3-4.  She had read it as well.  She is not progressing as much as she doesn’t always read the assignments and we haven’t been able to give a lesson each time we’ve set up a visit.  We had a good visit with her mom, Estela, after the first visit.  I think it helped build some good will towards the church with her.

This is Perla and her niece.  Often she is tending small kids when we come, making it hard to teach her.  But she has been consistently coming to church since her baptism.

Later in the evening on Tuesday, April 23th, we met with Branch 3 presidency.  They had prepared a list of in-actives they would like us to work with.  They had 21 names.  They took the time to talk about each one and give us some background about them.  We were thrilled with this help. 

Wednesday was not a very productive day.  Our appointments fell through and the correlation meeting we thought was being held was not.  The only good thing that happened was the inactive sister of Perla who is 15 years old, came with her to the young women’s activity that evening.  That came out of the blue!  While at the church, we did volunteer to plan and present the next week’s youth mutual activity and asked that it be a combined one with both girls and boys.  We thought it would be a way for Elder Rhoades to get better acquainted with the young men.

It seems like un-productive days come along somewhat regularly.  We are going to need to get better at having back-up plans in place and learn to punt from time to time.

Thursday, April 25^th, we had a good day with three appointments.  We started out with an active family, the Monsalvos in the San Martin branch.  It turns out that the father is brother to Juan, the spouse of Maria who we are working with.  Maria’s son, Victor, who is 18 years old, is also living with them.  He has been taught by the elders and wants to be baptized but has some things to work out first.  The father also was raised by our in-active sister Lola who we are working with.  He was able to give us some insight about her and where she is at.  Apparently Lola and her husband took him in when he was a teenager living on the streets.  He is a member of the church because of his exposure to the gospel in her home.  He is very grateful to her for that.  Cesar, the father, was just ordained to the Melchezidek priesthood at the district conference this month and the family is now working towards getting sealed in the temple.

We then meet with Maximiliano, a 25 year old member in the San Martin branch.  This member has a good handle on English and really just wants to practice his English with us.  But, he needs strengthening to stay active in the church.  We will try to work with him on his testimony.  Since our first visit we have run into him a couple more times.  I don’t think it is a coincidence.  I think we are being nudged and directed his way for a reason. 

Thursday evening we went to a family home evening the sisters were doing with an inactive family they found while knocking on doors.  This family has been inactive for over 30 years, but now is showing interest in coming back.  The mother, Griselda, came to church on Easter Sunday & the following Sunday.  Her husband, Victor, has a word of wisdom issue that may hold him back from returning, but the Lord is extending his hand out to them inviting them to return.  It is up to them if they will respond to the invitation or not. 

Friday, April 26^th,  was a good day as well, with two lessons in the morning to our new converts Perla, Dalila & Giuliana.  All had read their assigned readings.  It works better when that happens. J

Friday afternoon we met with the sister missionaries and introduced them to Daily Dose English program as we learned that they plan to start offering classes in an effort to find people to teach the gospel to.  They were impressed with the lessons and format and Dave’s salesmanship sold them on the program.  They are offering the class Friday evenings at 7 pm.  They did not have anyone come that evening but I don’t think much publicity is being done about it.

Friday evening we had a lesson with Zaida, another recent convert and her grandmother.  It turned out to be a long lesson as Marta gave us a very long history of her conversion.  We left them with the I Nephi 3-4 reading assignment as we find that works really well to teach them how the spirit works in our lives and the blessings that come when following the spirit.  We’ve tried to have additional visits with this family, but they have been a bit flaky.

In the course of our visit, we learned they live across the street from a Boy Scout camp.  This has energized Elder Rhoades.  He has excitedly been video messaging the scout leaders back home working on setting up a sister city type arrangement between the scout troop here in Venado Tuerto and Pleasant Grove.  We have met the Scout leaders here and they liked the exchange idea that Elder Rhoades presented to them.  You will probably hear more about this project down the road.

Friday evening we had also set up a family home evening with the Taverna family.  I had made deviled eggs to take to it.  We got to their house at 8:30 and found out that it had been cancelled.  They had sent us messages but we did not see them.  They still fed us this delicious cheese and ham with bread and they enjoyed out deviled eggs.  We went over the I Nephi 3-4 story with them.  Dave showed off some magic tricks with cards and we had a good time.  This family is working towards going to the temple to be sealed but do have some commandment issues that need to be addressed.

The district takes a group to the Buenos Aires temple every other month.  This weekend was a temple trip.  They charter a bus and leave on Friday night late, travel through the night and get to the temple bright and early Saturday morning.  They do temple work all morning and typically leave mid-afternoon to return Saturday night.  We do hope to go with them, hopefully on the next one at the end of June.  It would be great if we had a family we had worked with going by then.  We’ll see.

Buenos Aires temple.  

Saturday evening, April 28^th,  we had a family night scheduled with the Murphy branch.  So we spent the morning shopping for refreshments.  The plan was to do Meet the Rhoades with them.  Last Saturday afternoon we were contacted saying there was a festival going on in Murphy and it would be hard to get very many members to attend, plus about 20 members had gone on the temple trip.  I thought we were going to have to cancel.  But the elders had investigators committed to coming so they didn’t want to have it cancelled.  We went out anyway. We did have a very small group, so we punted and presented our “Boundin” video instead of our Meet the Rhoades presentation.  We were able to meet a few members and hopefully support the missionaries’ investigators.  We will reschedule our Meet the Rhoades presentation for another time.

The good thing that came out of going to Murphy was we visited the nut/dried fruit store we had been told about.  We stocked up on nuts and raisins and figs at a very discounted price.  A kilo of peanuts, shelled and salted was $5.  Remember, a kilo is 2.2 pounds.

Figs on the left and Raisins on the right

The last Sunday in April we visited Branch 3 for the first time on Sunday.  We had gone out during the day on Saturday and looked up some of the names on our inactive list.  We invited everyone we met to come to church to hear us speak.  Dave had worked all week on his 7-minute talk about a fireman experience he had with a young child, a water drain, a ball and popsicles.  My part was to apply it to the gospel.  It was the same lesson we had given earlier to Lucarelli family but developed a bit more.  I added in the example of Abraham and how he came from a culture that taught and practiced idol worship and sacrifice and yet Abraham choose to follow the gospel and make covenants with God, gain the priesthood and become one of the most famous prophets in the Bible. 

We were happy to see 5 of the 7 people we had invited to church come.  It was good to have friends there.  I obviously need to get better at taking photos of the people we are working with to make our posts more interesting.  Since I don't have a lot of photos this go round, I think I will post some interesting photos from around town.

Not sure if you can tell from this photo but these trees have spikes all over their trunk!  I don't think kids will be climbing on these trees ever.

 This beautiful relief mural is on the building across from our preferred bread store.  It is pretty impressive.  They were just putting on the finishing touches.

And here is the local neighborhood KFC joint.  They do a booming business and we are regular customers. 

 The chicken is better as it is rotisserie cooked, but it is finger licking good.

I am learning to make some great recipes using this pre-cooked chicken.

And our last entry, here is a street we pass every day going to the church.  Any guesses on how it is pronounced?  If it sounds like you are talking about your bathroom activity, you are pronouncing it correctly.  How would you like to have to give that name out as your address?

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  Moroni 7:33

"And Christ hath said;  If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me."