Ilumina El Mundo - Light the World

Our focus this month has been the Light the World initiative and new movie "The Christ Child"

What a powerful movie that is!  We have shown and watched it so many times we almost have it memorized, but it continues to keep our attention and touch our hearts no matter how many times we watch it.  In our weekly FHE we have shown it, in visits to members we have shown it.  We even have plans to turn the district chapel into a movie house and invite the public to come see it.  We did up flyers to go into the business windows.  We printed off small invitations for all the missionaries in Venado Tuerto to be handing out.  We billed it as a "first time ever shown in Venado Tuerto" event.  We have scheduled Dec. 19 & Dec 21 for 3 nightly showings at 7, 8 and 9 pm.  We even talked to the two local radio stations about announcing the event and they agreed to do it.  We looked into taking out an ad in the local paper but the cost was just too high.

We have talked about the daily service calendar during our visits to members as well and encouraged them to participate in lighting the world this year.

Sister Rhoades went all out for one FHE as the investigator attending (Damian in T-shirt next to the elders) had had a birthday the day before.  She fixed German Chocolate Cake doing everything from scratch of course, including the evaporated milk needed for the frosting.  It turned out fantastic, very moist and very rich.  We were happy campers, all of us.

For our visits with new converts and less actives we have focused on the 5 chapters in the Book of Mormon that talk about what happens here in America at the time of Christ's birth - Helaman 13 - 16 and 3 Nephi 1.  We've introduced them to Samuel the prophet and his prophesies.  They've been quite surprised to learn that the Nephites are now the bad guys at this point in the book and the Lamanites are the righteous people.  Since we've taught them mostly from 1 & 2 Nephi this comes as quite a shock to them.

This month has also been full of Primay programs in the different branches.  We were surprised they do them so late in the year.  But every Sunday except for the first Sunday and Dec 22nd has had a Primary program presentation by one of the different branches.  The last Sunday of the month, two branches are doing their programs.  Talk about waiting for the last minute!

We really enjoyed Branch 1's program.  They did an excellent job and the spirit was very strong.  Since their Primary does not have very many children and most of the children are younger than 8, they involved the families of the Primary children in the presentation and it was very sweet to watch families share gospel messages to the congregation.

 We found out that the tradition here is to do a big foyer display as part of the program.  Look at what we saw as we entered the chapel on Dec 8th for the Branch 1 program. 

 The big blow up of Jesus Christ was impressive.  He is looking down and with the tree stump there, the Primary kids could sit there and it looked like Jesus was looking directly at them.

Well, unless you're a big kid, like E. Rhoades.  Then it looks like you're confessing your sins.  haha.

December 15th was the Primary program of Branch 2.  Sister Rhoades was asked to play the piano for this program.  Here is what we saw when we arrived that Sunday. 

We've also been busy helping with the district Christmas Musical Celebration that is scheduled for Dec. 20th.  Luckily we are not heading this up.  We are only helping.  We've been trying to teach the missionaries a musical number by Sally DeFord, Born Is the Light of the World.  Or in Spanish, Nacio La Luz del Mundo.  We've had to simplify it as we only have a limited number of times to practice.  What is worrying Sister Rhoades is the scheduled transfers for Dec. 16th, right before the program.  If we get a lot of new missionaries into the zone, it could make things tough.

 Here is what our choir consists of prior to transfers.  Above is district 2 and below is district 1.
District 2 - L-R:  E. Delgado, E. Orquiz, E. Williams, E. Bitter, E. Sessions, E. Rowley, E. Lewis and E. Tillahuaca
District 1: Hnas:  Hna. Bueno, Hna. Ellsworth, Hna. Tippets, Hna. Callapa   Elders L-R:  E. Vergara, E. Baird, E. Cardenas, E. Villatoro, E. Fennegan, E. Castilla.  We lost one elder from this district E. Bingham at the beginning of the month.  He was fairly new and wasn't handling the mission well and asked to go home.  We felt really bad.  His birthday was Dec 2nd and we made peach cobbler for him and right after the district meeting on Dec 3rd he left. 

The first weekend in December was the Festivales de Venado Tuerto.  The best we could understand it was sort of like Pleasant Grove Strawberry Days but on a much more modest scale.  There were a few craft vendor booths set up in the main park and they had built a big stage for concerts in the evening.  What was really cool was the Methodist church, that is located across the street from the main plaza, invited local choir groups to come and perform in their church on Friday night, Dec. 6th and the Y.W. choir was invited to come and sing.  They had prepared a couple of songs for the district conference in October so they just needed to brush up on those songs since one was actually a Christmas song, What Child is This (in Spanish).

We might be a bit biased but we thought they were the best sounding group there.

Dec. 7th we made a trip out to the farthest point in the mission, General Villegas.  It is a very small branch 2.5 hours away from Venado Tuerto.  There is one pair of missionaries assigned to this small branch.  Most branches have two sets of missionaries so only having one tells you it's small.  They actually meet for church in a rented building, not a chapel.  And the baptismal font is a large plastic pool.  We should have taken a photo of that as well.

And the missionaries get to use bikes in this area.  Those are their bikes outside.  It is the first area we've seen where no locks are used.

Here is a picture of the chapel.  We had to take a picture of this because E. Rhoades says it is so exactly what he would see in the south when he served his younger mission.

We held a FHE showing the Christmas video but didn't get very good attendance.  But for the few that came, it was important. 

The Murphy sisters finally had a baptism this month on Dec. 14th.  It is quite the miraculous story.  Pedro, has been the father of a member family for some time but has never been baptized due to his word of wisdom problem and yet he would attend church with his family regularly.  Something pricked his heart recently and he decided that he wanted to be baptized and so he would have to give up smoking and set about to do it.  He was a heavy smoker according to what he told us so it was quite the accomplishment for him to do it.

Here is a photo from the celebration after the services. Pedro is in the middle with the white shirt and tie.  These are all his extended family. The gentleman on the left with the beard and white shirt and tie baptized him.  He is one of his sons.  He seemed quite firm in the gospel.  He just doesn't live locally.  Also the woman in the black top, his daughter is the wife of the branch president who is last one on the right.  So his kids are good solid members.  It was good to see him go under the water.

We were invited to a dinner at the Rolon families residence this month and learned what cooking "al disco" meant.  We had heard the people talk about that before so we got to see it in action.

Above Gabriel is in the early stages of preparing the meal.  Below the meal is simmering and bubbling.  The chicken was quite tender when we ate it and the "stew" was very flavorful.

He had fixed up the front of his house as well with some new plants.  And yes, that is a peach tree!

Here are a few Christmas decorations from down here.  First, what we did to decorate up our place.

 We bought a simple nativity scene and garlands, but no Christmas tree.  Small artificial ones were the only thing you could find and the price was crazy expensive for just using it one year, so we abstained from purchasing.

But here is a Christmas tree we saw at one of the local stores.

And yes, that is plastic soda bottles spray painted green.  We had to take a photo because it is so typical down here.  They don't throw away anything if they can help it and use and reuse whatever they have.  The next blog post for the last half of December will show some more Christmas items.

Spiritual Thought:  The missionaries in the Rosario mission have been working on memorizing the Living Christ together.  Here is my favorite paragraph - (but of course we've memorized the Spanish version)
We bear testimony, as His duly ordained "representatives" - that Jesus is the Living Christ, the immortal Son of God.  He is the great King Immanuel, who stands today on the right hand of His Father.  He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world.  His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.

A Shift in Focus

We started the last half of November off with a really amazing Family Home Evenings.  It was one of those times where you just pinch yourself and say, this is what I get to do as a missionary??

We brought together some of our new converts and recently reactivated by having a FHE at the Farias family home and bringing along Dario Arevalo.  Since both Damian Farias and Dario play the guitar and sing, AND their inactive father, Jorge Farias loves the traditional songs of Argentina, we thought it would be a great fellowshipping activity.  We turned out to be right.

You can see Damian playing above and both Dario & Damian played while Carolina sang in the photo below.  It was fun to watch how the two guitars improvised together.  Apparently these folk songs are well known by Argentines.  There were times when all the others would join in singing as well.  I would love to have Dave learn to play at least one of these numbers before we come home.

We had one of our families, Luciano and his mother Marcela finish up reading 2 Nephi with us.  They have been very faithful in keeping our appointments and reading the  Book of Mormon.  We decided we needed to reward them with an american meal.  We fixed them Beef Stroganoff Sunday afternoon, Nov. 17th.  Forgot to take photos.  Dang!

November 20th we did a group service project out in Murphy.  The sisters have been friendshipping a non-member who is trying to make a living growing a garden.  It is a big one.  This is his first year gardening and when we saw his garden we were quite impressed.  However, it is really more than one person can handle to keep up so we went out to lend a hand.

Here we all are hot and sweaty at the end of our time.  L-R:  Garden's owner, E. Castilla, E. Vergara, Hna. Ellsworth, Hna. Bueno, Hna. Rhoades, Hna. Tippets, Hna. Callapa.  E. Rhoades is taking the photo.  This isn't even showing the full length of his garden.  We gave him a few tips on how to use ground cover to keep down the weeds in his walking spaces between his rows.  That will help him tremendously.  We spent all of our time clearing out weeds in the walking spaces between the rows of crops and after two hours we had barely made a dent in his rows between all of us, so he definitely needs to work smarter to cut down on his work load.

November 21st was another zone conference.  We traveled down to Pergamino again.  Our first zone conference in the mission was down in Pergamino.

 They start out each zone conference singing happy birthday to the missionaries who have a birthday during that month.  That meant Sister Rhoades was included in the group this time.  We finally found out what is included in those birthday bags!

 We had some great workshops.  Above is the visual of the workshop given by the assistants.  Below is a recent convert family from Pergamino that came in and talked to the missionaries. 

 It was a very spiritual experience to hear them talk about how the gospel has completely changed their lives for the better and how grateful they are for the missionaries knocking on their door and the persistence they showed.  Apparently the mom was ready for the message but the dad took some convincing.  But they have all been baptized and are happily progressing on the road to temple convenants.

And there are always a few special effects.  Above the elders were challenged to do push-ups but as a team.  It was not an easy task.

Lunch was pizza.  I've never seen so many pizza boxes at the same time.  These pizzas were actually pretty good.  But I bet you've never had a fried egg on your pizza like we had here!

The going home elders sharing their testimonies - L-R:  E. Villatoro, E. Verdejo, E. ?, E. Fackrell

 This group of elders I've dubbed the Outer Darkness gang.  They are part of our zone, but their areas are 2 to 2.5 hours away from Venado Tuerto so we only see them when they come in for conferences or interviews.  L-R:  E. Jensen, E. Christiansen, E. ?, E. Grahme, E. (from Mesa, AZ), E. Olgivie

The former elders who have served with us in Venado Tuerto but are now in other areas are always happy to see us, especially E. Rhoades.  E. Cantero above.

E. Rhoades loves to chum around with these young guys.  L-R:  E. Fennegan, E. Baird, E. Cardenas, E. Rhoades, E. Villatoro, E. Castilla, E. Vergara.  We love their enthusiasm and their dedication to preaching the gospel, sometimes enduring a lot of rejection in the process.

Here is a photo of our zone as of November 21, 2019 L-R back row:  E. Delgado, E. Baird, E. Cardenas, E. Bingham, E. Vergara, E. Bitter, E. Rowley, E. Sessions, E. Lewis, E. Christiansen, E. Jensen, E. Fennegan, E. Graehme, E. Tillahuaque, E. Orquiz  L-R front row:  E. Williams, E. Castilla, E. Villatoro, Hna. Rhoades, E. Rhoades, Pdte. Allred, Hna. Allred, Hna. Tippets, Hna. Callapa, Hna. Ellsworth, Hna. Bueno

November 22nd, we saw another snowball here in Venado Tuerto.  The youth leaders planned a fund-raising activity for Especially for Youth.  They had each branch prepare a dance number and present it while selling refreshments to those watching.  (We ate the most amazing lemon cupcakes at this activity!).  The snowball effect was they had judges and placement awards, not just a show.  The youth worked harder on these presentations than they had the Talent Show.  They are starting to show pride in representing their branch.

 Here are two of the dance numbers.  Top photo shows the youth from Branch 1 and the bottom photo shows the youth from Branch San Martin (there are a lot more in this youth, but my photo just happen to coincide with a part where only three danced)

November 23rd Sister Rhoades attended a baby shower for one of the new convert families we visit.

Soledad Rolon is due to have her baby Dec 22nd.  The branch Relief Society threw her a party.  It was interesting because they met at a nearby park so the kids could play on the playground equipment.  Not a lot of gifts were brought (these people don't have a lot of extra funds for much of anything), but there were like 3 to 4 cakes brought.  Way more than needed for the amount of people that came.

Soledad with one of the cakes.  She is having a boy and plans to name him Michael Nelson (Nelson in honor of President Nelson), but they are spelling Michael - Maicol- because that is how you would have to spell it to have the same pronunciation in Spanish for the name in English.  Clear as mud?

The last half of November we also saw a number of activities finish up for us and a shift in our focus here in Venado Tuerto.

We finished up our Mission Prep class.  Here is a photo taken after our last class.

We are standing in front of the baptismal font as a symbol that serving as missionaries they will be inviting people to come unto Christ by entering into the baptismal covenant.  L-R:  Ayana, Rhoades, Maximiliano, Martin Aguirre, Leonela Moreno, Ignacio, Miligras Menchi, Angel

We celebrated finishing the course by inviting them to our home the following week to eat banana splits - since we are having very warm weather here.  This turned out to be a new experience for all of them.  They had never eaten banana splits before.  It was fun to watch them learn what a delight banana splits are.

 Angel checking out his options.  Milagros with her split completed.

 Sister Rhoades ready to dig in!

Three of the students have their mission calls and one has already reported to the MTC in Brazil.  The other two will report in January.  Two more plan to go out as close to their birthdays as possible in April.  One is preparing her papers as I write this blog.  Two more plan to go out around June/July.  That would make a total of 7 missionaries from this one class.  We hope that will be the case.  We will start up a second round of this course sometime in March probably as there are an equal number of students that could attend that didn't attend this time.  It is very satisfying to help these young people prepare to serve the Lord.

We also finished up the English Connect 2 course.  We had only four students stick it our for the full 25 weeks.

L-R:  Marilyn DeAngelis, Rocio Bolano, Maribel Capdevila, Instructor Monica Berta, Griselda Emacora.  Sister Berta did a great job teaching the course.  We got to substitute for her a few times which was fun.  We attended each week as a support and we often helped with pronunciation issues as well as vocabulary and of course, speaking practice.  The goal of English Connect is to prepare students for BYU Pathway program.

We held a Pathway fireside on Sunday Nov 24th to orient the members here in Venado Tuerto about the course, the requirements and the possibilities of what can be accomplished academically online through BYU Worldwide.  It truly is a miraculous development how members worldwide can be BYU students online and obtain a top knotch education.

We continue to enjoy working with our virtual Pathway group.  Thursday nights is one of our weekly highlights.  The students do such a great job preparing the gathering agendas and leading the students.

This is what we see each week during our one hour gathering.  You can see we have over 20 students who log in each week to participate.  And our group is only one of several throughout Argentina.  The students love the program and we love the program as well.

Our shift in focus is based on what the Holy Ghost inspires us to do.  We were inspired to create unity among the members of the district by sponsoring some district wide events, the Talent Show activity in June/July and the Sports Day activity the first Saturday in November.  These events are bearing fruit.  We were also inspired to sponsor a Mission Prep class and that is bearing fruit as well.  As baptisms have slowed down in Venado Tuerto (the last Saturday in November we had two scheduled baptisms that did not materialize at the last minute.  And we are not talking postponed, we are talking fell away!  It was very discouraging), and with some of our time commitments ending we found ourselves with some spare time.  What to do with that spare time we wondered.

Well, the Lord says seek and ye shall find.  So we prayed for guidance and the answer came back to focus on ministering.  We've started to meet with some of the branch and district leaders, mostly Elder's Quorum and Relief Society Presidents to learn how ministering is going here and how we might help.  What we've learned has been discouraging.  Ministering basically is not going, not even by the solid active members.  Any ministering that happens is mostly done by the full-time missionaries. No wonder the in-activity rate is so high and the church is not progressing towards becoming a stake here in Venado Tuerto!  And oh boy, do we have our work cut out for us!!  Message us with any ideas or suggestions because we continue to pray but have not been able to find any real solid answers to this challenge so far.  Once we find the answers, we have no doubt if we follow them, we will have success.  Look at our track rate so far!  And it's not because we are so wonderful.  It is because this is the Lord's work and he has power to do miracles through his servants if we do things in "his own way".

November ended with an attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving.  That is not a holiday that is practiced here in Argentina.  We figured it would be a day like any other.  However, we learned that Bruno and Luisa from Branch 2 had a huge desire to experience a Thanksgiving dinner.  So we invited them over, along with Dario Arevelo, who struggles to put food on his table.  We went to work trying to figure out how to find a turkey and all the trimmings of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  We learned that turkeys are non-existent in Argentina, so we had to settle for chicken.  We also had to do without cranberry sauce but a few of the other Thanksgiving specialties we were able to create but they had to be done be done from scratch!  We learned how to make eggnog from scratch and bread stuffing (which had to be cooked in the oven) completely from scratch.  None of this seasoned bread cubes from a box.  We also had to bake sweet potatoes from tubers and then saute them in butter and brown sugar to get the same effect we get using canned yams.  We did cheat and buy the chicken pre-cooked as well as the lemon pie we served.  But a lot of time was invested into making this meal happen!

L-R:  Bruno Soria, Luisa Varela, his mother, E. Rhoades and Dario Arevalo

They raved about the food and were very happy to be there and appreciative of our efforts so we decided it turned out to be a good way to celebrate.

We miss our family members and friends and it feels strange to be going into the holiday season when it is warm and sunny outside.  We hope the Lord will bless our efforts as we serve and strive to build up His kingdom in a very humble part of his vineyard.

Spiritual Thought:  "Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus"  Neal A Maxwell.  Take time this holiday season to watch the new Christ child movie at https://www.comeuntochrist.org/light-the-world/the-christ-child