Parker - December 18

Hey everyone! We´ve had a fairly good week. 

Tuesday we had a fairly good district meeting, and we went back to the city and managed to set an appointment for today for the doctor stuff. But we also were able to pick up the studies that they did on my head and back. I can´t exactly translate them or make it out, but basically, I can make out that there´s nothing wrong with my head, but there is something wrong with my back, I just don´t know what it is or how bad it is. We´re going back again today and the doctor will give me the breakdown. 

Wednesday was good, we had to do Weekly Planning in the afternoon though, cuz Cafayate told us that they might need baptismal interviews Thursday, which means that travelling is gonna take way too long and we´re not gonna be able to do it Thursday. And we did a really good weekly planning session. We took a leap of faith and started planning for two people to get baptized this week. And we had some pretty direct lessons this week. Both really spiritual, but when we came out of them, they were really committed to read the book of Mormon and pray to see if it´s true so they can get baptized. It was pretty cool. 

Then Thursday was a curveball, cuz turns out they´re not gonna have baptismal interviews. But then, at night, they say they do, so Friday we´re gonna do the interview by phone :/ 

Friday we had interviews with the mission president in the morning. Went pretty well, then we stayed in the city and had lunch and then did some baptismal interviews with the elders in the Santa Ana area, then we did a Tormenta Blanca in Santa Ana, ending it off in an Ice Cream shop, it was pretty fun. Doing baptismal interviews by phone is not fun though. 

Sunday was AN ADVENTURE. So, we had lunch with a member in a little town like 30 minutes away from our main town, but still in our area. So we are coming out of church and we see a storm coming, with lightning and everything. We don´t pay it much attention. But as we´re headed on the highway, the storm wall hits us. Fierce wind, torrential rain, and hail the size of quarters. Not to mention the pieces of broken tree. We are pushed into the bank and are stuck in the mud for a while. 

For a small moment, I thought "oh, so this is how I die." But then I snapped out of it and I say a prayer, just started reading Ether in the book of Mormon again, so I put in as much faith as I could muster, and after a few moments, the hail stopped and the wind died down. It still storming, but now we can get out without fear of getting pelted or torn away and push the car out of the bank. We also find out that three trees fell in the middle of the road, and if we had been just a little faster or a little slower, we´d have been flattened. 

And, when we get to lunch and get out and get a proper look at the car, we see that it is undamaged. All that hail didn´t damage it. It was a miracle, really, It was so cool how we were protected. 

I just want to share with you all the power of faith and how it really does work miracles. 

I love you all, 

Elder Blaylock 

Jack - December 11

Hey guys how´s it going? My week was pretty good this week, a number of interesting things happened.

First of all, we got the coolest ties anyone has ever seen, and I mean it. Both me and my companion got one and I wore my last Monday after our pday and on the way to our first appointment to two members who live near us and during the appointment I received like 4 compliments, after the appointment we went back to the pension real quick because my companion was jealous and wanted to use his too. Haha, whenever we use them everybody is like "Your ties are so cool! Where did you get them?" We actually bought two red ties and found a place to put a logo on them, so they´re custom haha ;D

Also last Monday we had a fun family home evening and this family had so much food! There were like 16-17 completos between the 6 of us, and a huge pie! It was crazy.

My companion had a meeting for district leaders last Tuesday so I was with the companion of the other district leader of our zone. His companion had hurt his head during our soccer game on Monday and spent like 16 hours in the hospital waiting and stuff like that, so neither he nor the zone leaders got any sleep, so we didn´t do much. I feel bad for his companion who then had to go to a training with the mission president with only 1 hour of sleep. I found out that the first missionary in Chile was Parley P. Pratt, who is one of my ancestors, so that´s awesome.

When we went to the zone leader´s pension to make the companion switch for the day one of the zone leaders went into the other room and came back with a poster saying, "Now if you don´t want this, there are many other people who want it, but Elder L left it for you." It was an awesome poster of Captain America Civil War so of course, I accepted it. I only had one intercambio with Elder L and it was right before he finished his mission, so we talked a lot about movies, especially superhero movies, and he showed me that poster. Turns out he left it behind for me. What a cool guy. 

Also, we learned something interesting during the meeting for district leaders, my companion wore his tie I was talking about and he received tons of compliments, and at one point the mission president´s wife came up to him and said, "Elder your tie is so nice, did president not say anything? He´s a HUGE fan of the flash, and he´s been watching the 4th season of the tv show all the time." ...guys, I knew there was a reason I was sent to this mission... hahaha just kidding, but how crazy right? If you weren´t sure the Flash is also my favorite superhero haha.

Also if you want some proof the scriptures are true someone actually stopped us and tried to convince us to (and he literally almost said) Eat, Drink, and Be Merry. Or in other words, 2 Nephi 28: 7 "Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and it shall be well with us." He argued with us saying that we should enjoy our lives, to which we responded that we were because sharing the gospel is awesome, and how missions are bad because serving people is something you should do your whole life, to which we pointed out that just because we specifically set apart two years of our lives to do this full time doesn´t mean we can´t serve people when we get back too. haha, it was crazy.

Anyways that´s basically all for this week, other fun facts of my area include that there´s an Optimus Prime here, and that Kevin, the bird from the movie UP, lives here and can be heard as you walk by this one building.

Elder Blaylock

Parker - December 11

Hey everyone!

So yeah, this week´s been fairly long. 

We went back down to Salta to talk to the doctor, and basically, he told us "yeah, we´re gonna do exactly what you asked us to do, come back another day to get a cat scan on your head and an x-ray of your back. 

So the next day we had leadership meeting and district meeting, and they took out my stitches. I´m doing fine, nothing wrong anymore, my head's fine. 

Wednesday, we went back to get them done, it was crazy, hooked up to this huge machine, unable to move at all. And afterward, we couldn´t head back to the first doctor, cuz we had to go to tribuno, the sister´s area so I could do a baptismal interview. But when we get there, turns out their baptismal candidate has had some issues from his past, and I am not authorized to do those interviews, so we went and picked up ice cream before heading back to our area. 

Thursday, was normal, just weekly planning, lunch, and work. 

Friday, we went back to the doctor to have a look at the stuff they did. But, turns out they just weren´t working that day, so it was just a waste of time. 

Saturday, we had our own Church Open House, the only problem was that just as it started, it began pouring down rain, with thunder and everything. So we literally had four people show up. It was a little rough. We also had no investigators show up Sunday. 

But on Sunday, we had a very fun lunch, barbecue, right after cooling off, sticking our feet in the pool. It was pretty crazy. 

And yeah, at some point in the week, we´ll go back to the doctor, but I feel fine. 

And yeah. I´m doing great. I´ve been focusing more on reading the scriptures and praying better. It´s going really great. even though we´re going through a little bit of a rough spot, I´m not getting discouraged, everything's pretty chill. 

I love you all so much, 

Elder Blaylock

PS We have a place to call home, it's with a member

PPS 8 Months left :)

Jack - December 4

Hey guys! What a week this week! Wow so much to talk about.

At the beginning of this week, I was having a lot of trouble with stress, especially about talking with other people, both because it´s a different language and because if you know me at all you know I´m a man of few words. Also, I kinda feel like I´m not progressing and my companion kept skipping my time for language study so the beginning of the week was really stressful. Then we had Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was incredible! The members who offered it are so awesome, Sister R homecooked everything and it was just like at home, and I mean it! Especially desert! We had banana bread that tasted just like my Mom always makes(without chocolate chips, unfortunately), and a lemon pie. The best part was the homemade pie crust! It tasted practically the same as my Mom makes it! I gotta tell you, miracles happen. haha. They also shared how they met and started dating and it was hilarious! We had the dinner with 3 other sister missionaries also, and because these members speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and a little Italian the sister missionaries wanted to know which language they first spoke into each other. They shared how they met in Utah, at BYU and it was so funny. Basically, Brother R ran into her one day and tried to flirt with her (a little unsuccessfully) and decided he had to meet her again. Eventually one of her roommates invited him over because the roommate had a crush on him, and in the other room he could hear her speaking Portuguese so he tried to escape the conversation and go talk to her, and she then saw him and tried to impress him with her Spanish that she was learning (also a little unsuccessfully) she basically said her name in a Spanish accent haha. This was all in the morning, and later in the evening he returned and she had just finished work and he literally told her, "I´m dating a girl in this same apartment building downstairs but I´m going to go break up with her and come back here" Hahaha! She was pretty confused but he went and did it and then returned and was like "alright now I´m single!" and she was just like "that´s great... I´m not" Eventually they started dating but it was so funny to listen to their story though. After that, we shared what we are grateful for and had dessert. If you´re ever feeling down, remember to give thanks for what you have, it won´t solve your problems but it´ll remind you to keep moving forward.

We had exchanges again this week with Casa Blanca and I was able to meet their Ward Mission Leader... He is insane! I´m serious. We went to an appointment with some investigators, and he showed up a couple minutes later and followed up on some of the commitments he left to read the Book of Mormon, they said they hadn´t had time to read because of their kids and school and work and a lot of excuses, and he was just like "alright then I´ll leave, if I´m going to promise you to take time out of my schedule to help and teach you guys and you won´t keep your promises then I´ll leave, I too have a busy life and a family." Elder M and I just sat there really worried he was too harsh on the investigators, but he continued and straight up read in front of them a chapter of the Book of Mormon and Prayed, all with a timer on the table. It took him about 4 minutes. Sometimes we never think we have time for everything we have to do, especially in terms of things we should do to progress spiritually. Honestly though, we can take less than 10 minutes to read a little and pray every day, we can do a lot more than that, but at the very least that´s practically no time out of your day. And the rewards are endless. In my studies this week I found one of my new favorite scriptures: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." And most especially this next verse: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Wow. One of my new favorites, and very true, for me my family and friends... well I suppose that means you guys, are everything to me, and though I´m gone I think and pray for you often. I share my experiences I´ve had learning from you guys with others. My favorite part of this gospel is that it centers in love and family and in the teachings of Jesus Christ. That´s where my heart is when I bear testimony to those I meet, I can feel it. So imagine if we put more emphasis in our lives for the things of God, the things of Heaven. One of the lessons we teach as missionaries is God´s plan of happiness for us, and all revolves around returning to him. So if there´s a way to be closer to Him a little early... I think that´s incredible. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

One last thing I wanted to share this week, sorry this letter is a little long, is about the initiative that the church started for December, for this time near Christmas. It´s called Light the World, at least I think so, here it´s Ilumina el Mundo. Anyways there are 25 videos at Mormon.org or also on youtube centered on how we can be happier this Christmas season and also how we can spread that. The videos are incredibly short and I invite everyone to watch one every day and think in how you can serve others, there are some ideas at Mormon.org also. First, though I want everyone to watch the kind of explanatory video, the first one, so look up Light the World 2017 and watch the official video. I´ve only seen a couple but honestly, they make me so happy to see and to think of how I can serve others, especially the main video and the video for day 1. I think it´s like day 12 or something that has one of the piano guys in it if you´re interested in that as well. And guess what? It´s even easier to keep track of each day if you already have the church´s Gospel Library app, it´s all there too. I promise that through this we can all be a little happier this Christmas.

And that´s basically it for this week, I know it was a bit longer. Also funny story, I saw two cats reenacting the end of Star wars episode three, a black cat was hanging precariously onto a fence looking up at a grey cat on a roof, and I could just almost hear "It´s over Anakin, I have the high ground!"

Elder Blaylock

Parker - December 4

Alright everybody, calm down.

For those of you who don´t know, I had a little experience this past week. But I think it´ll just be better if we go in order, starting from the top. 

So, Monday, we go to a shopping mall here and get my comp a camera, cuz he lost his in the MTC. And we come back here, visit a few people, and I get to know my new district. Another elder´s training and a Brazilian sister´s coming in, so that´s fun. 

Tuesday, we didn´t have district meeting, cuz half the district wasn´t gonna be able to make it. So we try to visit some people in the morning and manage to get some good contacts in. 

Alright now, for the good stuff. So, we went to pick up lunch from a member here, we don´t always eat in their house, sometimes they just give it to us in a Tupperware container. So we eat lunch in the apartment, and we are about to start companionship study, cuz we needed to leave at like 3:30. So, cuz I was sitting down for a little bit, I stand up to go stretch. Only thing is, I stretch a little too far and something happens with my spine and I had something similar to an epileptic seizure. I lost consciousness for about thirty seconds, at which point I fell on the floor and knocked my head on a metal pole sticking out of the wall. As I gradually come to, I realize that I am on the floor and convulsing, then I fully wake up and realized what has happened (remembering the other time I stretched my back too far and lost consciousness for half a minute, told you guys it wasn´t the video games), and I feel liquid running down the back of my head and neck. I put a hand on the back of my neck and see blood. 

Now My comp is moving, he quickly grabs a towel, gets it wet and tells me to put pressure on the back of my head with it. So that´s what I´m doing, he´s calling mission president, who puts him on with the Assistant who speaks English, and we have to run down to the hospital. Then we have a hassle to get a taxi to get down to the hospital, and I lie face down on some table and they start stitching me up. (Cuz health care´s free here.) The only thing is that they weren´t the most gentle about it. But they bandaged me up, and I walk back to the apartment. Like a ten minute walk, with a bandage on my head and a camisa blanca that´s not so blanca anymore. 

Then, my comp cleans up the blood, and I´m asking. "So who do you think we´ll be able to visit today?" And he´s like "Um, I just cleaned up a lot of your blood, you´re staying here and relaxing." Then the assistants show up. Tell me the same, and give me a spiritual blessing. So Tuesday I stayed in bed. Not so fun when you can´t move your head around due to the bandage. 

Then Wednesday morning, cuz I know mom and dad would want to know what is happening, I send a video I took the night before. And we take it easy. We still go out to visit some people, just not in the hot sun, cuz it was messing up my head. 

Thursday is an interesting day. We went to Salta to get some paperwork done for my comp, which takes forever. We arrived at 7:15, and weren´t out of there till 10:45. Then while in the offices, they realize that they only got half of his paperwork done, and they leave me there with the other missionaries. Now, President Orquera would like me to go to this one clinic and get an MRI done or something like that. SO I´m calling this place and they´re just bumping me around from department to department until finally, someone said "We´re too busy right now" And then hung up. After that, I tried to call again, but every time it said that the line was occupied. So president says that after lunch I should just go and talk to them in person. 

So they order Chinese food for lunch, it wasn´t bad. No Orange chicken, wantons, or fortune cookies though, so. 

But while we´re eating lunch, it starts raining. And I can´t get my head wet. That´s what the doctors told me. And I did not bring an umbrella. So we were stuck there in the offices. While we were stuck there. the assistants come over with like 6000 sheets of paper and over 10,000 cards, and ask me, my comp, and another missionary to split them up between the different zones. So we were there for the next couple hours doing that. 

Then we go to the clinic and get an appointment for Friday at 7:15 pm. 

Friday morning we get Weekly Planning done. They call us after lunch saying, "Hey, your doctor´s not coming in today, so come back Monday." So we went out and visited some people. 

Saturday morning we have zone conference, that was fun, explaining my head injury to the entire zone about four dozen times. Then we have a fiasco afterwards, and bottom line, we end up with no lunch. And in the afternoon, we head BACK to Salta to help out the sisters in Tribuno with their Church Open House. It was fairly fun. And afterwards, we went to an Italian restaurant, cuz we didn´t have lunch. 

Sunday, we have church, we do a presentation on the Light the World initiative, it was pretty cool. And we manage to have a great lesson with an investigator that night. 

So, today, we went to a cool, like ski lift type thing, and got surprised with a bunch of other missionaries, most of which were my friends. And now, we´re here, writing, and later, we´ll go BACK to Salta to see what the deal is. 

Anyway, it was a pretty crazy week. But I love you guys, don´t worry about me, I´m feeling fine. 

Elder Blaylock

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