2-23-16

I got a new companion but am in the same area, Elder Carrizales he is from Wyoming...so I'm excited:)  He's been in the mission 5 months.  What are you guys up to up in the frozen barren land of the north?

I spaced doing a recording because of transfers but I'll fill you in a little.  This week it was suuuuupppperrr hot, hit 123 degrees Fahrenheit, and then it rained Saturday so no when came to church sadly... but that's the mission. The investigators are doing really good even though they didn't go to church.. We taught A and To the law of chastity and they actually kind of want to get married so that is nice... J is having trouble smoking still but really wants to be baptized. D and C are doing really good basically D already stopped smoking but C isn't married yet... and her boyfriend doesn't really like us I don't think.... We are also finding some good new people but they haven't come to church quite yet... o and I traded a drunk guy my belt for his shirt it's a loooong story but I'll tell you in less than four months ;) 

I'm still working as hard as I can even the end is coming, it's actually a better reason to work hard.

Love you all tons and talk to you next week........ 

2-15-16

This week, Monday, p-day.  There’s this place in our area to write home and went there and they didn’t have internet so we took the bus to the next town and wrote from there.  We had a lesson with R, a new guy we are teaching.    He is about 25, has a daughter with his girlfriend and he is really cool.  He has some great potential he just needs to start ready the Book of Mormon right now.

Tuesday morning we went and did service.  Last week we found this lady named B.  She’s set for a baptism but not a date yet.  She didn’t make it to church but she’s going to go next week.  We asked her if there was anything we could do for her and she said my son needs to paint his room.  Her son is 18 so we painted his room.  Apple Green was the color of the paint.  We put the first coat on for her.  It was fun but super hot.

Tuesday night we got home from working about 9PM.  We got showered and put our church clothes back on and left at 11:30 PM.  We got on a bus at 12:30 AM and got to Resistencia at 7:15AM.  I slept but it wasn’t a deep or comfortable sleep.  My companion had to do paperwork so he could be legal.  There was another missionary there, Elder Johnson, we have some common friends.  He’s pretty cool, I met him at the beginning of my mission.  He’s a transfer ahead of me and his companion was also doing paperwork.  We basically spent the whole day together.  We went to a big super market and walked around all day.  We had some ice cream and Subway.  Just chilled for the day.  At about 3PM my companion came back and we took a bus to Formosa, about a 2 hour drive.  We spent the night there in my old pension with Elder Tapia and Elder Webster.  

Thursday we had multi zone meeting and we watched the missionary broadcast that we had missed when the power went out.  President Franco talked to us about how to follow the spirit.  I liked it a lot.  We missed our bus to get back to our area.  We left on the 8:30PM bus and got back at 2:30 in the morning.  Then we got up at 6:30AM and worked a full day. 

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were kind of rough.  A few of our investigators are falling away.  J, we think she’s hiding from us.  She didn’t come to church, she left us a message that she was moving.  We went to stop by to see how she was doing.  Her daughter came out and we asked if her mom was home.  She walked in the back yard and said “Mom the Mormons are here”  she came back and said her mom wasn’t home but she just talked to her behind the house.  D and her granddaughter came to church.  Some other investigators slept in and didn’t come.    Pray for my investigators because they need it.  They are such great people I just need to be patient.  It’s just hard to see their potential and see them not want to reach it.  

Saturday was sweet.  There was a ward I mean group baptism.  There’s 2 active families here and their son turned 8 so he got baptized.  We went to their house in the afternoon.  We hopped in the uncles truck and went out in the middle of no where to a pond.  

They dressed in white, went in the pond and baptized him.  Right after he was baptized all the kids threw off their clothess and went swimming.  Our ride didn’t come back for about an hour and a half so we just had a little picnic there and chilled.  The parents and all the kids swam.

This week we spent about  20 hours on a bus in 2 days.   That’s about 1750 pesos which is about $150 traveling and we only have about $190 the whole month so we’re eating rice.    Someone started a rumor here that we are here to steal their water.  The other day we were walking  down the street and this lady asked us what we were doing here.  We said we were teaching about Jesus Christ and she said no you’re not you’re here to steel our sweet water.  We disagreed with her but she insisted that we are in Argentina to steal the water.  It didn’t make much sense but oh well.

Anyway love you all bye!

2-8-16

(Tanner started by singing There is Sunshine in My Heart today in Spanish.  Very loud and very off tune :)  Gotta love him)

How’s it going?  I was thinking that I always send my beautiful voice home to you and them you never send anything back.  I was thinking you should send your lovely voices back because I miss you.  Another great week last Monday on p-day we stayed in the pension all day playing Monopoly and I got destroyed.  

The zone leaders here have Monopoly so we always play when we go there after zone meeting.  It reminds me of the good old days when I was like 12 and we used to play Monopoly and mom would make us all cry because we’d loose and we’d all give up. 

We had district meeting Tuesday so that was fun.  When we got back from district meeting on Tuesday afternoon and we went to get in our house and we realized that our key was broken so we sat outside for an hour until our landlord came and opened up our house for us.  This week A and T both came to church.  They both came to church and they are my favorite people.  We found them the first or second week here.  They were just a contact we made and they are super prepared.  A's mom is Mormon so that’s sweet.  They have a baptismal date for the 12^th of March.  They are so sweet.  We’ve been teaching J but she didn’t come to church and we don’t know why.  We know her son  came from another state to visit her.  Let’s just say here son drinks a lot.  We didn’t actually meet him but we showed up to teach her and there was a guy passed out in front of her house.    We were teaching her the gospel of Jesus Christ and he listened for a bit but he was long gone, poor guy.   She is doing good we just have to figure out why she didn’t come to church.  We are teaching D & K daughter and her other daughter.  We found them with the missionaries last week.  They came to church again this week and are progressing good.  They can only meet with us every Sunday.  Today we went and had a nice lesson.  K is solid, she had written down some questions for us.  Little by little.

We found some other sweet people this week and we’ll see if they really progress.  It’s all a progress, it takes patience but it’s fun.  Sweet people!  S, P, L Familia D.

Thursday we got home stroll in to the penc.  First thing you do is head to the fridge and get a drink of water.  I’m just sitting there minding my own business.  All of a sudden I see a huge scorpion chilling on our wall.  About a 4” scorpion.  That was fun, doesn’t happen every day.

Today we walked about 6 miles.  We went to K and D and then after we had an appointment on the other side of Las Lomitas.  It would be like walking from our house to the Payson temple and back.  

I cooked a cheesecake.  It's a cream cheese with condensed milk and then we put lime in it and break up cookies for the crust.  It was really good. 

It rained a lot this week, and it was hot today!  Ohhhhhhhh this week we met a lady that is 107 years old.  One hundred and seven years old.  107, 107 years old can you believe that?  Ridiculous.  She was born in 1909.  That is literally the oldest person I’ve ever met.  I’ve never even heard of someone that old let alone met them.  We were just walking around teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We knocked on a door.  They were a very humble family that let us come in.  They couldn’t read so that made it hard but we shared how to pray.  I introduced myself and what we were sharing.  I asked him if he lived alone and he said no I live here with my mom that’s 107.  Wow 107, we shook her hand.  Cute little old lady, pretty crazy.

This next week we have to go to Resistencia which is about a 6 hour bus ride and it costs 280 pesos which means we are going to be eating rice the rest of this month.  That’s OK I like rice, kind of.  We will leave Tuesday night at midnight and will get there about 6 AM.  Elder Cornell has to do paperwork and I’ll be in the office and then we’ll have a 6 hour bus ride back. 

Next Saturday the family R has an 8 year old son that will getting baptized.  His dad will baptize him in a pond.  That will be sweet.  We’ll actually baptize there next time we have a baptism.  That’s about it, I love you guys.    Send a voice message back so I can hear your sweet voices and your Utah accent.   Mounains.  Anyway have a great week, love you bye!

2-1-16

Here's comes the sun, da da da da da.  Right now I'm on a bus and the sun is barely coming up.  It's 8 in the morning and I'm so cold because the AC is blowing full blast.  Today is p-day, we got up early and took the 7AM bus to get to Eberreta and we'll have our p-day there because tomorrow we have district meeting there.  When we go there then we know we'll have computers to write on.  It's safer that way.  How is it going?  January is already ended and starting February, woot!  Dad happy birthday.  I didn't forget, mom didn't even have to remind me because I remember, what a good son I am.  But what I don't remember is how many years you are completing this year.  How do you say that in English, you turn.  How many years do you turn this year?  50? pretty sure it's 50 this year hahaha.  Let's go 50, happy 50th birthday dad.  That's what I'm talking about.  I hope you have a great one.  Happy Birthday

P-day last week was a mess because we couldn't get internet anywhere.  So we took a bus to a city an hour away from us with only one computer in the church so we had to share computers and only had about an hour and 15 min on the computer but it is what it is.  After we left we went and sat on the side of the main highway.  We waited for a bus to pass by for about an hour to get a ride back to Las Lomitas.  Tuesday we did service.  In the morning we cleaned the baptismal font.  When I say baptismal font I mean the plastic pool at a less active members house. 

After that we went to another less active lady and visited her and her daughter.  They are the M family.  She had some dirt piles that she wanted us to spread out.  We also breaking bricks so she can do cement in the floor of her house.  In a few weeks we'll do some more service for her.  We're going to put down cement in her house.  That was fun.

Monday night after we got back to our area we were walking to see R to finish the teachings for his baptism.  We were walking around and ran in to the 2 return missionaries from a different province that came to church last week.  They had an aunt and cousins that lived close and asked if we wanted to meet them.  We basically went on divisions and got some references.  We invited them to church and gave them a Book of Mormon.  They showed up to church so that was pretty cool. 

We've been teaching J, the lady we gave a blessing.  She came to church yesterday.  We found her in the morning and walked to church together.  She said she really like it.  We've been teaching the family F.  They are sweet, they are so cool.  We visited them Saturday and they said they were coming to church.  We called them Sunday morning but they didn't answer.  We passed by their house twice on Sunday but no one was home.

Thursday and Friday I went on divisions with Elder Porter, my zone leader.  I went to Ivareda.  We took a bus at 2pm and it was so hot.  The bus didn't have AC and it was honestly a very gross feeling of getting off the bus after 2 hours of sweating.  You feel so gross.  You know that movie flubber.  I imagine that's how flubber feels all the time.  Gross and gooey and grimmey and yuck.  

Friday night we were walking back to our house.  We were walking on the main road.  A guy said Elders how are you?  We talked to him for a minute and he told us he was a member from Formosa.  He asked about church here and he had come to do some interviews in Las Lomitas because it was 47 degrees Celsius or about 118 degrees Fahrenheit.    He was doing interviews to see how people live here in the heat.  So that was fun we walked around in that all day.  We kept walking down the same road and all of a sudden this huge wind picked up.  A storm was blowing in from out of nowhere.    There was a path way we were walking down with trees on both sides of the pathway.  All of a sudden we hear a big crack and this HUGE tree branch falls behind us.  Literally if we would have been seconds later we would have been smashed by the tree.  It was pretty crazy.  It got the adrenaline going.

Yesterday we were going to visit an investigator family with a member family.  We thought it would be the member mom & dad and we went to pick them up.  When we showed up the whole family was ready to go.  Mom, dad and 4 kids.  So there was 6 of us walking down the street.  We had so many people looking at us.  It was the first time I've done divisions with the whole family.  It was so cool.  We ate some guizos also with them.

The baptism Saturday went great.  I baptized him.  It was a short service.  The pool that we baptized him in was so shallow.  If we baptize any adults I don't know what we'll do.  He went all the way under.  He was confirmed Sunday. 

That's about it.  But this mission is still going great.  It's always better when you baptize so we're going to keep baptizing .  So that's this week, love you tons.  Bye!

1-26-16

Hello how are you?  Anyway another great week.  I'll tell you a secret, it's really hot here but not as humid as my last area.  You'd wake up at 7AM and it was already hot and at 9 you are walking and sweating.  Here it's a little dryer so it doesn't get really hot until about 10AM.  Plus I don't sweat as much because of the lower humidity.  I really like it here. 

Last week we taught a lot!  There's so many great people.  The first week we gave a blessing to a member's sister.  Her name is J.  She finally got out of the hospital .  We had gone by to visit her and it was really cool because we went on Wednesday and she accepted everything and gave her a priesthood blessing.  We gave her a Book of Mormon.  We went back Saturday with some members and she was telling the members about us coming by and blessing her  and then the next time I went to the hospital they told me to go home because I was healed and she knew that the blessing healed her.  It was really cool.  I think because she had that experience she'll be able to progress easily.  I doubt she's married.  I doubt anyone in this town is married.

We have this girl named R and she's been to church about 20 times  but she's not married.  We talked to my old companion in Formosa and he can go get the papers she needs and send them to us.  Hopefully we can get her to the baptismal font.  Wait, time out, there's no baptismal font, we baptize here in a members back yard in a very small pool.  It's like the pool we had except smaller.

This week we will have a baptism, R.  He is doing good, he is the son of one of a faithful member here.  I don't know why he wasn't baptized.    The very first week as we were getting to know people my companion said he wasn't baptized and that surprised me.  We taught him for 2 weeks and he's getting baptized.  He asked me to baptize him so that will be the first baptism in Las Lomitas.  Woot woot, and many more to come!

This week we went to a less active family with the ward directory and we just read everyone's names and the member told us where everyone lives.  This past week we've been visiting.  We probably found 5 or 6 less actives and every single one of them has someone in their family to teach and baptize.  These less active people haven't had contact for the church for 10 years so they are pretty prepared to learn.  They just literally didn't have a church here to attend.  We've possibly found a church.  It's a nice building that is 15' x 12' with an office and a kitchen.    We're sending the papers in to get it approved.  Maybe by the end of next month we're hoping to have a church.

This Sunday there were 19 people in church.  That actually wasn't very good, a lot of people didn't show up.  There were 2 returned missionaries that showed up with their moms.  They live about 7 hours away and are traveling to Cordoba temple and have family here and so they went to church.  That was really cool, they both served in Brazil. 

In my old area we were teaching a girl named M.  She's getting baptized this weekend.  Elder Tapia told me that she's been through a lot.  Her whole family is against her getting baptized and she has to be interviewed by President Franco.  She's been through a lot and has a great testimony.    She has some good  friends in the church too.

We cooked some sloppy Joe's, whewwwww  some American food.  We haven't had too many lunches so I'm starting to use the packets you sent me.  There's a really cool family in our area that fed us lunch.  I took a picture with them.  The one with four kids and a mom and dad.  They are one of the coolest families I've met in my mission.  They are about to get sealed in the temple so that is special.  We had the lunch with the group leader too that lived in Texas.  

This week a Jehovah's Witness told me that my salvation is in risk and that I should repent.  I testified clearly to him that Jehovah is Jesus Christ.  He kind of got mad but that's alright the wicked taketh the truth to be hard.  It's actually kind of sad because they are so close to the truth (sort of) but they are just blinded by the craftiness of men.

Yesterday I didn't write because we had interviews with President and that's why I didn't write.  It took up the whole day.  We woke up and tried to get the 7AM bus but we were told the 7 o'clock bus doesn't exist anymore so we had to wait until 9 o'clock bus.  It takes about 2 hours on the bus to get to where the zone leaders live and there's a big church there.  It's the district building.  It would probably be an hour driving but 2 hours on the bus.  We went to take the 4:30 bus but they didn't have it any more and the next one wasn't until 7:30pm.  What can you do? Nothing because we don't have a car or scooter, just our feet.  

Las Lomitas is super dusty so all of my shirts are turning super yellow, kind of cool.  The other missionaries know that you work hard and are an old missionary when your shirts start to turn yellow.  I guess you could say I work hard and I'm old in the mission. 

That's about it, love you guys.  I hope all is good there in Utah.  I'm having some great experiences and we're are praying for miracles every day, trying to follow the spirit, be obedient and just loving the mission. 

Kiss kiss, hug hug and we'll see you later.

1-18-16 Las Lomitas

So here I am in Las Lomitas, the new area.  Las Lomitas translated means the little ridges, it's actually true there are little hills here the most I've seen in my mission.  They are about 1/2 the size of the hill we live on there in Payson but still they are hills.  Las Lomitas is a cool place.  It's about 5 hours away from anything and 7 hours away from the mission home and 5 hours away from my last area.  It's a farm town but it's pretty cool and bigger than I thought and it has a supermarket.  My companion is Elder Cornell, he's pretty cool, a nice guy.  He's a new missionary, has 2 transfers and he's super excited for the work.  This week we worked really hard.  Being in a new area helped me to be really excited again.  Basically we got here without any one having a set baptismal date but there are a few people we're teaching.  There's a lady that's been to church about 15 times but she's not married.  We went to the place where people get married here and we asked them what they need, so we've started on that. 

We have another investigator named R.    What happened yesterday in church was that there about 4 active families here.  The family M, they are sealed members that moved here from Formosa 5 years ago and they also lived in Texas.  He worked in Texas for 10 years.  I asked him if he knew Sherman Texas where we used to live and he said yes he worked there.  He is the group leader.   We have the meetings at his house.  It's a little room, probably about the size of my old bedroom.  There's no AC and yesterday we had 21 people at church.  There's one family that has 5 kids and there's another family that is super faithful.  The family C.  The husband is a convert of about a year ago and they are planning on going to the temple the end of February to be sealed as a family.  They are super faithful.  They had us over for lunch yesterday.  They fed us noki's, it's like an Italian food.  It's potatoes with this noodle thing with sauce over it.  Then there's the family S.  The family S there is a mom and 2 kids.  1 of her kids is baptized but she has another child that is 11 and he's not baptized.  We invited him to be baptized and he said yes.    He'll be baptized Feb 6.  We just need to teach him everything,he' been to church enough to be baptized.  He's the only person that we have with a baptismal date right now. 

I'll tell you the story of Las Lomitas, the church was here with an active branch about 10 years ago in 2005-2006 it was very small.  There was a family M and they were super faithful and had a church in their back yard.  In 2006 their child got struck by lightning and both of the parents died and the other faithful son in the church moved away.    So there wasn't any leaders here for the church and it was still super young.  Plus I think some of the missionaries weren't being obedient.  We're in the middle of nowhere and so nobody checks on the missionaries for a long time.  Then they took the missionaries out of the area and the church died.  There's probably about 50 members in total on the records but about 25 still are living.  We've been going through the members and working with them.  We had a less active sister come to church with 2 of her daughters and one of them is 8 and a son that is 14 but he's slept in.  We're working with the kids.  We've been looking for some of the member families that haven't been coming.  We actually found a lot of families this week but we need them to start progressing.  So in Las Lomitas the church started up a year ago.  About 8 months ago the missionaries started working here full time so that's cool. 

Funny story, there is a man named S.  Some of the missionaries before us were walking around in the area and S came up to them and introduced himself and said I have the Melchezedic priesthood out of the middle of nowhere.  Turns out he was baptized along time ago.  So we went to visit him.  His wife isn't a member.  In Resistencia I went to this village of mud houses that was suuuuuuper far away, an hour and a half.  Turns out the family that I visited was his sister.  He hasn't talked to his sister for 5 years.  We called the Elders in Resistencia and they gave us her number and we're going to get the number to S.

It's hot here still, really hot here,  there's a lot of work to do.  We've been looking for a church building.  We found one building but it's not done yet and we have to get it approved.  We sent some pictures to President Franco and we'll call him about it.  It would be nice to have a church building because it's kind of like Family Home Evening in a members house.  It's not quit the same, it's a good experience.  This week we'll continue to work and find people.  We have a special meeting Wednesday.  All the missionaries in the whole world attend the meeting.  It's the first time in the history of missionaries that they've done this meeting.  Maybe they'll extend my mission for another year, ya!  Maybe a 3 year mission  or maybe not.

Love you guys, have a great one and I'll talk to you later.

1-12-16 Transfer

I got transferred.  I'm literally in the boonies of Argentina but it's gonna be a blast!!!!!!!  I'm in Las Lomitas, about 9 hours away from the mission home and 7 hours from my old area.  We have church out of a members house here, there are about 30 members.   It's not even a branch but a group.   It' s new area and it's a gold mine as it comes to the work, but there is a lot of crime (but don't worry they don't mess with us, plus God helps, and I'm sure you pray enough that God feels obligated to protect me) and killer cockroaches and other bugs that don't exist in the United States.   Also it's the hottest area in the mission and it's the middle of summer right now.......but I'm soooooooooooooooooo excited I might even finish my mission here.  I'm with Elder Cornell,he is from American Fork and he is pretty new in the mission, 3 months.  Dont' worry my 6th toe surgery went well and back up to speed :)  I just got here last night and now I'm on divisions because there are only 3 computers.  My bus was 3 hours late and then I rode it for 5 hours alone to Ibarreta and tonight we have to go 2 more hours to get the the area.  Basically I'm going to be traveling a tooooooooooooooooooon in my new area.

Recently I've been trying to know Jesus Christ better and recognize the spirit.

Love you all.