Jack - November 27

Hey Everyone! I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! We still haven´t had our Thanksgiving meal from the members who offered, apparently we have it this week, so that´s exciting. We did exchanges twice this week, the first time was with the zone leaders, and I was with Elder L who´s from Idaho and just finished his mission yesterday, so that was fun haha. I told him about all the movies he had to see, he´s a huge Batman fan so I´m sure he´s excited for Justice League which I heard just came out. The other exchange was with some elders in our district and this time I stayed in our area and had to lead the day, all went pretty well, I knew my way around to all of the people we planned on visiting. The only problem was during lunch, it turns out that day a member was going to buy us lunch from papa johns (my companion was sad to miss it haha), so my companion told me which buses we could take to get there, so we took one, but it turns out we took the bus going the wrong way. We were incredibly lucky though because our Ward Mission Leader was on the bus going to Valparaíso for college, he saw us and asked us where we were going and then quickly told us how to get to papa johns, we had to do a lot of walking haha. We did a couple Family Home Evenings with members and less actives that went really well, though I have to add that it´s really hard to play certain games like charades when everyone is expecting an answer in Spanish haha. Oh, and I almost forgot. There was an earthquake yesterday... pretty small but noticeable, it was weird. Other than that, I hope everyone has an awesome week this week!

Elder Blaylock

(and some pictures of my district from the last meeting of the transfer, though none of us will change areas)

Parker - November 27

Hey Everyone!

Yeah, this week has gone fairly ok. 

So Monday was fairly chill. Tuesday we had the final district meeting of the transfer. Went fairly well. The only thing is that we were supposed to do exchanges with the ZLs Tuesday, but they totally cancelled on us, it was the most bizarre thing. The night before they asked us where we were gonna do our district meeting, and I answered "in the stake center, cuz we have to do exchanges right?" and elder roman (who ended yesterday) was like "ehhhhhhhh. We'll let you know." Ok. Then we have to wait after we´ve already finished our district meeting for them to finish theirs, and then see if we have exchanges or not. But their district meeting goes on for SO long that we decide to leave so we can get back in time for lunch. Then, while we are waiting outside the church at the bus stop, they walk out, look at us, and just walk away. It was kinda funny, I guess. 

Then Wednesday, we went to Cafayate again. For Baptismal Interviews. So, I thought I´d be smart and just get our tickets roundtrip, right? so when we need to leave, there´s no problem. BUT, because of the schedules of the buses, we are gonna have to spend some time in Cafayate, and we go off in splits with the elders there. And as we head back to the bus station, I realize that I don´t have my ticket for coming back, and there´s absolutely no time to go searching for it. So, we had to hop in a Taxi and come home. It was a lot faster but also four or five times as expensive. Sigh. But all in all, it was fun, I guess.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. And our lunch cancelled. And we had no money. So for our Thanksgiving, we ordered up some Argentine Pizza. 

Friday, we were supposed to have exchanges with the other elders in our district, BUT, they called us Thursday night saying that they´re really sick and have to go into a Clinic the next day. So again we didn´t do exchanges. But all in all, pretty good days. We were able to find an investigator that we´ve been looking for a while. And she accepted a baptismal date, she just didn´t go to church this week, so we´re gonna have to fix that. Same with another investigator, she said she was going to go, but in the end, never showed up. 

Saturday we worked fairly hard, and at the end of the day had a really good lesson with an investigator, Julia. We finally figured out what´s been holding her back. She used to be Adventist of the Seventh Day or something like that, and she was very active in that church, doing a lot of service and she's not in that church anymore, like, she kinda already knows that our church is true, but she feels like all the work she did in the other church was in vain, and now she´s just tired and feels like she has to start all over again. So now that we know her need, we can start working. Also, her and her husband made us Argentine Barbecue. A REALLY good Argentine Barbecue. 

Sunday was interesting. The only investigator we had come to church was one that we weren´t even focusing on. Sigh. But, if we´re doing our best, we´re successful missionaries, we can´t make peoples' decisions for them. And then, we had a really good branch council meeting, literally one of the best I´ve ever seen in Argentina. And when we went to lunch, well, the wife had already left in taxi, leaving us the car. BUT she accidentally brought the keys with her, so we had to leave the car and head up in another taxi. And then, in that lunch, we had ANOTHER Argentine Barbecue. It was good, but we could barely move once we got to the apartment, which was a long time after. Cuz we had to take two buses to get back from lunch, and while waiting for the second bus, we had to sit in a plaza absolutely FULL of people playing bingo. It was just bizzare. We were getting home from lunch yesterday at like 5:30. 

And then we got the transfers. Nothing much changed, two more people come in, the rest of us stay the same. This next transfer is gonna be interesting though, cuz one way or another most of the district will change. I´ll most likely be leaving. If not, it´ll be really weird. 

Anyway, so that´s been our week. fairly interesting I guess. Here are some pics that I took. 

Love you all!

Elder Blaylock

Jack - November 20

To Germany and back again! What a weird trip!... especially since I didn´t go on it, just my suitcase.

(I loaned my suitcase to the owner of the house for his trip to Germany.)

This week was awesome! A lot of weird things happened though. Last pday we made cookies!!!! We used Arianne´s recipe (they were incredible, shoutout to Arianne), and they turned out pretty well, our neighbors ( and also the owners of our pension) are really nice and let us borrow some stuff to help us make them. Also last pday we planned on taking time to thoroughly clean our pension because on Tuesday we had interviews with the president and some of the mission staff about the pension, but it was a little tough because we had no water all day... we ended up having to fill jugs with water from the pool haha, which was made harder by the 3 or 4 dogs trying to play with us as we did so haha. Then the day of the interview we had no gas, which means no hot water and we couldn´t show them if the things in the kitchen worked. That and president interviewed my companion first so while they were doing that I had to respond to all of the questions from the pensionero and the enfermera, and of the assistants to the president. My companion is really lucky that for most of the questions I had just barely noticed where something was the night before haha. The assistants did their jobs really fast so they could play tennis too, so that was funny. They also came back on their pday, which is Saturday, to play more. Something else weird that happened was that on Wednesday we didn´t have water again (but for less time), and when we were walking around all of the fire hydrants were pouring out water, so I don´t really understand that haha. Also, one day while we were going to an area to do some contacting there was a big fire, so we called the bomberos (firemen) and tried to help out if we could, but we ended up leaving. It was weird, I hope everything is okay for those people. Because we´ve been having trouble finding people to teach, this week I came up with an awesome plan to inspire the members to take part in missionary work. I´m really excited to work with the members with this plan. We´ve already started with one family who are recent converts but they're awesome, they're the first family I met when I got here and they are so great, their testimonies are also really strong for the little time they´ve been members, they're an example for many. We met with them twice and they´re really excited to help us out. We´ve also had members come with us for some lessons, and invite some less active families to an activity in their home, it´s awesome. That´s just about everything I can remember from this week, but I´ve got a lot of pictures and even some videos to send. Though I apologize that the videos are in Spanglish because I meant to speak only in English but it´s hard to switch back. Anyways I hope everyone´s week was awesome!

Elder Blaylock

Parker - 20 November

Hey Everybody!

So this week was interesting 

We had a fairly fun district activity on Monday. We made tacos in the chapel and watched a church movie named Charly. Wasn´t bad. 

Then, Tuesday, we rehearsed for the zone choir, which was a surprise that the stake president sprung on us last minute. We sung in the stake conference, Come All Ye Faithful, and Silent Night. The only problem is that I´m actually just tone deaf. Then we had a quick district meeting, and yeah, came back to work. 

The next day, we had a Tormenta Blanca in the sister´s area. It went fairly well, we were able to help them out in finding new people to teach. 

Thursday, we did weekly planning in the morning, and it was really good, it was totally focused on the investigators we have and it really gave us hope that we could help someone get to baptism. 

Friday, in the morning we had interviews with the president, and in the afternoon, another Tormenta Blanca in the elder´s area. It didn´t go too great because it wasn´t properly coordinated, and it was further complicated by the fact that the sisters lost their phone. But everything turned out ok. We were able to get the district all encouraged.

And yeah, Saturday we were able to visit some investigators and we were able to take an investigator to stake conference and another one goes there all on their own. The choir was....as expected. But it all went well. After the conference, a family made us a barbecue, it was REALLY good. 

And yeah, today, we´re just kinda chillin. 

But yeah, so, lately around here, we´ve been seeing some of the Lord´s promises being fulfilled. According to Doctrine and Covenants 84:85, this past week, we´ve received food, money, and even clothes from members. My comp foolishly didn´t bring any winter clothes, or even any rain clothes cuz he thought he´d be going into summer, Thing is that it rains a LOT in this mission. So while we were at lunch, a member felt sorry for him and just gave him a jacket. It´s a cool looking jacket too. 

We´ve also been working really hard and diligently, and we´re finally seeing results. Things are picking up, we´re finding more people and things are just going better all in all. 

I love you all so much, I´m praying for you guys

Love,

Elder Blaylock

Jack - November 13

Hey guys this week kinda flew by, kinda, it´s more or less that I´m having trouble remembering everything we did. It´s also probably because I´m a bit sick this week. It feels like we didn´t get much done this week, which is a bummer, we had some great goals for finding people to be able to teach that didn´t really work out. Exchanges last week were pretty fun though, I was with Elder G from Paraguay and he´s pretty cool, he was really excited to do exchanges with me so he could practice his english haha. He really wants to learn english its cool, he´s probably one of the most dedicated to learning it out of the missionaries here. He´s a funny guy though, before we went to bed at the end of the day we were talking and he said he wants to marry a North American and live in America. Apparently he doesn´t like Paraguay. He´s a cool guy though, he´s 25 I think (but much smaller than me) and so when one of their investigators asked how old we were he´s like ¨25¨ then he looks at me and I say ¨18¨ and his face was hilarious, he did like a double take and everyone burst out laughing haha. Also during intercambios we ¨taught¨ one of their investigators who is Brazilian and wow does he like to talk, I had such a headache because he basically talked for 2 hours in more or less spanish and portuguese mixed together, while we read scriptures or said like one sentence every once in a while. It was crazy, but he´s actually a good investigator. In my sector we had some good lessons with our investigators this week but not much more. Our best lesson was with the family I think I wrote a little about a week or two ago that has like no food or water, we taught the father of that family about faith, prayer, the Holy Ghost, and Baptism. But it was crazy because the first time we were at their appartment it was a mess, with random things everywhere, it was dimly lit and filthy, and they didn't look too great either. But this time it was way way way cleaner and everything was more or less organised, they looked clean and happy, it was a crazy change. All of that and the dad understood and agreed with everything we taught him, like it was something he already knew he just didn´t know how to describe it. We have another lesson with their whole family this wednesday, though actually he´s the one who insisted we set up the appointment. It was great. Other than our lessons we tried really hard especially near the end of the week to meet our goals to find new investigators to teach. So we spent whole days passing by all of the people or references that were receptive when we contacted them but nobody was there or they were busy. We literally went through all the people we knew, and did more contacting in the streets and at houses but nothing worked. It was a couple long days with a lot of walking and it didnt help that I am a bit sick. This sunday directly after church though we set up a table with pamphlets and pass along cards and other things and talked to all the members about missionary work and invited them all to share with people they know and it was awesome. We´ve been having trouble finding people to teach in this sector but we figure that we have a really good ward so we´re planning on working with the ward to find people. Also one couple that lived in Utah for a little bit invited us to a Thanksgiving dinner later this month, so thats cool!

Anyways that was our week, I hope everyone is doing well back home!

Elder Blaylock

Parker - November 13

Hey Everybody! 

We had a full mission conference. Yeah. It was insane. there were so many missionaries there. But it was also pretty fun. Elder Christensen and Elder Bragg came with their wives and they each shared a talk. They focused on having the Spirit, which was really great. They focused on really getting to know the Spirit, recognizing it, and following the impressions. I actually really loved it. 

Other than that, not too much happened this week. Well, I don´t know. We´ve really been trying to find new investigators, but it´s been pretty hard. We thought we hit a break last week when we got a couple referrals. So we went to them, they live in a couple of the smaller towns in our area, the first two lived in one fairly close, but it was hard to find them, cuz we don´t have a map of that town and it was hard to find the vague directions. Then we got on a bus and went literally to the middle of nowhere and then called the person to figure out which way to go to get to their house. Aaaaand they answered and said, "Not interested."

Yeeah. It´s been fairly rough. But I think things will pick up soon. Today we have another district activity, of which I will definitely send pics. And yesterday we had a special Sunday where it was entirely focused on missionary work, so I think we´ll have more help from them as time goes on. 

But it´s not all bad news. Saturday, while attempting to visit some of the few investigators we have, we felt impressed to visit some less actives. And turns out that also happening to be visiting them is the member´s best friend since elementary school. And we brought up the Church, and she asked when are the meetings, and she said "oh dang it, I won´t be able to go tomorrow, but next week, I´m gonna make it." and yesterday, While trying to visit an investigator, we found out she wasn´t there. But we had been walking around for a while, so we sat down to rest a bit, and after a few minutes, a man walked out of the house, a member of the family, a little drunk, and he starts talking to us, and he was fairly interested in learning more about Christ and the Bible. He doesn´t live there, and he rarely goes by that house, so it was pretty cool to see that the Lord really is preparing people to receive the gospel, we just have to find them. 

Anyway. yeah, Sorry I don´t have much this week, I don´t have too much time, cuz we got to get to that district activity in about an hour. 

I love you all, 

Elder Blaylock

Jack - November 6

Hey Everyone! This week was both good and bad, lots of tough things but at the same time I think we´re making progress in this sector. We received a reference for a family that were very receptive to us, and they also really need our help though, and the help the gospel can provide because they don´t have any running water and hardly have any food, so they´ve got quite a few difficulties so we hope that we can help them. This week we met an atheist named Jerusalem so that was funny haha, not very interested in our message, though. We also did some service pulling weeds a couple times this week. One time while we were stopped on the sidewalk writing something down in our agendas this little tiny man stops by us and asks us where we´re from, we were able to teach him quite a bit but he didn´t really know his address very well so we don´t know where he lives, later in the semana though we ran into him again in the street. It was weird, I hope to find him again and actually find out where he lives so we can teach him, because he´s interested whenever we talk with him. Again this week most of our lessons fell through which makes for pretty tough days because we spend time planning each one specifically for these people, but we´re still pushing forward. Exchanges this week was with the Zone Leaders which was awesome, though it did make me grateful that my area doesn´t have very many hills haha. Apparently, this mission is known for the hills so I´m glad my area is pretty flat. The zone leaders area though was cool, and my companion for the transfer was very helpful. It helped first of all to have lessons to practice teaching in, and it helped that he gave me plenty of time to talk, because I don´t really like interrupting people and my companion doesn´t give me very many opportunities in the few lessons we have. The whole 12 week training program seems pointless with it´s self evaluations because I´ve only been in like 2 lessons in my area. The exchange was awesome though, the people we taught were a little more understanding that I was learning Spanish than in my sector, and so I understood most of what was going on. We had an incredible lesson answering the question of why are there so many churches if there's only one Bible. So we taught about the restoration and even though the man had been taught by missionaries a couple times before he said we finally answered his question. Also, it was funny because my companion was the elder who looks like a North American but he´s from Brazil. So I gave the example that the best way to lie is to include truths or things that seem obvious, and that´s how Satan influenced people to form many different churches and hide the ways of the Lord with confusion and arguments about doctrine. I said, if I told you my companion was from the united states you´d be able to believe me easily because he looks like a gringo, but if I told you he was from China, you´d have a much harder time believing me. This is why with so many different churches, many have parts of the truth. But I know of a surety, that the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ is in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, because the gospel has been restored in its purest form through the same ways gospel was revealed in days of old. I encourage everyone to seek for themselves the truth, seek it out, ask God, because God only gives us things that are good. Even if something happens and it seems bad, God knows us perfectly, as a father knows a son, but better, and He knows how to help us progress, for that is the purpose of life, to progress and to eventually return to our Heavenly Father. If our purpose is to return to Him, I´m pretty sure He knows how to tell us how to get there. Sometimes, the way is hard, bad things happen, but often times it is to prepare us for something else, or to teach us and help us progress. It´s not easy, but it´s worth it.

Elder Blaylock

I´ve added some pictures from our zone activity last pday.

Parker - November 6

Hey, everybody! So this week was fairly interesting.

On Monday we had our pday activity, sorry I couldn´t send pics last week, but here you guys go:

It was really fun actually.

Then on Tuesday, we had a multi-zone conference, and they changed some things about the missionary work here. Instead of counting investigators as new after the first lesson, they´re only gonna count them after the second lesson, so we get a better idea of how many real investigators we´re finding. So we came up with a big fat zero this week in terms of new investigators. But we did manage to get some follow up visits with some of the investigators we found last week. And they are interested in learning more, so maybe, later on, we´ll see. 

Friday was interesting, we went to the Cafayate area, which is four hours away by bus, with the rest of the district to do a Tormenta Blanca. It was a bit stressful, cuz two of the elders forgot their IDs so they had to come a little bit later. It was fun though, we had some good pizza for lunch and went back at night. It was stressful again cuz they didn´t have the system up in Cafayate, so last minute they made some calls so we could get on. 

Anyway. Then here in our own area, we are managing to find some more people to visit and maybe a little bit later on we could find new investigators from. 

Last night I finally perfected my bread, the right consistency cooked at the right temperature. so that was fun. 

This week is gonna be a once in a mission lifetime opportunity in which we will have a mission-wide conference, where the entire mission will come to Salta and a General Authority will come to the Mission. So, we´ll see how that goes.

I love you all!

Elder Blaylock