Round Two

Here in Argentina they handle baptisms and confirmations a bit differently.  Since most baptisms are done on Sunday, the new converts wait a whole week before being confirmed and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost.  I thought that was very strange when we first got here, but now that we have more time in the mission and I see how limited their Sunday church attendance can be to get baptized, I figure perhaps that is one more way to get them to the church another Sunday.    I am really learning how fragile the new converts are.  They truly are like recently sprouted seeds and still need a lot of care and attention to keep them growing and developing deeper roots in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So a week after Ricardo was baptized, he was confirmed.  He asked Elder Rhoades to do that.  With Dave's limited Spanish that was a bit stressful for him, however, he was honored to do that and did quite well.  So now Dave has had one baptism and one confirmation that he has done on this mission.

We started the month of July out with a total solar eclipse, right here in Venado Tuerto!!  Yup, our little farming community was in the path of totality.  The only thing we had to worry about was cloudiness as it is common to have days where it is overcast the whole day.  But July 2nd was a clear, sunny day.  So starting about 4:30 pm the moon started to cover the sun and around 5:40 or so it reached totality.

Here is a photo taken by one of the members.  None of our photos turned out this well.  It was a pretty amazing experience.  Even as the sun became covered more and more, it was still pretty light, but as soon as it reached totality, it was like a switch was turned on and it went dark.  For about two minutes we were able to look directly at the sun and see the ring of fire.  Then as soon as a very slight piece of the sun began to show again, it lit up the world.  Just goes to show how powerful of a light the sun is.  We couldn't help but make comparisons to the son, Jesus Christ, and how powerful his light is.

Right after the eclipse we took a local member couple with us to visit Javier and Denisa.  They are not showing a lot of fruit from our visits and nurturing so we felt it was time to call in the local calvary and turn it over to them.  With how much work we have and so many people we have to spend our time with, at some point you have to say, "We love you, but we'll come back when you are ready to make changes in your life."

July 3rd we had to make a trip into Rosario to exchange our car we have been using for a different one.  We don't know why we had to do it, we were just told to do it so we were obedient and did it.  Sort of makes you think of Adam and sacrifices or Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah.  But it turns out, that the Lord is mindful of us, even with the little things.

 Our twin cars.  First car is on the left in the bottom photo and on the right in the top photo.  Our new car is on the right in the photo below and on the left above.

Our first car was a manual transmission and Dave was having to use a clutch that here was like a little metal ball, not like the pedals we have in the states.  It was killing his foot and causing him a lot of foot pain.  Here in Venado Tuerto most of the intersections are unmarked so it requires him to press down on the clutch to some degree at almost every intersection.  Plus there are a lot of speed bumps (which I learned in Spanish are called "lomo de burro"  which literally translated is spine of donkey - funny huh?)where he had to slow down and use the clutch.  He was getting to the point where the pedal was cutting into his foot so much and the pain was constant.  He was worried about how he was going to handle another 15 months of it.  The new car is an automatic.  No more clutch pedal to deal with.  His foot is doing so much better and we can't help but feel that the Lord was aware of him and looking out for his needs.  Tender mercies from God are wonderful testimonies of His love for us!

That morning, July 3rd,  I woke up feeling awful.  I really didn't want to get out of bed but knew I couldn't have Elder Rhoades going into Rosario on his own.  I went but had no energy and felt terrible the whole day.  And this is when round 2 started.  I was sick yet again and Dave quickly joined me the next day.  I stayed in bed all day Thursday and Friday and only got out of bed Saturday to do some shopping and meal prep because we were hosting a big Bi-Cultural Independence day BBQ with all the full-time missionaries here in Venado Tuerto on Sunday, July 7th.

Sunday, July 7th, we also said good-bye to Carmen Bagorria, the daughter of Lola, one of our in-active members we have tried to influence into coming back to activity.

Her husband had been out of work here in Venado Tuerto.  He is a truck driver, which they usually have a good demand for here.  But again, the weak economy is limiting job opportunities and he had been let go.  One of the missionaries, helped him find work in Neuquen, a province in western central Argentina where they have discovered oil shale and the economy is booming there. 

On this map of all the provinces in Argentina, you can see Neuquen on the west side of the country a bit lower than the middle (in pink shade).  We are in the Santa Fe province (it looks like Italy a bit because it is shaped like a boot) in the foot area of the boot.

Her husband has been gone for a couple of weeks and had been able to save up money to move the rest of the family down.  They truly believe this was an answer to prayer and it will be a positive change in their lives.  I'm sure the Lord will be able to use them.  She has a great testimony and dedication to the gospel.

We attended a baptism at San Martin branch just before doing our BBQ as there were 4 people being baptized.  That is quite a group.

L-R:  E. Smith, Victor (Maria's oldest son), E Gonzalez, Elio, Jacqueline, Silvia, E Canteros and in front E. Backus

With the U.S. Independence Day on the 4th and the Argentina Independence Day on the 9th we wanted to do a joint celebration.  The younger missionaries had transfers on July 8th so they wanted to do it when everyone that had been serving here for awhile could be included.  We had them come during the siesta and fed them big juicy hamburgers with as many of the condiments we could find (in honor of the U.S. Independence) and big fat chorizos (in honor of the Argentina Independence), along with chips, fruit, jello, soda and lemon bars for dessert.  July 8th also happened to be Elder Fugal's birthday and he volunteered to make German Chocolate Cake, which turned out to be heavenly.   Elder Rhoades set up a BBQ out in our backyard borrowing the grill from the church.

 Elder Rios, Galindo and Navarro hanging out in the back yard waiting for the food to be ready.

 Our apartment was pretty full with 18 missionaries but we managed to fit them all in.  And they put away a lot of food!

We took the opportunity to do some training with the missionaries about what we are trying to accomplish here.  We talked about the youth and the need for more of them to serve full-time missions from this district.  We told them we have a list of young men from 17-24 years old for the entire district that has 151 names on it, most of which are in-actives.  We told them the goal is to have 15 young people serving full-time missions from this district.  Currently the district has only 3.  So we have our work cut out for us.  But all it would take is to get 10% of our list to be worthy and prepare and go out.  We talked about what a game-changer it would be if we had more returned missionaries here in the district who could become future leaders.  We asked for their help.  They seemed to be pretty shocked at some of the numbers we were sharing with them.  Hopefully, it got their attention.

The bad news was a big chunk of them ended up being transferred the following day and we had to start over with a lot of new missionaries.  I think we better get used to that.  We stay put and it is revolving door with the younger missionaries.  We'll get them trained and up to speed with what we are doing just to send them home or off to other areas in the mission.

We managed to pull off the BBQ event even though we were both still somewhat sick.  The next week we decided to take it easy and not over do it in an effort to make sure we got 100% better.  I had never gotten completely better between round 1 at the tail end of May and round 2 here at the beginning of July.  I had a cough that plagued me the whole time.  In fact I had just started taking amoxicillin the day before getting sick because we had started to wonder if I had walking pneumonia.  Here you can go into the pharmacies and buy a lot of the drugs that require a prescription in the states without ever needing to see a doctor.  The pharmacists are pseudo-doctors, often recommending dosage and time frames for the medicine they sell.

So I was a bit paranoid about doing too much too soon and perpetuating this lifestyle I seem to have adopted here in Argentina.  So it was a slow week.  I wasn't back to full strength anyway so even if I had wanted to work hard, I don't think I could have done it.  We focused on preparing for the branch talent shows that were happening this week.  Three were coming up with July 9th the first one in Branch 3.  Here are some photos from their Talent Night.

 Some of the exhibition entrants.  The cake won first place as it was the only one submitted.

 Brother Becerra dressed up as a clown and acted as the MC.  He had a fun time doing it.

 Tania doing her dance.  She took second in youth category, but will go to the district as the first place youth won the favorite category.

Nicolas Romero and his friend won favorite doing rap.

Our submarine act that we worked with a lot to make it happen.  The front (Rodrigo) and last boy are from an in-active family.  In between is Briant Alvarez, who is struggling and the two new elders - Bryan and Castilla.

 Below is Omar Quiroga singing.  He won first place in the adult category.  He also provided the sound system.  He is semi-active in the branch, so it was great to have him participating.

Other than starting over an hour late, it was a successful activity.  At the end of the night, the MC said to the whole audience that these kind of events need to happen more often and he offered his sound system for a karaoke night in September - September 13th to be exact.  So karaoke is in our future!
We had in-actives and non-members involved in the show, judging and attending.  That was the goal!  Besides helping the members bond together.

The other glitch was our place ribbons were not ready for this first Talent Show.  I had to make a bunch of construction paper ribbons just so we had something to hand out and then later in the week we got the ribbons and made those up, so we had them for the Talent Shows on the weekend.

Sister Rhoades patiently making place ribbons for all the branch level Talent Shows.

We set the activity up with eight talent categories.  Four for exhibit - cooking, sewing, drawing/painting and arts & crafts and four acting categories - primary age, youth, adults and favorite.  We had the branches ask 3 people to act as judges and they decided the winners for all categories but the favorite.  The people who attended got to vote on their favorite act and the act that received the most votes in the favorite and that anyone that won first place by the judges would advance to the district level Talent Show to be held later in the month.

Murphy branch did their Talent Show on Friday night.  Again, the show got off to a late start, this time 45 minutes late but since they are the smallest branch in the district they didn't have as many acts.  We still got home late, but it was a good time.  We were worried they would have only a handful of acts, but they had decent participation and the members again had a good time and acted like they didn't want the activity to end.  They kept asking for the last act, which turned out to be their favorite, to keep singing more songs and they then showed the exhibit displays to all the audience and they had refreshments and just kept visiting.  Here are some photos from their Talent Show night.

 The sisters took time to make decorations for the show. 

The drawing category

Below entrants for the sewing category.

For the performing acts we had 

 break dancing

 Buzz Lightyear

 Ian and his younger brother Tomy singing and playing guitar and bongos.  They won the favorite category.

 And Valeria Heredia told a kid's story with actions and everything.  She was second place in the adult category but will go to district as first place won the favorite vote.

Below is a picture of all the winners showing off their ribbons.

Saturday night was the Talent Show for Branch 1.  This branch was by far the most organized and prepared of the ones we had attended so far.  They didn't get a lot of participation in the exhibits, only one category - drawing/painting.  But they had a lot of adult acts.  They didn't have any children acts, except that one 4 year old after watching the other acts, decided she wanted to sing.  She wasn't very good, but since she was the only child act, she got first place and goes to the district!  The youth put a lot of time into preparing a skit together and we liked seeing the team work and bonding that took place with that.  The missionaries did a great job running the show and this one only started 30 minutes late and had the least delays between acts.  They also used a couple as MC's and they did a great job!  Here are some photos from their Talent Show night.  We took mostly videos of this ward so not too many photos to post.

 The Relief Society sisters prepared a dance together.  It was great.  And below is the group of youth with the sister missionaries you did a skit that combined the synchonized swimming, a Titanic re-enactment and a dance segment at the end.  It was an interesting combination.  But they took the favorite vote.

Branch 2 and Branch San Martin did not have their members ready yet so their Talent Shows were postponed until the following weekend, which actually worked out well for us since that meant we could attend all of the branch level Talent Shows.  But it did mean we had to move back the district level Talent Show a week as well AND we had to train a whole set of new missionaries that came in to those branches with the transfer as to what needed to be done and how.  It was like we were starting from scratch.  Out of the 4 missionaries assigned to each branch, only 1 started put and 3 were transferred out in each branch.  So Sunday we were holding a meeting in our apartment with the new elders explaining to them what we were doing and why and how to get things going.

One good development that has come out of the Talent Show activities is we finally got our foot in the door with some members out in Murphy.  We were able to set up an appointment with Ian Heredia, a 20 year old young man out in Murphy and went to that on Monday, July 15th.  He is a great young man.  He got sidetracked from serving a mission for a while because he has some good talent in soccer and even advanced far enough with a club to be sent to Mexico to play.  I think that is like playing in one of the lower level baseball teams and serves as grooming for possible advancement into the big leagues.  But while in Mexico, he injured his leg and had to be sent home to heal and rehabilitate.  He pretty much put his soccer career out of the picture and Ian took it as a sign from God that he was heading in the wrong direction in his life and he needs to serve a mission.  Unfortunately, he has no idea how to go about preparing.

Thus our next inspired project, get a mission prep class up and running in the district.  We have already talked to the district president and YM district leader and have them on board.  Now it was time to locate potential class members and get them invited.  We have identified 3 possible members in Murphy to attend.  The district goal is to have 15 full-time missionaries from the district serving at any given time.  3 from each of the 5 branches would make that happen.  Since Murphy is 30 minutes out from Venado Tuerto, by car, they requested that we hold the class the same day as the Institute class, Tuesdays but earlier in the evening.  Since Institute doesn't start until 8 pm we will be holding our class at 6 pm and going until 7:30 (that's if we start on time).

While we were out in Murphy on July 15th we also visited an in-active father of one of the talent show acts, the youth who won first place.  His father had come to support him on Friday and we wanted to thank him for his support.  The mother was hesitant to let us come.  She was afraid it would cause problems for her in the home.  But when I explained to her what we wanted to do she was all for it and was very welcoming when we arrived.  Her husband was in the middle of repairing a motocycle so Elder Rhoades was able to make a connection with him.  The husband then showed off his construction work on his house to Elder Rhoades and invited us to come back some time, since we didn't stay long as he had said he was busy.

We ended the first half of the month with a new member discussion that went really well with Hector and his step-son Lautauro, who is 13 and is struggling in his life with a lot of challenges.  We did our I Nephi 3-4 lesson and at the end of the discussion we asked, "What can we learn from this experience of Nephi?"  Lautauro answered without hesitating, "You have to obey the Lord no matter what".  The kid is smart.  Maybe there is hope.

Spiritual Thought for the Week:  “But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance”  I Ne. 1:20

...the Lord’s tender mercies do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness and obedience enable us to receive these important gifts and, frequently, the Lord’s timing helps us to recognize them.  We should not underestimate or overlook the power of the Lord’s tender mercies.  Elder David Bednar "The Tender Mercies of the Lord"  General Conference April 2005

Back to Work

The last half of June we were able to get back to working hard.  We had full calendars and made lots of visits.  Here are the highlights.

June 17th we supported Branch 3 with a Father's Day activity.  It went all day!  Started at 11 am and didn't end until 4 pm.  These people like to party.  They fixed a spagetti luncheon, played games and visited.  They had asked us to help with the games.  It was a big group so we played fruit basket and then took it to the next level by removing chairs and making it a process of elimination.  Maxi Alverez was the winner.

Dave next to the sign at the Father's Day party

While we waited for the lunch to be ready, Dave taught Briant one of his card magic tricks and then had Briant go around and do it for the different members waiting.  It was a great confidence builder for Briant.  I also think it helped cement a positive relationship with him.  Dave now has both Briant and his younger brother Maxi texting him the way he did with his teachers in his quorum in Pleasant Grove.  

We continued to work with new converts, one of them is Nair Silva.  She is the sister to Salome, one of our other new converts.  Nair was baptized first just before we arrived in March.  Salome was baptized after we had been here a few months so we got started visiting her right away.  Nair lives out on her own so we didn't meet her when we started to visit Salome.  But now we are visiting both sisters and they are very different from each other, but both eager to learn the gospel.

Nair in the middle with the sister missionaries - Sister Martinez on the left and Sister Condie on the right

We continue to entertain.  We had another young couple, Enrique & Maria over to our home for an evening meal.  My go-to-meal is now beef stroganoff.  I've served it on noodles (since they are big on noodles here) and on rice.  It works great either way.  I was super excited when I discovered they had Worchestershire sauce (called salsa inglesa here).

We held our monthly Family Night in Branch 3.  We used Pres. Hinckley's talk where he brought out his now famous what every new convert needs list.  We worked in my giant pumpkins as a comparison... bottom line - they need A LOT of love and attention for a long time after they join the church to get their roots strong in the gospel and their testimonies to grow the size of one of these.

Being sent to an agricultural community is making my pumpkin growing hobby come in handy.

Louisa Varela, our little sister who has returned from being inactive had a birthday on June 21st.  We were invited to her little party.  She was born the same year as Sister Rhoades, just a few months earlier.

Her son, Bruno, had gotten her the biggest birthday cake I have ever seen.  It was two layers and the top layer was a spice with nuts flavor that was simply delicious.

Later in the day they did a smaller gathering and fixed pizza.  We goofed around a bit with Bruno, who has studied gastronomy and has the complete chef outfit.  He asked me to poise as his assistant.

Piano lessons have been stalled.  Attendance has been non-existent.  If it doesn't improve, lessons will probably be discontinued.

June 22nd, Elder Rhoades had the opportunity to perform his first baptism in Spanish.  A little old lady in Branch 2, named Rosa, has taken a shine to Elder Rhoades and asked him to baptize her.  She is 72 years old and doesn't get around real well, but with the help of the regular elders (Fugal and Magaria) they were able to get her into the font and under the water.  She was extremely happy to be baptized.  She cried and said a prayer of thanksgiving right there in the font.  Sister Rhoades gave the baptismal talk at her services.  We will be visiting with her to give her support.

June 23rd, Ricardo Mercado was baptized, the 17 year old son of Maria.  We've been working with him and his family so that was a great day to see him baptized.  Elder Rhoades was asked to confirm Ricardo the following Sunday, June 30th.  That was a stressful thing for him as he had to do it all in Spanish, but he did quite well.

L-R:  Elder Margaria, Ricardo Mercado, Elder Fugal, Elder Gonzalez, Hector Fernandez, Elder Cantero

The same day Ricardo was baptized, another man was baptized Hector Fernandez, whom we have started to work with.  He is potential priesthood and we don't want to lose him to inactivity.  

A few more photos from Ricardo's baptism - June 22, 2019

We finished the month of June with our Scout ceremony.  It turned out really well.  Here are some photos from the event.

 They did a neckerchief exchange between Elder Fugal and Hugo Silva, the scout adult leader.

 We had Lisandro Enrico, the department senator come.  He is holding the plaque.  He was involved in the scout program as a youth.  We had him present the plaque we made to commemorate the link between the two groups.

Here is a photo of the plaque.  It cost us a pretty penny (more than I was expecting) but they were really impressed with it.  We have it in English and Spanish.  We had it say - 

The Boy Scouts of Utah and the Scouts of Venado Tuerto extend a hand from side of the world to the other, sharing a common goal and desire to be good friends and neighbors, having a common allegiance to our scouting principles.

We put the outline of each state - Santa Fe in Argentina and Utah in U.S. and the scout seal from each group as well.  Then we listed the leaders names that were part of the presentation.

Photo op - Elder Fugal & Elder Verdejo, both eagle scouts.

The scout holding the flag shows the name of Harry Amincton, who was the first boy scout in Venado Tuerto.  The street the boy scout encampment is on is named, Amincton.

A group photo of all the older scouts in attendance and their leaders, with the flags of US, Argentina & Venado Tuerto.

The lowering of the flags at the end of the activity.  They all surrounded the flag pole and saluted.  Then each group did their group shout.  It was pretty impressive. but very cold.  There was a biting wind that didn't help.

The last Saturday of June was a temple trip for the members down to Buenos Aires.  They had a big group going this time.  It was awesome!  A number of the families we have gotten to know were getting sealed and there were a number of members making their first visit to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.  What was really fun was that Bruno and Louisa, our reactivated members had made plans to go.   They wanted to do baptisms for some family names.  Louisa got sick right before and was not able to go.  She practically cried when telling us how disappointed she was she couldn't go this time.    Bruno showed us a sheet of paper with his family names - 4 of them - that he wanted to do the work for.  When I asked him if he had entered them into the Family Search site, he didn't know what I was talking about and this was just a few hours before the bus was set to leave.  We quickly helped him get his family names into the family search site.  Since we don't do a lot of genealogy we didn't realize that the names that had dates of birth less than 110 years ago, he had to get permission from the nearest still living relative, so it ended up that he was only able to do one of his name, but he is now working on getting the permission.  But it was so fun, because Bruno was sending us photos as he got there, he was so excited to be going to the temple.

The district members leave in a rented bus about midnight and travel most of the evening and arrive early in the morning.  Here is his first photo that he sent us with the lights still on.

Then here is his photo a bit later after the sun came up with him in front of the temple.

I have to say seeing their excitement about going to the temple is at the top of my list of experiences we've had on our mission so far.  It was a very sweet thing.  I was smiling the whole time as we spent Friday night with them, 

Spritual Thought of the Week:  The Lord blesses those who attend to the sacred ordinance work in the temple.  And the blessings he gives will not be limited to the time spent in the temple. Those who do temple work will be blessed in all aspects of their lives.  Their labors in the temple will strengthen them and refine them spiritually.  www.churchofjesuschrist.org