There & Back Again (de Una Ida y Una Vuelta)

We are loving our adventure of "ida y vuelta" as you would call it in Spanish.  Wasn't Elder Uchtdorf's talk great??  There were certainly a number of talks in conference that spoke to struggles the people we are working with are dealing with.  You can truly receive revelation through the prophets of God.

The fight is real.  Despite the good things happening, there are plenty of discouraging times.  We have worked with a number of families for a number of months that we now have a vested interest in their success and we care about their progress.  Unfortunately, they sometimes stall in their progress as life challenges get in their way.  We just hope and pray they will keep hold of the iron rod and make it to the tree of life and then stay there!  Some of them disappoint us, but others keep pressing on.

Conference weekend, there is an ice cream tradition here in Venado Tuerto that was started by the couple serving the trek mission at Kilgrumen.  We saw it in action back in April and had the baton passed to us to keep the tradition alive.  The weather was very nice the Saturday of general conference and we had 18 hungry missionaries excited to go eat ice cream between the two sessions.

Due to the time difference we have conference sessions from 1 - 3 pm and then from 5-7  pm.  So in-between was a perfect time for a late afternoon treat of ice cream.  I wish I had taken a photo of them all lined up in their suits waiting to place their orders.  Unfortunately, I didn't pull the camera out until later in the activity, so here is what we have.

Back row - l-r:  E. Homes & E. Hanson  Front row - l-r: E. Vegara, E. Castilla, E. Morel

 A row of happy missionaries, relaxing and eating some good ice cream.

 L-R:  E. Castilla, E. Hanson E. Morel, E. Bingham, E. Fennigan

 L-R:  E. Delgado, E. Bingham, E. Fennegan, E. Villatodo, Hna. Ellsworth

L-R:  Hna. Martinez, Hna. Ellsworth, Hna. Rhoades and soon to be Hna. Moreno (she will be off to Brazil serving a mission come Nov. 20th)

As you can see from all the smiling faces, I think it was a hit.  We were totally caught off guard when the following Tuesday at District Council the missionaries made us stay seated after the meeting was finished while they all got up in front and proceeded to sing to us my favorite Spanish hymn - Oid El Toque Del Clarin (we don't have this one in the English hymnbook) and then handed us a bunch of thank you letters they had each written out to us.  It was so thoughtful of them and totally unexpected.  It is going to be one of my most favorite memories from the mission, I think.

Our second mission prep student received her mission call and opened it up at the beginning of October.  The Menchie family lives just around the corner from our apartment so we stopped by to participate in the unveiling.  The house was full!

Milagro Menchie has been called to serve in the Bolivia, Santa Cruz North mission and will report Jan 30, 2020.

Here she is at the church, excited about her call to serve.  Her brother returns Nov. 12th from his mission in Brazil.  So it will be great that she can spend the holidays with her family and him at home and then go off to serve.

Over conference weekend we hosted two get-togethers.  Saturday night Dave invited a bunch of the young men over to eat french toast and play metegols and guitars while I was off at the women's conference, which here goes from 9-10:30 pm.  They showed up at 8 and were still going strong when I returned from the meeting.  At 11:00 pm I insisted Dave take the boys home.  After all we are senior missionaries!

 L-R:  Jorge (back of head) Luciano Hernandez, Emiliano Baudino, Valentino Alessia, Alex Cabrera, Tomas Perez, Lautaro.  Photo below - Tomas Perez & Alex Cabrera

Sunday night after conference we invited the Young Single Adults to come over for a french toast dinner as well and a share-your-favorite-talk devotional.  We didn't get real good participation that night, only 4 came.  It was a last minute plan so next conference in April we'll have to plan and publicize it sooner.

October 9th was another zone conference.  Those are always a spiritual experience.  We took advantage of having two new zone leaders to put a bug in the ear for the lunch menu.  The past zone leaders have always loved serving these huge chicken sandwiches that are more bread than anything and tend to be dry.  I ate them the first zone meeting we went to but after that I've just refused.  We tried to get the other leaders to try our Caryco Rotiseria roasted chicken and french fries that we love but they didn't seem interested.  Since both the zone leaders were pretty new and hadn't had much chance to learn their way around we invited them to lunch, served them the chicken and won them over.  So lunch was delicious!

 See what I mean?  Doesn't that look delicious?  Especially the chicken??

The zone leaders got a lot of compliments on the lunch so I think the other missionaries agree with us now.  Maybe we've started a new lunch tradition for zone conferences.  That would be wonderful!

Here are some photos from this month's zone conference.

E. Fennegan, one of our new zone leaders, showing off his Peruvian tie.  He hasn't been to Peru, but somehow he has one.

E. Holmes showing off his scripture covers.  Since there is so much cattle here, leather is cheap.  Apparently in one of his areas there is a member that makes scripture covers.  Would love to get a few of those.  

A Book of Mormon activity from the zone conference.

The zone leaders' workshop used a football theme.  Found out E. Fennegan, who is from Arizona, was a quarterback in high school.  There is E. Rhoades in the middle of the line thinking "Pick me!  Pick me!"

But E. Bingham, a newbie in the mission was picked to throw the football in a demonstration used to talk about using members in the missionary efforts.

Oct 12 & 13 was District Conference.  We were newbies in Argentina the last time they held district conference.  We knew just about no one.  What a difference 6 months can make!  As we looked around we could see so many people we have worked with or have gotten to know.  The chapel was crammed full as well as the culture hall.  After the meetings it was hard to get away, so many people wanted to talk with us.  Not that we were wanting to make an escape or anything.  Despite seeing many people there, there were still lots of people we've worked with that weren't there.  The building was so full.  If activity rate were to improve, they would not be able to fit everyone in for the conference.  Wouldn't that be a nice problem to have?

After the conference we had the Sanchez family from Branch 3 over to our house for a pancake feast.  We fixed homemade hash browns and eggs as well.  This family is one of our favorites we are working with (should have taken a photo) and they were being rewarded for having read through all of I Nephi.  They were baptized one day before we entered into the MTC so they have made it to the six month mark and are going strong. 

October 13th was the birthday of Giselle, a recent 17 year old convert and close neighbor.  We gave her a card and an IOU to take her and her wheelchair bound mom out for ice cream as we heard ice cream is a favorite of Giselle's.

The evening of October 13th the youth attended an orientation meeting for PFJ (the Spanish version of EFY).  It stands for Para la Fortaleza de la Juventud.  It was the same time as the English class, so I skipped out and attended.  They will be holding this 5 day youth conference from Jan 27 - Feb 1 and as I sat in the meeting I made a list of youth that are on the edge as to if they will attend or not and came up with 11 youth.  We will be focusing on visiting them and helping them get excited and signed on for attending.  It can be a testimony building experience for them. 

The cost of PFJ is 3,500 pesos, which comes out to about $67 US.  This includes the transportation there and back, 5 days of lodging and food, and all the activities.  This would be a steal of a deal in the US but here, it is going to be a challenge for many of the youth to come up with that kind of money.  The Argentine economy is struggling and most families do not have any extra income of any kind.  We decided we needed to turn our planned Sports Day activity into an opportunity for the youth to fund raise.

Tuesday, October 15th we finally were able to visit Martin & Silvia.  We've been visiting them fairly regularly since Silvia was baptized a few months back.  Martin has needed to stop smoking.  He made a serious attempt but wasn't able to leave it completely.  Since then he has lost his enthusiasm and appointments have been missed and before that would never happen.  We've been seriously praying for them.  We tried to buoy Martin up and encouraged him to keep trying.  We left him the talk by Elder Holland titled "Cast Not Away Thine Confidence" which speaks to the struggles we enfront whenever we are about to make a giant leap of faith towards becoming all we have the potential to be.  It seemed to be well received.  We can only pray it will do some good.  However, it did make us think about the teachings of Jesus Christ that requires a sacrifice to follow and live.  Not all are willing to pay the price.  We hope Martin is. 

Spiritual Thought for the Week:    "There remains something undeniable, deep within our hearts, that hungers for a higher and nobler purpose... The Savior invites us, each day, to set aside our comforts and securities and join Him on the  journey of discipleship.  There are many bends in the road... But if you stay on the path and trust in God, you will eventually find the way to your glorious destiny and back to your heavenly home."  Deiter F Uchtdorf - "Your Great Adventure"  October 2019 General Conference