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

Jack - October 30

Hi everyone! I hope everything is going well back home! Things are pretty up and down over here. Some days are really long and all of our scheduled lessons fall through, and other days we seem to meet some people who might be interested but then it turns out they´re not or it´s impossible to set up a lesson with them. We have some exciting things planned for this week though, and we had some good days last week too--don´t worry. I got to play guitar at a member´s house twice last week, so that was awesome haha. I wish I had one I could practice with on pday. One day we were walking through this one area and this dog just started following us, it wasn´t really bad because it was actually a really tame dog. So it was pretty funny, I turned to my companion and said we made a new friend. We turned a corner onto another street though and every dog on that street went berzerk at the dog following us. One dog burst after the one following us when their owner opened their gate to go inside, another dog straight up jumped over a concrete wall to start attacking this other dog. It was crazy. I walked into a members house the other day and Stranger Things was on... I was sad haha, I don´t want any spoilers so I was trying not to pay attention but it was also pretty loud. Luckily we were only stopping by to grab something haha, that and it was actually an episode from season 1. Last week pretty much the only lesson we had was with a group of four Haitians who don´t speak practically any Spanish, so that was hard. We had a lesson in the church building and showed them a video in French about the restoration, but they completely missed the point and were like how is there a video if there weren´t videos back then. Still not sure they completely understand it was a representation but the rest of the lesson went pretty well I think. On Sunday, two of the four we taught showed up to church with like four others, soooooo.... wish I remembered any french at all from high school. Pretty much as soon as I started learning spanish everything I knew about french went out the window. I need like a basic French book or something. Also last week after I emailed we met up with all the missionaries in the zone and played soccer for 2 hours on some really nice fields owned by the owner of our pension, because apparently he owns everything haha, he´s nice though, and a member. They invite us in for dinner a lot. Oh and let me just say, the lunches may be hard but the dinners are perfect. It´s basically just bread, deli meat, and guacamole. Everytime. It´s awesome how much they have guacamole down here. Anyways, I feel like I´m forgetting something, but that´s how our week went. We had a training for the new missionaries so I got to see some of the people from the MTC again and it was funny because we were able to talk about our areas and stuff, I got to show them how the owner of my pension owns a ton of stuff that we can use pretty much whenever, and I had to point out to one of them that it had only been a week since we´d last seen each other haha. They were acting like it had been a month, which it had felt like, but it was funny. Anyways I hope everyone´s doing well back home! I can´t wait to hear from you! 

Elder Blaylock

(PS Every night the sky is somehow different and beautiful)

Parker - October 30

Hey everyone!

So yeah, we´ve actually had a good week, especially compared to last week. 

So I´ll start with why I´m on a lot earlier this week than normal. It´s cuz we have a district activity planned, but all the stuff that we want to do is only open in the afternoon. Sorry, I won´t have pics of it for you guys right now, but I´ll try to get them sent fairly soon. 

And yeah, so we´ve finally started to have some success here. We finally got to talk with an investigator who´s been coming to church, we just haven´t been able to actually sit down and talk to her. She´s the niece of a member who´s the only member of his family who´s Mormon. She´s 8 and wants to be baptized, but her mom thinks she´s too young, so we need to talk with her more and get her to give permission. 

Then the next day, we went to another town in our area called Campo Quijano. It was gonna be the last time we went if we didn´t get any success. But lo and behold, as we were walking around a neighborhood, we felt like we should talk to some people standing outside a house and we managed to find six new investigators. They´re really excited to learn more. At first, they were just interested in getting us on their radio show to talk about different religions, but then they actually got interested as we began to answer their questions. 

Then, the next day, we went to Cafayate to do baptismal interviews. Got a silent version of the 2017 Mummy film on the bus ride. Couldn´t hear it, so no opinion. The interviews went well.

When we got back we went to a Church activity and found some more investigators! Now, this requires backstory. So there´s a recent convert here who´s family basically hates her for getting baptized. But somehow, her sister and husband came to this activity. So we sat with them and answered their questions. And they became more and more interested as we were talking. And so now we´re gonna visit them and teach them. 

And on Sunday, we finally got this one investigator to come to church. She was a Seventh-day Adventist, so getting her to church on Sunday was hard. But she finally went and loved it. Then in the evening we visited them and we finally managed to get her to commit to a baptismal date, she seems way more excited now than ever before, so that´s awesome. 

And yeah, that was basically our week. Things are going great here.

I love all you guys,

Elder Blaylock

Jack - October 23

Hi everyone! I´ve finished my first week in the field! It was pretty difficult, but it was also pretty good. My companion always tells me that he appreciates my enthusiasm for the work, I have a lot of trouble with speaking the language and also knowing what to say, partially because it's a different language and partially because I´m really not a conversationalist. So that stinks, its hard to improve when you don´t know the words either. Nevertheless, whatever I can´t do, I try to make up for in enthusiasm. I set pretty high goals for our area in terms of contacting and handing out copies of the Book of Mormon, and we´ve seen quite a bit of success there. Whenever I´m walking down the street, or contacting houses, or even talking (well listening) to people, I´m always smiling, it´s weird because I don´t really think I smiled that much back home. Here I am constantly smiling, and I mean constantly because sometimes my face hurts a little at the end of the day haha. I figure that I might not be able to tell someone perfectly of the happiness of our message, but if someone always sees me with a smile they might wonder why, especially since I stick out here. I´m 99% sure I´m the tallest person here. Anyways my message to you is to smile more, practice having a resting smile on your face, even if you´re not actually super happy, it will always improve your mood, and make you an overall happier person. For our district meeting this week it happened to be on my companion´s birthday, so that was cool. The sisters made brownies and brought chips and soda and some Colombian food (because my companion is Colombian) called Arrepas or something, I don´t know how it´s spelled. But I do know I never want to eat them again. My companion also happened to make some for me for breakfast, and then our lunch appointment also consisted of them. It was not good, basically when you take a bite it seems to expand in your mouth and cover everything, kinda like if you´ve ever done that one game where you look for candy in a pile of flour, but you have to use your mouth. Yeah not a fan. The lunches here are real hit or miss for me, yesterday we had a really good lunch and for desert we had chocolate icecream with sprinkles on mini waffles, it was amazing. But then the other day when we had lunch at the owner of our pension´s house we had some avocado and some kind of meat and cheese and it wasn´t bad, and it filled me up so I wasn´t complaining. But then they brought out a huge meal. Apparently that was just a salad. I was so stuffed, especially since I don´t generally eat much anyways. Once while we were walking down the street we encountered a man who was really polite to us but as we talked he told us he was baptized into our church when he was a kid by some missionaries like us, but that he had a bad experience with the church, because his only friends were the missionaries, and they switch areas often. So he felt alone and betrayed because he thought these missionaries were his friends but then they left and never talked to him again. As he was telling this I felt so sad. It was a shame that the members at the time didn´t make him feel more included, and maybe he wasn´t really converted to the gospel, maybe he was only looking for friends, but either way no one should ever feel alone. I hope to do better than those missionaries in helping people realize that. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ will always comfort us, also as a church we should always remember to be friendly towards everyone, include everyone. Nobody should feel alone. A good church should feel like family. This experience was also hard for me because I failed to respond how I wanted, I wanted to try and comfort him, to express how sad I was that that happened to him, but I just stayed silent because I was afraid I wouldn´t know what to say or it wouldn´t be received well. Either way I felt bad for failing, all I could think about afterwards was Mosiah 28:3, but my companion tried to make me feel better and remind me that it was only my first week. I´ve got a lot of improvement to do thats for sure. This week I had some incredible studies of Helaman chapter 5, because as I read the Book of Mormon I´ve also started keeping a study journal, and Helaman chapter 5 is incredible. I wish I had more time to explain why, maybe I´ll explain it next week, but until then I encourage everyone to read it and look for examples of the Doctrine of Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism for the remission of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Persevering to the end. I hope every one is doing well back home!

Elder Blaylock

Parker - October 23

Hey Everybody!

How`s everybody doing? I`m doing great. Wow, this training is a piece of work. 

It`s actually not that hard, like I said in my last letter, I actually feel really prepared to train because I remember well how crazy everything was at the start of my mission, and how I just wished someone could explain things to me. So now I can do that for my hijito. (That`s what we call them in the mission). But yeah, everything`s going well. I basically have the goal to put this new missionary in the mindset where he can go out to work, not have any success, and still be able to say at the end of the day "I did a good job today." And yeah, we didn`t have a super successful week, but we`re getting there. 

We`re doing a lot of contacting, because we don`t have a whole lot of investigators, and we`re trying to figure out good places to contact. Oh yeah, just for mom and dad, cuz they were asking, I am in a tiny city called Rosario de la Lerma, it`s about 40 minutes away from the main city in Salta, and we have a couple other small cities in our area, and we`re trying to decide which ones we`re gonna try working in. Last week, we went to one called Campo Quijano, but we didn`t have a ton of success. This week we`re gonna try a different one called Cerrillos. 

But yeah, my comp`s actually cool, he`s doing really well on the Spanish for someone so new. And he`s really enthusiastic and has little fear. When all of our plans fell through one day, he just went right into contacting, it was inspiring really. And, since he lives in DC, it`s been cool, cuz we`re the only east coasters. And guess what? Last year, for their family pictures, they went to the Booth House. Yeah, no joke. Literally the Booth House that`s a 10-minute walk away from the house. And then they went to Coldstone after. Isn`t that so insane?

But yeah, other than that, I`m doing great, a lot better actually. I keep thinking about how much time I`ve been here and how much I`ve got left, and it`s actually comforting. I`ve still got time to work, but not a whole much longer until I get to come home. 

I love all of you guys.

Elder Blaylock

Jack - October 18

Chile is beautiful!!! It is so much better out of Santiago, which was still nice but you couldn´t see much because it was such a big city. It was a pretty nice city though, there were trees everywhere along the roads and there are plenty of parks that people actually go to, it was cool. But the Viña del Mar area is way way way better, there´s houses up and down the mountains and cities near the ocean it is so beautiful everywhere. My first area is in Valparaíso Placilla area or something. Luckily it´s not super far from the mission home like Coquimbo or something, so I didn´t have to ride a bus for four hours. Our house/pension thing is way better than I imagined because when we went proselyting in the CCM (MTC) I saw the pensions of the santiago oeste (west) mission and they were tiny appartments, I´ve got a cool cabin thing with some pretty rich members next door and a tennis court too! How weird, we haven´t used it yet though. My first day was pretty long, I´m hoping it´s kinda like when I arrived at the MTC and it starts to speed up because it was so long. My companion/trainer is Elder G and he seems great, he´s really excited for this transfer because apparently his last companion was doing a mini mission or something and didn´t want to work very hard. He´s very happy I´m his companion because of my excitement. There´s so much I want to do and help with but it´s hard when I only understand a little spanish and speak even less. Which is partially why the day felt so long. I had my first meal with a member yesterday... It was basically beans in bean juice with potatoes and some meat that I couldn´t cut because of all of the bean juice, so then after eating everything else the meat tasted like beans too. That and it was all very very filling. Then the member brought out a huge strawberry cake/pie thing, which wasn´t bad but so so filling. I ate everything though, it was hard but I did haha. We´ve got a lot of work to do in this area because of the last transfer there´s basically no investigators, I´ve heard my ward here is one of the biggest with a good 200 people or so, which should be good. I´m not exactly looking forward to looking for new investigators because I stink at contacting, I prefer teaching lessons. My first day after dropping stuff off we went to a Family Home Evening with a recent convert family and it was fun, that I could understand and I even contributed to the discussion so that was fun, they´re a nice family. I´m glad to be out of the MTC but now it´s all just kinda overwhelming all over again, I hope I get used to it and learn quickly. I hope everyone back home had a good week!

Elder Blaylock