WORST internet connection in the world // Mar. 19, 2018

Well the truth has finally been revealed. I´m not talking about what happened in 1820 nor am I referring to the fact that I finally found the source of the stereotypical cricket noise in our apartment(shockingly it was a cricket underneath the fridge). No, I am talking about the fact that it has been proven that Argentina has the As I was passing by businesses the other day, I saw the completely reliable ¨Todo Noticias¨ news channel headlining what I have known since august 2016. But now it has been made official. Just today I waited 2 minutes after clicking on an email for it to open up. But I dont intend on going on about this so let´s move on the what happened in the week! 

So I will let you guys in on who Sandra is because I imagine you have seen her blast feeding my comp and I on facebook. She is an investigator we are teaching right now. Her three sons got baptized the 3rd and 10th of February and right now we are working with her so that she can get baptized. She has to either get married or get separated from her novio. The problem is that they dont want to get married because they both have government pensions for being single parents. So if they get married they lose that pension. The pension runs out to be like $250 dollars or 5000 pesos. But we put a date with her for the 14 of april and set the goal that she could make a desicion by that date. She has a great testimony and has gone to church like 8 times since we found them in January. But yes, she has the habit of taking pictures of us during our lessons and then uploading them to ¨face¨. We are also trying to find more people because that is an issue right now. The branch is going through a transition so we are finally going to get a branch mission leader to work with this week.

This week we had leadership conference in Resistencia! We got up there Wednesday night and the next day we had our meeting. Presidente Patanía announced that the 1st presidency sent a notice saying that they wont be sending out as many missionaries to the mission... mostly because the amount of missionaries going home is a lot higher of the amount of missionaries leaving for missions right now. Apparently a lot of missions are closing and missionaries are being focused in different parts. He talked to us about the difference between effective and efficient. Making the point that even though the amount of missionaries in the mission are going down, we need to be efficient and maintain, if not increase, the amount of work we are doing, despite the drop in numbers. When I got to the mission there were 180 missionaries in this mission and when I leave there will only be 130. Thats 25 areas that will have been closed in 2 years. Our zone has 7 areas in it and its the biggest zone in the mission with the smallest having only 3 areas. Just realities that the church is facing right now and the hand of the adversary in our lives. 

We had lunch yesterday with a family. They made us an argentine BBQ... this is a common experience that usually I dont mention in my emails but this BBQ was different because afterwards we went to their backyard and in the middle of the yard there was this random matress. I couldnt resist this golden opportunity to capture what I see on the daily but at this point has become normal to me. Seeing this matress in the middle of the yard didnt strike my attention at first but then I thought that if this was my first week, I would be caught off gaurd by such a scene that you may only see in west virginia. 

Well that was the week! Saludos! 

Elder Keicher

Water just started spewing out mid prayer // Mar. 13, 2018

Hey fam! 

So this week was transfers. Honestly this past week felt like the moment in Deal or No Deal when they are about to reveal to the contestant if they chose the million dollar brief case and as the suspense builds, Howie Mandel declares, ¨...we´ll be back right after this break¨. Well I was expecting a lot of things to happen to the zone, but there was basically no change. So I am in my third transfer with Elder Teves in Goya and this ¨break¨ will last at least 6 more weeks. 

So this week we had a little complication in our apartment. Wednesday morning my companion and I were literally saying our prayer before leaving for the morning and water just started spewing out of out water heater  in mid-prayer. Obviously the water leaking out was boiling hot lava water and we couldnt figure out how to get it to stop. We put a huge pot under it and thought we would just wait for it to drain all out. But 15 minutes passed and water was still spewing out. At this point there was water all over the apartment and I started looking for the water vaulve in the apartement. So we got the water turned off and spent some time cleaning the apartment back up. But it was quite the inconvenience

Considering it was the last week of the transfer there was a lack of motivation amongest a lot of the missionaries because we were all expecting something to happen. We had a great lesson anyway with one of our investigators named Azucena. We were in a lesson in which, my companion and I decided to figure out what her need was. Well, turns out that the problem was that she didnt want to open up to us while her husband was there. Because he got up after 10 minutes and left to go run an errend and while he was gone, she completely opened up to us about some serious things that she has kept in for more than 15 years. It was a great experience and we were able to get the ball rolling with her. I´ll have to share that experience more deeply later on. 

So this week we will be going to resisetencia for leadership conference with my comp and this time the district leaders are coming with. So it will be super nice to change up the routine. Plus going to resistencia makes me think of my first six months in the mission so its always nice to go back. 

Right now I am reading the Book Of Mormon, and this time I decided to use a study manual and I am really enjoying it. It really makes you read and see certain scriptures in a different light and with different background information that helps you understand the context and meaning of the scripture. 

So that was my week. I didnt really take many photos this week, but I´ll be sure to take plenty this week. Love you all! Have a great week! 

Elder Keicher

I got a bracelet made from a sister in the zone!