Parker - October 16

Alright everyone, 

I`ll be quick, cuz I have to get back to work, but here`s the rundown.

So last week, me and my last comp, elder F were working hard, trying to contact some of the people from the Tormenta Blanca, so far, not a whole lot of success, but we`ll keep tryng. 

Then, on sunday, we get two phone calls, one from the president and one from the assistants. President called me, telling me that I`m gonna be training these next two transfers and telling me what I need to do now. And the assistants called my comp to be District leader in the zone I was in before. 

So Monday, in the morning we hustle to get to the bus station on time for my comp to leave at 9:30, then after that, the zone leaders took me to the offices of the mission to stay there for the rest of the day. So I waited around, After a little bit, missionaries began trickling in, a mixture of trainers, office people, and ending missionaries, so it was fun to talk with all these people we got a nice group of trainers here. Then at like 1:00 we have lunch and after that, we have a meeting for the new trainers where they tell us more about our responsibilities for these next three months. At like 4:40 the new missionaries got to the airport, so we were all out of the building, chillin while we waited for the mission president to get done interviewing all of the newbies so he can assign companionships. At like 7:00, we all go in and we have the assigning ceremony. And I got paired with Elder G, he`s from Washington D.C. so we`re like the only people from the East Coast in the entire mission. It`s pretty cool. He`s also pretty cool too, we like a lot of the same stuff, and he`s actually not bad at all with the spanish, he`s doing exceptionally well for someone so new. 

But yeah, then, after that, we had a barbecue with everyone, then went to go sleep in a hotel. At first, I was kind of nervous about training, but as I started talking with the newbies and answering their questions, explaining things to them, I started to get more excited, to the point where I do feel completely comfortable in this new role. In the morning after their first Argentine breakfast, they went off to go do paperwork, and we were hanging out in the offices. Us gringos went on the mormon channel and watched a recent face2face with a bunch of mormon singers. It was good. 

After that, when they got done with the paperwork, I took my new comp to our area, cuz we`re just like 40 minutes away. We had lunch, he unpacked while I reorganized the apartment, and then we went out to go to work. And we actually had a pretty successful day in comparison. 

I am so grateful for this opportunity and I know that the Lord will bless us and that this is really gonna help me become the person that Heavenly Father wishes me to be. 

I love all you guys,

Elder Blaylock

Jack - October 11

Hey guys! I hope everything is going well for everyone back home! Not a ton happened this week, other than the fact that I´m kinda sick of the MTC now. I´m gonna miss hanging out with my district all day, and it´s gonna be weird to get used to just being with a companion everyday, hopefully I get some good companions. But yeah not much really happened, it´s kinda just the same old again. Yesterday though we had a cool surprise, we were walking around the grounds of the MTC and some guy stopped us and was asking if we were the missionaries giving a tour of the MTC to a bunch of kids from a nearby school and we were really confused but we were like no that´s not us. Then about 10 minutes later in the middle of class another teacher runs in and is like ¨come on! you guys get to go teach all of these students!¨ It was actually really cool though. We started setting up some chairs so that each companionship would be able to teach a kid, then about a minute before we started they were like Oh actually there´s like 100 kids here so you´ll each be teaching about 8-9 kids. It was really cool though, we were able to answer questions and teach a bit of a lesson. Other than that the other cool thing that happened was that this past Sunday I was assigned to teach a lesson in our priesthood meeting about the Holy Ghost and it was probably the best lesson I´ve ever given, and by a long shot because I´ve always been bad at teaching anything in general. But now my district keeps telling me I should be a motivational speaker or something, it´s strange. Anyways as I was preparing I first figured I would just teach about the gifts of the Spirit again because that´s one of my favorite topics, but then I figured I should say a prayer for guidance from the Holy Ghost about what I should teach about the Holy Ghost, which is kind of a no-brainer now that I think about it. Anyways I was looking in the Preach my Gospel manual for some good scripture references to the Holy Ghost when I found a reference to the word earnest in the Bible Dictionary. Before I tell you what it means, Paul the apostle uses it in reference to the gift of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament about 3 times. In 2nd Corinthians 1:22, 2nd Corinthians 5:5, and Ephesians 1:13-14. One of the names for the Holy Ghost is also the spirit of promise. And in each of these scriptures it talks about God sealing us with the earnest of the spirit. Or in Ephesians it´s a little clearer, ¨...ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.¨ The Bible Dictionary says this: Earnest. A pledge or security. The word thus translated is a commercial term denoting the deposit paid by a buyer on entering into an agreement for the purchase of anything. As used by Paul it means that the Lord gives us his Holy Spirit in this life as a foretaste of the joy of eternal life. The Spirit is also the Lord´s surety that he will fulfill his promise to give eternal life to the faithful.¨ WOW! How incredible! The gift of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost after being baptized and confirmed is just a foretaste of the blessings in store for us, just a initial down payment to show the Lord will follow through on His end of the deal. This ¨little downpayment¨ is the 3rd member of the Godhead, if the companionship of someone so important and capable of so many things is just a taste of the blessings to come then truly God has so many blessings in store that we won´t even have room to receive them all. What an incredible and loving blessing, I explained it better in my lesson, also going over many of the other things the Holy Ghost can do to help us, but I don´t have a lot of time, so I´ll leave that to you to study. If you have preach my gospel, there´s a brief list on page 96 and 97 I think. That blew my mind though, my perspective on the Holy Ghost completely changed. I encourage everyone to be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. I hope everyone had a good week this week, I leave the MTC on monday, so i don´t know what emailing will be like next week, it may be even longer than a week until I email you, but I´m hoping for the best.

Elder Blaylock

Parker - October 9

Hey everybody!

So, this week has been interesting. 

Last Tuesday, we had District Meeting, and it was the first time we had the entire district there! Yeah, There are two elders in my district that live suuuuper far away, five hours in bus, so they haven`t been able to come to the district meetings. And something happened to their phone so we can´t call them and they can´t call us. We communicate by texting. 

But yeah, it was interesting, I based the entire thing on the Book of Mormon. I had each companionship prepare a lesson plan using just the Book of Mormon, without any pamphlets or using the Bible, in order to help them see that we can use the Book of Mormon in every lesson, and it can teach whatever point of doctrine that we need. it was really cool. 

It was also one of the elder´s birthday, so we had a cake that my comp made from a cake mix he got in his package from home. 

I`m sending pics of the District Meeting. 

Also, in order to help us find a few more investigators here, we did something called a Tormenta Blanca here, which means "White Storm." So two elders and two sisters came over to our area and helped us contact a whole bunch of people, so now we have a few more potential investigators to try and visit. And now, EVERY area in the district wants to do a Tormenta Blanca, so that`s gonna be fun. 

Then we tried really hard with one investigator named E, to get baptised, but it`s so weird, he and the only other real investigator we have, J, are like basically ready, totally ready, and they want to get baptized too, just for some reason, they want to put it off. Sigh, it`s rough. 

But yeah, and then my comp got to a year in the mission last week, so we burned a shirt of his. (I didn`t do that, there was no space back in Aguilares.) But yeah, it was fun. Even though he just recently he got to a year, he`s probably ending the mission with me, cuz he needs to get back and go to school. 

Other than that, the only interesting things that happened this week are that a bunch of missionaries in our zone went home a week before the transfer ended. Not because they broke a rule or anything, they just went home a week early. Cuz of the whole extensions thing. I knew like half of them, one of them, the Zone Leader, was a good friend of mine, he was also my zone leader in Tucumán. 

Anyway, I love you all!

Elder Blaylock

October 4 - Jack

First, Mom, you owe me 31 pieces of candy. I took notes on all of the general conference talks (Man I miss that tradition)

Second, How cool was it to hear President Russell M. Nelson mention the missionaries in Chile? Let me answer that, REALLY COOL.

This week went really well for me. Not only did we get to watch general conference but I also got a chance to go proselyting this week, which was incredible! I don´t know if it is just because I was a missionary this time, but general conference was awesome, I loved all of the talks that were given. I hope everyone was able to watch all of it, and if not go back and watch it! I know I want to listen to some of those talks again. It seemed like a lot of them were focused on self improvement and strengthening each other. A lot of talks were given about service, which is so important because it is much better and you will be much happier if you try to think of others before yourself. I loved that a few spoke on Christ´s moral character and how we can all strive to be more like Him. The other topic that seemed really important this conference was about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon daily. One of my favorite talks given was from Russell M. Nelson about treasuring the Book of Mormon in our lives and gaining a personal testimony of it. So many talks addressed this topic, and I even wrote about it last week in my email, which I don´t think is a coincidence, so I urge all of you to read the Book of Mormon for yourselves and truly study and pray about it. My favorite talk however was from Jeffrey R. Holland. I loved that talk so much. He spoke with such love and emotion and power. I love Matthew chapter 5, which his talk was kind of focused on and I loved all of his advice on trying to be more Christlike everyday. If you only listen to one talk from General Conference, listen to this one. He spoke at the end of the Saturday morning session. Also remember to always try to apply what was taught in General Conference to your lives! My other awesome experience this week was when we went proselyting. It was incredible! I can´t wait for the field. Everyone in my district were assigned a companion from the santiago west mission for the afternoon and as soon as we got there I totally called it. First, I called that I was going to be assigned the shortest companion, and then I called that I was going to be in a trio. Both were correct. But my companions were really cool, they were the zone leaders. The whole time we were walking around I had such a big smile on my face. I learned a lot that day about faith. Faith is incredible, it is truly the opposite of doubt. I´m probably the only missionary in my district who hasn´t really worried about learning the language because I´ve seen all 3 of my brothers learn their mission languages, and I always just had this feeling in the back of my mind that if I really need the language for something, then I´ll know what to say. I´ve only been learning spanish for 3 weeks (4 weeks now) but I was able to understand everything except one conversation while we were proselyting, which I´ll explain later. We taught a lesson to a recent convert and I was able to understand all of it and even teach and testify for part of it. It was incredible. The same principle applies to everything, all week I´ve been pretty sick but I´ve done my best not to worry or complain about it and just trust that while I´m on the Lord´s errand I´ll be taken care of. Whenever I teach, especially proselyting, I´ve never felt healthier. It´s incredible, have faith in the Lord. Near the end of our time proselyting we went to an area where there were a lot of Haitians who speak French-Creol. One of my companions was able to speak it pretty well(as well as english which was nice for me), but I was again astounded as I was able to understand their conversations, I couldn´t speak back, but I could understand what they were talking about. It was so cool. There was one Haitian who could speak a little spanish and a little english, so he really wanted to talk to me because I was clearly from the United States. I felt so stupid, for some reason I couldn´t understand what he was trying to ask me though, all I could gather was that he mentioned me being in Chile, and the verb venir, which means to come. So I assumed he was asking why I came to Chile and I began testifying of why I was serving a mission and of Heavenly Father´s love for us(my purpose for serving a mission was in my farewell talk if you´ve read that), and eventually one of my companion stops me and tells me that he was asking where I was from. I FELT SO STUPID. After thinking about it for a little bit though I realized something cool. That was the only conversation I didn´t understand all day. Before he left that guy stayed back and shook my hand continuosly telling me over and over again that it was beautiful talking to me. I think I was supposed to misunderstand that conversation and bear testimony. As all day i´d been able to understand the language with the help of the Lord, by the same power I couldn´t understand that question, but only in order to bear testimony to him. It was a powerful realization. I hope everyone is doing well at home! I´ll talk to you next week!

Elder Blaylock

October 2 - Parker

Hey Everyone! Quite the week we`ve all had. Ending it off with a nice general conference. 

So yeah, to start off, not much happened until thursday, that`s when stuff got exciting. So, we were scheduled to have president interviews that day, and we were also planning on doing comp exchanges with the elders in Cafayate, an area in my district. We had to do it then cuz they live lke four or five hours away by bus, so since they were already coming to Salta, we decided to take advantage. 

So I go with the new missionary, who`s still in his training, elder Baum. And we have quite the bus ride ahead of us. Then we get there and get to work. Since I am District leader now, I have to give the baptismal interviews for everyone in my district, and they had four candidates. So we went and visited all of them. The first was an old man named P, who was very nice and was very sincere, even if he needed a little nudge on the answers to the interview questions. The second was a woman who was also really nice, very repentant and also ready for baptism, even if she`s a little new and uncomfortable with certain church practices. The last two were two brothers under 11 years old. They were also excited to get baptised, even though one of them said "I don`t want to commit to not drinking tea, cuz sometimes we`re out of maté and we only have tea." Maté is like an herbal tea here, not against the word of wisdom. It was funny. 

So yeah, because it takes so long to get there, the other elders left and came in the middle of the night, so that wasn`t too fun. Then early morning, we went back.

Then we had general conference. It was really good. Didn`t get to see the priesthood session cuz it`s so late here, started at 9 and went till 11. But other than that, it was really good. I liked Holland`s talk, I never thought of the parable of the two debtors like that before. There were also many talks I loved, like Nelson`s, and Eyring´s, and Anderson`s at the end were probably among my favorites. Also the one by Callister, who talked about the book of mormon. 

And yeah, that was basically my week. Today for pday all we did was play a little bit of soccer in the morning and then we went to go eat chinese food. It was like legit chinese food, it was pretty good. 

Anyway, that`s pretty much all so far. The work here is tough, we`re probably gonna have a Tormenta Blanca here this week to help us find new people to teach, cuz it`s hard. 

Love you all,

Elder Blaylock

Jack - September 27

Hey everyone, quick week for me this week. Not a lot happened other than the same old schedule everyday, so the week kinda flew by. We had an earthquake drill last week, and then about half an hour later there was an actual earthquake, at least some people think there was, I couldn´t feel anything so maybe it was just really small, I know Chile gets them a lot. Yesterday morning all of the previous groups of missionaries left the MTC for their missions. Both the previous group of north americans, there for 6 weeks (like me) and all of the latinos, there for 3 weeks. It was weird to say goodbye to them because we´d only known them for 3 weeks, but we´d grown pretty close, especially with our roommates. This week went a lot better with my companion, I don´t know what changed but we haven´t had any arguments and we´ve been able to practice teaching with much better unison and accord. Something I forgot to write about last week was something else that was said in the devotional we watched from Elder Bednar. He suggested that we should all read the Book of Mormon with a specific question in our mind that we want answered. Then as we read, mark all of the scriptures and passages that stand out and when you finish reading, do a little review and write a summary of what you learned. He said that by the time we´re his age (he was speaking to a bunch of missionaries in the original devotional) we should have bookshelves full of different copies of the Book of Mormon categorizing our growth in spirit and knowledge. What a cool idea. So this week I´ve been trying it out and it is incredible. I just started from where i was in my current reading, I didn´t bother starting over again. And I just started with one question in mind, but as I´ve been reading more questions and passages of scripture hace stood out to me. It has been the best experience I´ve ever had reading the Book of Mormon ever. Each time I read I say a prayer first to help me focuson my study and on my questions and it is amazing, I´m able to understand and learn so much more. I highly encourage everyone to try it. For your first time maybe focus on trying to find out if the Book of Mormon is true, even if you already have a testimony of it, and mark whenever someone bears testimony or anything else that stands out to you. It is truly an incredible experience. I hope everyone is doing well and I can´t wait to talk again next week.

Elder Blaylock

Parker - September 25

Well Hello everyone!!!

So, This week has been rather interesting. Let`s start from the beginning. 

So Tuesday, we didn`t actually get much done, cuz I had to have an interview with the president in the afternoon that took up a lot of time.

Friday, we went to a Zone Conference, and it was pretty good. Oh yeah, I don`t know how it is in other missions, but here, when someone is ending, in their last zone conference, they give their "Faithful Testimony" and two people gave them this time. One was a sister who was in my first district a year ago, and the other was my zone leader in Tucuman, we did comp exchanges so many times, we`re basically companions. But yeah, it was weird to see, that these people are ending the mission, and that really there isn`t a whole lot of time left for me. 

My comp is saying that when he leaves, I`m gonna train. And yeah, it`s actually very likely. the only question is whether my current comp stays here for one or two transfers. But yeah, basically when I leave this area, I`m gonna have like 6-8 months left, which is insane. 

Also, after the conference, we went with some elders in my district to their area to do exchanges. They had two baptisms last week, and I had to give the baptismal interviews, it was crazy. Afterwards, they had an activity, and invited us to stay. Basically every organization had to prepare some desserts, and the missionaries were gonna be judges, so that was a fun night. One of the elders in that companionship made dirt and worms, you know, with the choclate pudding, oreos, and gummy worms? It was weird. 

And then yesterday was my comp`s birthday, and we had TWO barbecues. One for lunch and one for dinner. It was AWESOME.

And today, we went hiking up this hill/mountain here. It was pretty cool, pictures are included. And then we went and ate MCDonalds in the city. Then we came back to write, but the chapel here has like trashy internet, so we had to come and use an internet cafe. 

But yeah, other than that, everything`s going great here, love you all

Elder Blaylock