Another audio file for Tanner's weekly letter. It's transcribed below
How's it going? I'm
Elder Simmons, I'm 19 years old and I'm a missionary of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'll start
by telling you what happened last week.
Last p-day we went to one of the most expensive restaurants in all of
Formosa and we bought Alligator, it was so good, it had a four cheese dressing
on top and it was $15 a plate. We spend
$80 between 5 missionaries but it was so worth it.
Elder Johnson came back with his parents, I met his parents
and that was really fun. We went
around with them a little and visited a few people. Elder Johnson took us around in the car he
rented so that was really sweet because I haven't been in a car for over a
year. Last Saturday was my companion's
birthday so we ate 3 lunches in 2 days.
Woooohooo. On his birthday we
made ourselves cheesecake
This is a national day of service where they cleaned up a park.
We are teaching a couple.
We dug a hole for
them and then after we dug the hole they gave us like 5 hamburgers each and
then they gave us a piece of cake. After that we went to lunch with another
family and oh my I was so full.
Let's get to talking about the work. We are teaching this man name Miguel some
English classes. I did English classes
in my first area Clorinda a year ago but I didn't like it at all. I didn't feel like it was very
efficient. There was a man that found us
in downtown Formosa in his truck and yelled out at us "I no speak English,
teach me teacher." We said alright
we'll teach you and so we started teaching him and it turns out that I'm sure
he wanted to learn English but it looks like he wanted to learn a little bit of
the gospel too. He's kind of worried
about his son that is passing through his teenage years. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him
to come to church but he's not in our ward so we'll ask him if he went to
church when we teach him again tonight.
That should be fun.
Also we are teaching named A. A is the husband of the Sister D that got baptized a month ago. He lived
in Paraguay but he came back to Argentina so he is going to get baptized. This
one is complicated. There is a family
that all the kids are members but the parents aren't members because the dad
doesn't want to get married or baptized, he doesn't want anything to do with
the church but the mom goes every week with her kids. When the parents aren't baptized and one of
their kids turned eight but it's a convert baptism because the parents aren't
members. So we're teaching her and she's
going to get baptized this week. Also the same situation there is a kid that
is adopted but not legally and he's living with a member and he turned 8 and he
is going to get baptized this weekend too.
After that we found a less active family. The family R,who the mom was baptized 20
years ago but she hasn't been going to church for a long time. Some of the members in our ward told us to
pass by and they have a daughter that is 9 years old and she wants to get
baptized not this week but next week. So
we have some good work. Other than that
we need to start looking for some new people.
We have a lot of people to teach but they aren't progressing very well,
they don't come to church because of some obstacles.
Funny story, N,
the kid that was baptized 4 weeks ago.
The other day he was walking and he sees some police and they are
looking through a house for drugs. He
looks suspicious because he's looking more than he should be and the police see
him. Before N drank, smoke and did
drugs so the police know him. So the
police see him, this is after he's been baptized, they pull him over and throw
him up against the car and start patting him down and take his backpack off and
they open the back pack and there is one thing in the backpack and guess what
it is? His Book of Mormon, that day he
was headed to his brother's house to give him a Book of Mormon. On Saturday we did divisions with him, he's
only 17 and he's super cool, I went with him and Elder Tapia went with another
kid in the ward. We went and taught his
brother and that was really cool. That's
about it for the work, there's a lot to do here in Formosa.
Today we did something special. Today we went and bought ground meat but it
was ground crocodile. I don't know
what's been going on with eating so much crocodile lately but it seems to be
the theme. We threw some onion, some
bell pepper, little bit of egg, little bit of salt and we put it in an
empanada. You guys remember those things
from Taco Bell called empanadas that had apples and cinnamon. They make those here but they aren't sweet,
they always put them with chicken or ham & cheese or any meet. We made empanadas with crocodile and it was
really good. Right now we are getting
ready to go out and do the beautiful work again. We are going to teach the family Cespedes,
the ones that got baptized last week.
They are so cool, honestly. Elder
Tapia thought they were members that were baptized 20 years ago because they
seem so faithful and come to all the activities and the brother passed the
sacrament on Sunday. I love them so
much. We are having Family Home Evening
with them and we are going to share our alligator empanadas with them. Sunday they made us an asado. Which is a BBQ with way too much carne, way
too much meat. Wow it was so good and
hey guess what. Even though I'm eating a
tone here I've been losing weight. I
lost like 2 pounds this week. Elder
Tapia and I run a little and do a lot of pull ups, so that I can get ready for
that beach body when I get back. Even
though I have 10 months to worry about that.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach me at
tanner.simmons@myldsmail.net but you can only contact me on Mondays unless it's
transfer then it's Tuesday. Love you
tons, have a great week and I'll see you later.
Love Elder Simmons
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