Brock - July 25

Oh Happy Day!

Parker - July 24

Hey Everyone!

Wow do I have a week to tell you guys about. 

To start off, we were able to set some baptismal dates, so that`s really cool. we don`t have anyone that`s like right now gonna get baptized, but the ones that have a date set, they`re progressing rather well.

Also, ok, here`s the interesting part. Friday, in the morning, well, we have been trying to get our apartment changed, but the missionaries in the offices aren`t getting anywhere. So my comp got a little heated. He`s also been having tons of personal problems, so he was pretty discouraged. he kept saying I don`t feel like being in the mission anymore. 

So, Saturday, we spent the entire day travelling. we left in the morning to go to Salta, where the president is, and my comp had a talk with him. He came out a lot happier. 

And now, we have transfers! i will be staying here. my comp goes off to Salta. My new comp is Elder A, from Utah, he`s 6´8" really tall, but that`s cool. He`s already here, and he seems pretty chill, we`re gonna get along this transfer. Also, my MTC companion is now in my district! It`s so crazy and cool. 

Yeah, that`s pretty much it, I`m so excited for brock to go home, then I`ll have ayear in the mission, and then Jack heads to Chile. This transfer`s gonna be interesting. 

I love you all, and hope Brock has a fun plane ride. 

Love

Elder Blaylock

Brock - July 24

Just sending a quick e-mail to check in. We're at the president's house. I've already been interviewed. I love you guys. 

Mission accomplished. 

Parker - July 17

Hey everybody!

So yeah, this week went by fairly fast. Really the only things of note were the exchanges that we did. I stayed in the area with a Chilean ZL. He´s pretty cool, not a whole lot of people like him, but we got a long pretty well. I think its because he likes to be strict. 

Yeah, And I got the package!!!!! Finally! I am so happy to have gotten the package. It really boosts my spirits. 

Yeah, also, we finally got a certain investigator to church, and she liked it, so she´s gonna get baptized in the beginning of August, really cool. 

Oh yeah, completely forgot, we had Zone Conference last week, and I met the new president, Orquera. He´s pretty cool. Really capable, like President Chaparro, my last president, but he´s also got the spirits of a brand new missionary, so it´s gonna be interesting working with him. 

We still have no idea if I´m gonna stay here or if I´m gonna go. There´s a tiny tiny tiny possiblilty that I stay here with the same comp, but it´s really unlikely, and niether of us wants that. We get along really well, but we both really kinda need a change. 

Yeah, other than that, not much happened this week. Hope you all have a really great week!

Love you!

Elder Blaylock

Brock - July 17

This week was pretty exhausting. We worked to the bone, and Sunday morning we went by all of our investigators and not one went to church. Thankfully, one of the members brought a friend to church. We taught him a little after church, and he accepted everything pretty well. So that´s good.
My new companion is cool. He´s from Honduras, and he speaks English bascially fluently, but we only talk in English when we joke around. On Friday we had our multi-zone conference, and we (the zone leaders) had to prepare training. I think it turned out fine. I talked a little bit about Capitan Moroni. In Alma 48, it talks about Moroni, that if all men had been, and were, and ever would be like him, that the powers of hell would have been shaken forever, and that the devil would never have power over the hearts of men. So we talked about some of the things he did and was, how he pointed to Christ by the way he lived his life, and how we can apply some of these things to our missionary work. For instance, the people of Moroni had great faith in the Lord.

15 And this was their faith, that by so doing God would prosper them in the land, or in other words, if they were faithful in keeping the commandments of God that he would prosper them in the land; yea, warn them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger;

16 And also, that God would make it known unto them whither they should go to defend themselves against their enemies, and by so doing, the Lord would deliver them; and this was the faith of Moroni, and his heart did glory in it; not in the shedding of blood but in doing good, in preserving his people, yea, in keeping the commandments of God, yea, and resisting iniquity.

Here we see that the people had faith that God desired that they prospered, that he would warn them what to do, and where to go. I talked about applying this to how we work, where we work, and having the faith that God wants us to find the elect and is always trying to help us. I hope the training went over well. 

Today we had to come down to the capital, because tomorrow we´ll have the self-sufficiency course and the temple session. So we kind of wandered around, me and the other Americans going home. The bought a bunch of fake stuff, like ties and wallets and belts. I didn´t see anything "Brazillian" enough to be a cool souvenir. But we did go to a "famous" pizza/churrasco buffet that I´ve been hearing about my whole mission. This is going to be a good week. I love you guys. Don´t know if the next time you hear from me it´ll be an email or if we´ll be huggin and crying, so...

Elder Blaylock

Parker - July 10

Hey everybody!

So, this week was interesting. We did exhanges with the other elders in our district. And, my comp was told some good news by the ZL`s. Turns out, the district leader doesn`t need to leave his area during exchanges, his area should be the role model, and he should bring missionaries there to show them how it`s done, so...he got to stay here while I had to go to a rather difficult area for the third time in a row. We spent a good part of the day contacting, cuz they basically have no one to teach. Literally nobody let us in. Then we managed to have one lesson...with an investigator that has known the missionaries for 13 years, and is super paranoid and almost impossible to baptize.........So that was an interesting talk. 

Also, while we did exchanges, my comp did a family home evening in the twig, which was like super sucessful, so when we went back on thursday, it was basically a whole different area, cuz we had so many new people to teach, this week, we`ve managed to find about 20 new investigators. 

Now the sad part. When we did the FHE here, in the branch, on wednesday, I`m not kidding, literally NO ONE showed up. We sat in the chapel for like three hours just waiting. Finally, when we were about to call it quits, one member showed up, kinda sad, because she thought she had shown up late, after everyone had already left. Then we told her that she was the first to show up. 

After giving up, we went and bought some Choripan to cheer us up. Jameson knows what I`m talking about.

Yeah, and on Sunday, because it was the Argentine Independence day, there was very few people in our sacrament meetings. It`s been kinda tough, but we haven`t gotten discouraged, we`re just gonna work a lot harder, we`re changing lots of stuff. We`re gonna change apartments, how we work with members here, everything. 

Also, something that happened that was pretty awesome:

So for the past like seven or so months, I`ve been asking for a Portuguses copy of the Book of Mormon from the offices. And every single time, the ZL`s come back saying ``they didn`t have any.`` Only problem with that is that in the Presidents last conference, I saw another missionary receive a portuguese copy of the book of mormon from his ZL`s. And, this last time, again. nothing. so anyway, this week, my comp was thinking about the stuff he has. About what he`s gonna leave here and what he`s gonna take. He`s sorted out a bunch of  clothes, notebooks, etc. And one day, he turns to me and says ´´Hey, since you want one so bad, and since I`m not gonna take it with me, here`s my triple-combination in Portuguese.´´ WOW! I honestly have no idea what to say to him to express the gratitude I felt. 

And yeah, that`s basically what`s been going on this week. 

I love you all!

Elder Blaylock

Brock - July 10

So this week I was reminded that God hears and answers our prayers. I haven´t been writing too much about it (actually, I haven´t said anything at all until now), but my companion is kind of difficult to be around. He talks about a lot of inappropriate stuff, he just wants to baptize people without repentance and stuff like that, and his favorite past-time is to annoy me. But, I´ve been determined not to say anything about it, and to just keep going until the end because it´s so close. Yesterday though, it was getting really hard and I wasn´t really handling it anymore. So I went into the other room, sat for a few minutes, and then was overcome by the urge to kneel and pray. So I did. I talked with Him about what I was going through, that I justed wanted to do what was right, to feel the Spirit. I asked for strength and patience to go through the next two weeks with my companion. I thanked Him for my mission and all the things I passed through, and for His exceeding mercy on me. And then I went back into the other room. About twenty minutes later, the assistants called, like they always do on Sunday night, to follow up on how the zone went that week. After they followed up a little bit, the assistant asked "Do you guys like emergency transfers?" (he thinks he´s funny). So, it´s a long story. Last week, this Australian Elder (a zone leader in Salto, my old area) who played rugby before the mission tore a ligament in his knee. And has another ligament in his knee tearing as well. So he went to the mission office. They´re still seeing if he can do the surgery here or if he´ll have to go home. If he goes home there´s probably no way for him to come back, because it takes like a year to get a visa between Australia and Brazil. So anyway, his companion was in trio, and they wanted to fix that. So my companion is going there! It´s not that my companion is a bad guy, he´s just difficult to live with and he doesn´t care about what other people think of him. (He kind of has a superiority complex). So didn´t really care that he bothered me--on the contrary, he enjoyed bothering me. But anyway, that is almost all over now. My companion for the last two weeks will be Elder T, from Honduras.

In other news, today was probably my last normal P-day. Next week I´ll probably have my last interview with President (actually, it´ll only be my second), we´ll go to the temple and have the self-sufficiency course. Then the week after that, I´ll be at the mission office, basically just waiting for my flight. Today we met up with the district leader and his companion to make pizza (we made a very fat pizza, which took longer than expected) so we just did that today.

Last week we had a bunch of meetings. We had the "Meet the President" activity, the leadership council meeting, and interviews with President on three separate days. President Ribeiro seems nice, but I simply won´t have the time to get to know him for him to have a significant or even fleeting impact on my mission. He is certainly very different than President Farnes. That´s probably a good thing. President Farnes had the right vision, there were simply a lot of missionaries with "selective hearing" who misinterpreted his zeal and urgency for "there are no rules, just baptize". But President Farnes, no matter how much he required results it was never at the cost of obedience or skipping repentance.

Well, I haven´t got much else to write. I´m anxious to see you all. I´m not dying, I´m not distracted. Other than these companionship problems and my feet, things aren´t that hard. I´m grateful that all of yo are having such great and spiritual experiences this week. Sorry Ella, about the fall. Just remember that "Adam fell that men might live, and men are that they might have joy"! Love you guys.

Elder Blaylock

Parker- July 3

Hey Everybody! Wow this week seems like it went by really fast. 

To start, we didn`t do the extended companion exchanges. My comp has been pretty discouraged, and we rescheduled the exhanges and reduced them back down to normal. But yeah, my comp`s had a pretty rough time, cuz of his family situation and with his girlfriend. They haven`t broken up, but for the past two weeks or so, he hasn´t received any mail on pday. So, Wednesday, after doing personal study and daily planning, he let me know how discouraged he was with everything, with the lack of progress in the area, with his emotional problems and everything. So I supported him and tried to comfort him. I used two scriptures in Helaman Chapter 3. The first one talks about how there was still great contention all throughout the land, yet Helaman still tried and made an effort to be righteous and to do everything the Lord had commanded him, and I related it to how with us as missionaries, it doesn`t matter if after all we do, there`s still contention in the land. We have no control over the free will of others, we do, however have control over what we do. In Chapter One of Preach My gospel, there`s a section where it describes a Sucessful Missionary, and there is no point there that says that their Key Indicators are the highest in the mission. If we try to have the Spirit with us and Testify about what we teach, God considers us sucessful missionaries. The other scripture I shared was the one near the end, verse 35. Where it talks about yielding our hearts to God. I asked him what he thought that means. He said that it means trying to be more obedient to the rules, dedicating oursleves more to doing the work. I said no. I said sometimes it means that we have to take that which we love the most and yield it to Him. 

And yeah, after that, we`ve been working hard to try and get everything ready for the location change for the chapel in Santa Ana, the twig. I`m sending pics so you guys can see the end results.

Other than that, not much has happened. Although I did fall off my bike three times in the last week alone. So now both my arms and my legs hurt. 

Transfers are in a couple weeks. And I realized that this next transfer is gonna be my only transfer in my mission where I am the only member of my immediate family in the mission field. Cuz after this next transfer, the next one starts in September, when Jack enters the MTC. And its also the transfer where I`ll reach the halfway point. 

I don`t know if I`m gonna stay here, my comp wants to, but I kinda don`t. Two transfers here is enough for me. 

Love you all!

Elder Blaylock

Brock - July 3

Well, it´s official. President Farnes went home. We went to the temple with him on Wednesday, and on Friday he and his family got on the plane. Now our mission president is Presidente Ribeiro. I talked with President Farnes in the temple. Basically he said that he was feeling the same way I am about leaving. It doesn´t seem real. It´ll probably only kick in on the plane. But it was good to see him and talk with him. I was probably one of the only ones that got to speak with him much, due to time restraints.

Also I forgot that I talked about this in last week´s letter. Oh, well.

By the way, with all of the hurry of last week, I forgotto tell you that I went to the hospital! Yep, I´ve got some real nice foot pain. They did an x-ray, just to tell me that the problem wasn´t in the bones (which I kind of already knew) and prescribed me a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. It seems to be working. (basically a strong ibuprofen). 

But this week has been reasonable. Everything is ending, though. Every week the end draws nearer and yet the reality of it all is strangely distant. I guess I´m starting to sound like a broken record. There´s not really much else to say. I love you guys. My prayers for Brother L and for Kabyn.

Elder Blaylock

Brock - June 28

Well, I kinda forgot to tell you guys this week that I wouldn´t be able to email on Monday, so....

Anyway. So this week we didn´t email on Monday because we went to the temple today (which was made our P-day). It was the last time that I´ll see President Farnes as my mission president. Once we got to the celestial room, I had a good talk with him. I asked him if they were nervous, and he said that it still didn´t feel like it was really happening. (This statement is 100% accurate). He asked me how I was feeling and what I was learning at the end. What I´m seeing here is that yeah, I´ve changed and grown and stuff and that´s great, but if I don´t hold fast to the changes and the growth then none of it will have mattered. It´s like, now (and when I get home/start school) I have to put the stuff I learned to the test. Almost like the mission was just a big study session. That counts toward your final grade. ;)

So the temple was awesome. We had to take a taxi to the rendevous point because some Brazillians decided that the public transport system doesn´t work so clearly the obvious answer isn´t reform but yes, boycotting. Meaning like 30% of the bus routes are in operation. We did managed to get a discount with the taxi guy, though, because my companion "badmouthed" the Uber people. hah! We had a great session but didn´t get to stick around long due to time restraints. 

This week I decided I´d try to study something a little bit difficult in the way of Paul´s epistles. (They´re good,  but they are so easy to misinterpret many things, and some of the major reasons for weird other churches´ rules, like women not being allowed to cut or dye their hair). I found some excellent scriptures in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2:

3 For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile:

4 But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.

5 For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness:

6 Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ.

7 But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children:

8 So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us.

9 For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.

10 Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe:

11 As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children,

12 That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory.

13 For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

20 For ye are our glory and joy.

I liked this passage a lot. This is the manner of a true minister, as stated in the chapter heading, or more appropriately, a true missionary. And as verse twenty says, "ye" (those who come unto Christ and are reconciled unto God through the first priniciples and ordinances of the gospel) are our glory and joy. For as God said unto Moses: "This is my work and my glory; to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." I love you all. I´m praying for Brother L and his family.

Elder Blaylock

Parker - June 26

Hey everybody!

Well, sounds like it´s been a busy week for everybody. I have also had quite a week. First off, that´s really scary what happened to Brother L, he´s definitely going into my prayers. 

Anyway, about my week, well, it´s been a little crazy. On Tuesday, we went to the main city to have a three-zone conference with the Mission President. There were a bunch of missionaries there, almost 40 missionaries, one of them was my previous zone, so I saw a bunch of missionaries that I already knew. The conference itself was pretty good, it was basicially a huge Book of Mormon training conference. It was completely focused on the Book of Mormon, because it really is the keystone of our religion, every single point of doctrine that we share as missionaries somehow relates back to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. Just a side note, I´ve been studying the Book of Mormon lately, while marking up scriptures that I like, good missionary scriptures, or really important pieces of doctrine. And I recently just got done with all of the war chapters in Alma, before I started the war chapters, I was a little apprehensive, because I thought my book of mormon was gonna be totally marked up except for a large blank spance spanding from Alma chapter 45 or so until 63. But, as I studied with prayer, I was able to fine many very good scriptures in that part of the book. There is doctrine everywhere in the book, no part is insignificant, not the large war in Alma neither the tiny entires in Omni. I can really testify that I have no doubts that that book is true. 

It was also the last time with this mission president, this saturday the new one comes in to replace him, he seems really great, from what I heard. 

So yeah, other than that, WE HAD A BAPTISM! Yeah, when we met the guy, I wasn´t sure that he was gonna make it, but he did. J L. He´s 67 years old and has led a very interesting life. But about a month ago, we met him, as he´s the Godfather of one of the members in the Twig. But as we´ve taught and explained things to him, and more importantly, as he has read the Book of Mormon and prayed fervently, he has made huge changes in his life, and he was able to be baptized and be confirmed. He is the first man in the Twig, Santa Ana, to be baptized there, and we´re working with him so he can receive the priesthood and we can really organize the church there. Just to let you guys know how excited he is to start in the gospel, he paid his tithing as soon as he was able and he immediately began setting about to establish a better place for us to congregate when we go to the Twig on Sundays. It was really cool to see him change and be baptized. 

Other than that, it was a pretty chill week. We´ve got an interesting week ahead of us again as well. We are going to have Companion Exchanges twice as long so my companion can help out another area in the District. 

Anyway, Love you all!

Elder Blaylock

Attachments area