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