Baptisms from Beginning to End With Inspiration In-Between

We started February off with a baptism in the little town of Murphy.  It was a child of record who had turned 8, but he specifically asked us to come.  We visited his less active mom when we first got here about 10 months ago and he has never forgotten us.  Every time we have seen him, he has come up to us with the biggest smile and adoring look.  So we just had to be there to make his baptismal day even more special.

 

Lucio Serrano had many people there to support him.  He is loved by the members in Murphy.  We have to agree, he is a sweet kid that is easy to love.

PS - HLJ is the Spanish version of CTR.  It stands for Haz Lo Justo.




We started a monthly movie night that we will do each month on the first Friday of the month.  We have access to the Living Scripture site and we realized that many of the movies have Spanish sub-titles.  Also, many here study English, that is why we teach an EnglishConnect course.  And these movies on the Living Scripture site can be faith building as well.  We felt inspired to begin this monthly tradition so we have high hopes for this.

Our first movie night was February 7th and we went with the classic Saturday's Warrior the 2016 version.  We had about 12 people attend, mostly young women.  They loved it!  After the show, we take time to share thoughts and impressions.  We make sure they know these are not church movies so what is being shown is not church doctrine, but we do testify of truths found in the movie.  This time about a pre-existence, the importance of families, and that God has a plan for each of us and it is important to find out what that plan is and follow it because it will bring us lasting joy and happiness.

That same weekend we held a Sunday devotional for new converts.  We had heard about the South America Northwest tour that Elder Holland did in January.

We found out that he was holding devotionals targeting different groups during his tour and one of the groups was new members of two years or less.  Since we work a lot with new members we felt strongly that we needed to make that available to the members here as well.  We found out that we could access a recording of the event.  So we set up a date here and publicized the event as much as we could.  We listened to the recording ahead of time and knew it was going to be powerful.  It's Elder Holland folks!  We made invitations and took those around to every new member in each of the branches, active or not.  We actually meet a few new people we didn't know about before.  We put posters up in each of the chapels.  Even with all our efforts the turn out was minimal.  But... those who came were very impressed and edified greatly.  They all talked like it had been well worth coming.

We also felt impressed to organize a youth activity for leap year day, February 29th.  We got the green light from the district president and then met with the district YM president and YW president.  As we meet we felt impressed to focus on the 200th anniversary of the first vision and preparation for for April General Conference.  By the end of the meeting we had developed a pretty great plan for an activity that will combine fun socializing together but also provide a spiritual finale that should build testimony and challenge the youth to prepare for April conference.

We learned of a new bakery that is fairly close to us that makes great "facturas" which is basically pastries.  There is no end to good bread products here in Argentina. 

Not only do they have good pastries but they have both wheat and white rolls that are as good as anything in the states.  We can always use rolls for our Family Home Evening activities so it helps to have another source because you can't always count on rolls being available when you go to the bakery each time.

Because of the heat, we have had a steady diet of chilled watermelon.  There are days when nothing tastes better.  We include watermelon on our Family Home Evening menus as well.  Sometimes we need the missionaries to help us polish off left over watermelon from an event.  They are usually happy to do so.

 E. Tiquillahuana & E. Lewis above and Hnas. Silva, Callapa and Bueno below.

February 12th was yet another zone conference.  This time it was only the missionaries from Venado Tuerto and it was held in Venado Tuerto, which was nice since traveling usually means a 6 am departure time.  But the conference didn't have the same excitement you feel when two zones get together.

 Current zone leaders - E. Landvatter & E. Johnson

 Hnas - L-R: Bueno, Moura, Silva & Callapa

 Rama 3 elders - L-R:  E. Navarro, Campos, Vergara, Carbajal

 L-R: E. Tiquillahuanca, E. Skinner, E. Hansen (greenie), E. Rowley

L-R: E. Rodriguez (greenie from Arequipa, Peru), E. Bitter (Dave's adopted son), E. Taylor (greenie), E. Johns

The zone leaders wanted to teach about teamwork so they brought out the good old fashion three legged race event to illustrate what it takes to work together.

Zone leaders preparing the ties

On your mark!, get set, go

Lunch requires a large quantity of whatever we are eating as the elders can certainly put away a lot of food.  This time the menu was choripan, which is sausage sandwiches where the sausage has been cooked over a grill.  We learned that our friend, Victor Barboza, is the chef of these sandwiches. 

The choir Dave put together from his district singing

 One of our favorite elders is finishing up his mission this transfer so he was asked to give his testimony.  E. Vergara (on the right) has been in Venado Tuerto since July so we've gotten to know him well.  He started out as a zone leader and then became a district leader and has been training new elders.  He is a 24 year old convert from Chile.  He's done some great things here in Venado Tuerto.  We are very impressed with him.

 Our complete zone group photo

We are working on finishing up the EnglishConnect 1 classes and hope to have that completed by the end of the month.  We continue to work with our Pathway group.  It is smaller, but we have a dedicated bunch and mentoring the lead student seems to be a lot less time intensive than first semester.  They have seen how it's been done enough times by others that they know the routine now.  

We've had some pretty intense summer storms.  The weather here tends to be cyclical.  We tend to have hot days with more and more humidity until the heat/humidity is stifling and non-stop from morning to night.  At which time, we have a big downpour of rain, which will bring relief from the humidity and heat to various degrees for a number of days (2-4) and then the heat and humidity start to build again until it gets so bad that it causes another rain storm, sometimes with lightening and thunder sometimes no.  

We finished up the first half of February with a baptism as well...Victor's!  Victor is the husband of Rosanna who was baptized in September.  At the time she was baptized, he did attend her baptism and confirmation but prior to this he hadn't attended church at all during the 2-3 years she had been attending as a non-member.  But once he attended for her baptism, we noticed he started to attend on Sunday as well.  And the elders assigned to their area, did their job and invited him to come unto Christ and be baptized and he accepted.  We've liked him from the beginning.  He is an auto mechanic so Elder Rhoades connected with him right away.  So February 15th we had the privilege to attend his baptism.

When we got here, only Tania, their 15 year old daughter was a member.  Then September, Rosanna was baptized and now Victor.  They have a 6 year old son as well.  This is an eternal family in the making!  If Victor can stay active.  We are confident that Tania and Rosanna will stay active.  We will definitely be working with Victor to help him progress.

Spiritual Thought:  "Ultimately, everything God invites and commands us to do is an expression of His love for us and His desire to give us the blessings reserved for the faithful."  Jorge M Alvarado  October 2019 General Conference