I´ll begin this week by reassuring you all(mom) that the picture of the X-Ray is certainly NOT my arm!! But isn´t that a crazy X-Ray?? The thing is destroyed. That is the arm of a less active man who completely messed up his elbow/arm playing soccer. I think, from the way he described it, his elbow/arm completely broke and collapsed inward toward his body…. (that´s a jimmy fallon EW!). Well that happened like 2 months ago and they did surgery on it and put 6-8 screws in his arm with a metal brace to hold everything in place. Felt bad for the guy but we talked to them and like I said found out they were a less active family. We asked them what happened and they just said that they just slowly stopped going; the husband started playing soccer on sundays and just lost the motivation to get out and go to church. But now that his arm is destroyed, he wont be going to soccer on sundays now!! Wo-ho! But they still didnt come to the district conference this past Sunday :( So we will be paying them a visit this week for sure.
Well, as you may have noticed from the pictures I uploaded, we went to El Potrillo this past Fridayand Saturday for the first time in like 9 weeks!! There is a lot of work out there and we will be trying to make weekly visits there to help teach and get the temple trip organized for them. But I will tell you, it was quite the trip. We left Ibarreta on a bus at 4:30pm on Friday and made our way up to a city called Juarez, where we stayed the night in a hotel called ´´El Parador´´. We arrived there and checked in at 9:30pm and then walked into town and ate at a restaurant called ´´Karen´´(Yes I thought of you gma Karen). But we walked in sat down and ´´karen´´ came and took our orders, or should I say, told us our orders. It was kinda funny, I will write the dialog of the short conversation:
Karen: ´´Todos quieren el lomo, no?´´ (Everyone wants the lomo right?)
E´Freeman: ´´Tiene un menú?´´ (Do you have a menu?)
Karen(waitress): ´´sí pero, vos queres el lomo´´ (yeah but… you want the Lomo) **with some argentine sass**
E´Freeman: ´´ok, tiene más que el lomo?´´ (ok, do you have more than just the lomo?)
Karen: ´´Escuchame, vos queres el lomo´´ (Listen to me, you want the lomo!) **even more argentine sass**
E´Freeman: ´´…...ok´´
**10 second awkward silence**
E´Keicher: ´´puede ser una coca?´´ (can I have a coke?)
Karen: ´´por supuesto!´´ (Of Course!) **said with a smile**
Forgive me for putting the spanish in there, but those that have served in Argentina will be able to understand the situation better with the ´´Vos´´ conjegations in there by Karen´s mom. But as you can see Karen ordered for us. Haha It was an interesting experience and I will admit, the lomo was very good and came with very good side of fries. Probably the best fries I have had in Argentina. Then we went back to the hotel and spent the night. Saturday morning bright and early we arose at 6am, pack our things, ate hotel breakfast(croissant and warm milk) and left for El Potrillo which is a 3.5 hour drive from juarez. The problem though, was that the guy who took us, only had room for 3 missionaries inside the truck, so Elder White and I opted to sit in 2 plastic chairs in the bed of his truck for the trip….
And it was a humid 10°c driving like 40mph . I was freezing my butt off back there and actually had numb toes for a little bit! I never thought I would get cold down here but I did. But when we got there we split off and a member came with us on visits to be our translator because the main language there is Wichí and Nivaclé. We taught 1 family, a guy, and gave the preisthood to a recent convert. That took 2 hours and the other 2 elders did temple recommend interviews for members and then we left to make the 7 hour trip back. We got back to the city of Juarez at
6:45pmand the next bus for Ibarreta didnt leave until 11:30pm.
But we soon found out that we had an issue. We ran out of money in Juarez…….
Since our zone is way out in the middle of nowhere and 6 hours from resi and 4 from Formosa, we have a monthly travel fund to use for divisions and trips to multi zone conferences and trips to potrillo. Well this was my first trip to potrillo and I didnt know how much money to take and so for this reason we ran out of the money I brought in Juarez. So I had to go to a bank in Juarez and take out money from my personal card. We then found a place to eat called ´´El Aleph´´ in Juarez which is by far the best restaurant I have ever ate at since the panda express I ate in Atlanta. And it was cheap. I took a picture of what I ordered and will attatch. SO good. So that was the Potrillo experience this week.
On Sunday we had District conference with Pres Franco, the assistants, and the district of Ibarreta. There were a total of 150+/- that came. It was such a good conference and was super relaxing. Kinda bittersweet to see the last talk by Pres Franco, luckly I will see him one more time on the 20th of June when he comes to Formosa to pretty much say good bye to everyone. Fabiana and Damian Cano came to the conference and we learned that the birth certificate of Celedonio should be getting to the mission office today. So things are starting to get real with them. This Saturday we have a baptism set for Malvina, a 9 year old from the Colony.
We had transfers, again, Sunday night and not much changed since 3 weeks ago. I will stay here with Elder Freeman until at least the 14th of August. This is the start of the long 9 week transfer. I am doing super well and I am really excited to get things done this transfer. I am glad everyone is doing well and is happy.
This past week when we were visiting with Malvina, her older sister came out of the house with a SLOTH!!! at least thats what my first impression was. The animal was so small and moved so slow and was so adorable. But after looking at it some more it started looking like an anteater. And I later found out it was indeed an anteater. But still so cool! I had never seen one before and got to hold it and it ended up sleeping on my chest. I will attach that photo as well. To be honest a lot happened this week and I dont know if I am forgetting anything. I am not as fortunate as those state missionaries(cough cough Patrick Foresight) who have iPads to write their weekly emails throughout the week so you´ll have to bare with these sporadic and thrown together emails.
I am learning more everyday both spiritually and temporally. I know that this work is true and indeed difficult. But it does bring true hope and happiness to everyone who truly searches it. I hope you all have a great week and focus on the things that matter. Keep a good perspective and count your many blessings because you are all so incredibly blessed with what you have in every aspect(temporally & spiritually) and remember that the mass majority of people have problems worse than you. We dont have room to complain, but rather to give thanks for what you have in front of your eyes. If you dont believe me, ´´just watch the news´´. I actually cant watch the news but you guys can and I promise you will be humbled. I love you all.
Corbin Keicher
Argentina Resistencia Mission
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