Lucas has a girlfriend 9/26/17

Hey  All! 

Well we had transfers and nothing changed with me, same area and still with Elder Souza. I am pleased because I didnt want souza to go just after one transfer. We get along and you just never know what kind of comp you might get when transfers come. So I am happy. We had 3 missionaries leave and 3 come. One of them is Elder Carro(from ARG) who now is in Vera... it will be interesting because I was already his ZL once and he has...... a reputation of causing problems. so we´ll see what happens this transfer...stay tuned! haha 

But this week was pretty normal. It is kinda fun having a young single adult convert(Lucas Vergarra 23yrold). JAS(jovenes adultos solteros) or the YSA group here in Reconquista consists of like 9-10 people and now Lucas has been thrown into this group. This past weekend the YSA group here traveled to Paraná, entre rios to go to a YSA dance. That is where Lucas is from, and the older brother of Lucas makes what is called equipos de Mate(look it up), which is all the equipment that people here use to drink mate. Well, his older brother sells them really cheap so I bought one from him. But when we went to his house to give him the money before the trip, we found him with a jovencita from the YSA group named Carla.... Oh the worry that Elder Souza and I had for Lucas because he is a member of 4 weeks and now he thinks he can just go off and date the mormon YAS girls. I ll be honest, Lucas is a catch; works for the military as a meteorologist, has a car, isnt ugly, is mormon... but he is biting off more than he can chew. I feel like an overprotective parent, worrying about their kid after he/she turns 16. But it was awesome because Sunday, Lucas taught Gospel Principles... and what did he teach on? his topic was ¨Marriage and the eternal family¨. haha it was perfect but I hope it doesnt get him too motivated to get married... We will try to see if he wants to serve a mission because apparently Carla is working on her mission papers..... So much DRAMA!!

Lucas "the catch" Vergarra

We passed by the familia Moreira twice this week, the first time they didnt answer the door and the second time the mom answered the door and very frankly told us

  ¨ahora no puedo atenderles, estoy muy ocupada, otro momento, CHAU¨ ** abruptly closes the door **. Which is spanish for ¨my husband heard I was talking with you and told me not to listen to you guys.¨ 

I am so disappointed because they we rock solid the first two lessons we had. And the mom was SUPER nice and intrigued with the book of mormon and the restoration.... Unfortunatly  this happens too often in missionary work, but we can only keep going. On Wednesday, we had a zone service activity where we cleaned the ¨Zanjas¨(Ditches that serve as waste and trash storage) in a neighborhood in reconquista. It was gross but super fun! 

Zone service activity

That was basically the highlights of the week. I am super excited for general conference this weekend. Should be a fun week. I will be able to pic up my camera this week at leadership council in resistencia So I will be able to take more photos and videos. I hope you all have a great week! 

E´Corbin Keicher

Floating Island 9/18/17

how is it going?

This week was a lot of fun! But a little slow on the missionary work side of things. We had our multi-zone conference like I mentioned last week on Thursday. We left thursday morning at 6am in a shuttle with the whole zone and got to resistencia at 930am. The conference was super good and fun. President patania is a lot more number based than pres. Franco. There is definitely a difference in the mentality and way of going at things between the two. Pres. Patania talked about breaking trends and trying new things to see what works. But in our respective area of Reconquista 1, we are lacking a little and the work is a little stagnant. I am hoping that we can get some productive days in to jumpstart things again. We passed by the moreira family again this past week and taught lesson 1: the restoration. And it was super good, in the sense that the mom was super attentive and paying attention. She understood everything pretty well and understood the invitation to read, ponder and pray. So we will be verifying with her to see how she is feeling along with the rest of the family. But they are the most progressing right now in our pool. We were finally able to find Yolanda and her family. They are the young family that lost their 18 month year old due to heart complications. It has been hard to find them because after the funeral, yolanda lost it and they had to go live with some relatives that live in chaco. But this past week they came back so that their 2 boys(brain6 &alan8) wouldnt fail out of their year of school. But we talked to yolanda on friday, and it was so sad to see how much pain she is in.  She is on medications now to control her emotions and depression, but we just shared with her the Plan of Salvation and gave her some things to read from Joseph Smith regarding the death of little kids. Then on Saturday we went to their little humble house and helped her husband pour concrete floor for and extension they are putting in to their house. That was pretty fun to mix the concrete and level everything. Then on Sunday they came to sacrament meeting as a family. It was so nice to see them there. 

In the multizona, Pres. Patania talked about the use of computers and clarified the rule that, if the branch president calls him to give him permission, then the missionaries in that branch may use the computers. So we got our branch president to give us permission to use the computers. So luckly, we are no longer writing in cyber cafes. On our way back, we passed by walmart, and there I bought, microwave popcorn, doritos, tostidos chips, skittles, and some other stuff. But they didnt have salsa so that was a disappointment. Today, for lunch we went to the más lujo restaurant called ¨el cruce¨. They had waiters and everything. I ordered costeleta de cerdo which was basically a slab of prok chop(155pesos) that was super good. and I got it with a side of fries(55pesos) and a 350ml coke(35pesos). It was a little expensive but then part that made me mad was I ordered a desert that sounded so good. It was called isla flotante(55pesos), which literally is floating island. The waiter said it was really good. So I got that and then they brought it out, took a bite, and it was glazed with a coffee/alcohol cream. I was so mad, alcohol? in a desert? come on! That was my experience today. 

But that is it from Argentina this week. I hope you all have a great week!! Love you!! 

E´ Corbin Keicher

ps- still dont have a workable camera so I dont have many pics

These twins from our branch had their birthday

We had a choir last night  in a members house, we sang Más Cerca Dios de ti. 

Avocado Shake 9/10/17

Hey Fam!

Well time flew by this week. But it was a productive one. This is the
start of week 5 of the 6 week transfer and it is going to be an
exciting one. Tonight we have a FHE with a family that is reactivating
in the church. Tuesday and wednesday will be normal days and then
Thursdasy we have a multizone conference in Resistencia. Well be
taking a shuttle as a zone to resistencia earlyin the morning and then
after the conference we will stop by the only Wal Mart in the mission
to do some shopping.

Our District pic

But this last week we contacted in a young family of 5, the Moreira
family. 4 of them were home when we contacted them in the last
morning. The young mom and her 3 kids of 13, 9, and 5 years of age let
us in and we shared a quick message with them and left them with the
book of mormon and a time to come back this tuesday. Friday, we had a
post-baptism lesson with Lucas(23yr old) and we made a video eatting
argentine sweets. I`ll try and load thatup. but while we were there,
my brazilian companion made a Avocado shake.......... it consisted of
avocado, sugar, and milk.... it was awful. I dont know if logan had to
suffer through 2 years of avocado shakes cause i couldnt even finish
the glass i was served. Lucas was undecided about it... but lucas and
I agreed that the shake smelled like cold wet socks. It hasnt really
heated up yet, it rains a couple of times a week, but i know the
coming summer is inevitable. All the people here keep talking about
the huricans that hit texas and the earthquake in Mexico.... sounds
like it was pretty destructive.

Sunday was really cool. President Patania was in reconquista getting
to know the local district leaders and doing temple recommend
interviews for the members and so he was in our branch. His wife a 14
year old son, daniel, were with him. But I really enjoyed the talk
that Pte Patania gave. He talked about ¨coming unto christ¨. A line he
said really struck a chord with me, he said, ¨Too many latter-day
saints are active members IN church, but completely inactive members
OF the church¨. He basically made the point that many saints dont
remain active after the church doors close behind them. They go back
to their houses and during the week, they dont utter a single prayer,
read a single verse of scripture, or think about their savior only
until the enter church again the following sunday. I really loved
that. As members we need to be active members of the church, not just
in church buildings and church sponsered events, but rather in our
homes, during the week, and even when we are on vacations.
But I loveyou all. That is it from me this week in Argentina. I hope
you all have a great week.

Loves,

E´ Corbin Keicher

I forgot to mention that we went to the las colonias alfajor factor and took a tour. SUPER cool. 

on the tour

eating sweets with Lucas

knock off version of "UNO" called "screw-you"

EXTRA broke my fast 9/4/2017

Hello fam, 

 

The nicest, most American-like street in the entire mission

This week passed pretty quickly for me. We did our very first Zone Activities. Last leadership conference, president patania put into effect zone activities to do proselyting and service. As a zone we have to do 1 proseliting activity and one service activity every transfer. So last tuesday, after district meetings, we did a proselyting activity in area of reconquista 3. That is the area of Sister Arias(37 year old brazilian) and Sister Howe(19 year old from greeley CO), and they didn’t have many investigators to work with, so the whole zone went to their area and contacted for 2 hours and got them a bunch of references to follow up on. It was kinda fun. This Tuesday we are going to do a service activity as a zone at a members house. Ill be sure to take some pictures for you next week. The picture situation is kinda weird, I cant promise pictures every week, some of the computers in this cafe dont allow you to upload pics and some do... so if i can I will.

Zone pic after our activity

 The work is moving along slowly here. After 3 weeks here, I have come to the realization that every single family here is a partial member family. And those who aren’t members, don’t want anything to do with the church. It is quite odd, and there is a lot of history that I need to figure out. I think it would help the branch to get new strong member families... so I think I might put that as the focus. 

The Parera Family

We are entering into the second half of the transfer and we will be having divisions and multizone confrence.. so it will be a fun second half of the transfer. This afternoon, we will be going to the Las Colonias Alfajor factory to take a tour. I am pretty excited for that. There you can buy boxes of alfajores, so when I come home, Ill get a box to bring back! 

I have a question for... Lucas, the recent convert, has his father who works for the military, and he has to take 2 trips a year to the states, well to Michigan, to use a flight simulator. Well he brought back  ¨Extra¨ gum and lucas gave me the box. So Sunday after the 1st hour of church, I popped in a stick of gum, and Elder Souza, and the sister missionarys started accusing me of breaking the fast. I was so confused, hahaha it was kinda funny but all of them swear that if you are fasting you aren’t allowed to chew gum. SO the question is, If you are fasting, are you allowed to chew gum? I told them if that is the case, then I have never fasted in my life. haha kinda a funny stupid question. 

But that was my week, nothing too crazy. I am getting excited for conference already, haha I hope you all have a great week! 

Love,

Corbin

A weird, 45-year old man made an iron soar and shield, unfortunately he sold the knight helmet 

abundance of life 8/28/17

 How are things? 

Well a few new things to tell you about this week. First off we had the baptism of Lucas Vergada, the 23 year old meterologist for a local military air base. That happened saturday and all of his family from paranà, entre rios came for the baptism. The family got baptised in march and may(some in march and some in may) and so Lucas got exposed to the church through their conversions. It was a great baptism and his 25 year old brother baptised him. 

On saturday, we went to go eat lunch with lucas and his family, but his family got stuck in mud 20 outside of reconquista in a town called malabrigo. so we went with lucas to go help them out. But right as we got there, they had gotten out of the mud thanks to a truck that had just passed by and pulled them out. We returned to lucas` house for lunch where we talked for a little bit and got to know the whole fam. Sunday we had a area broadcast from salt lake for the area south america south where  elder rasband presided in the broadcast. For that reason, we had all the branches together and then after the broadcast we comfired lucas in one of the rooms of the church building. 

This past thursday a friday, all the district leaders had a training in resistencia, and there are 2 district leaders in our zone, so their companions stayed with us while they were gone and we did divisions. I was with elder Giforos from american fork. His has been in the mission for 2 weeks, and even though i am the zone leader, I think I learned a lot more from him during divisions than he learned from me. The MTC is such a spiritual high that the new missionaries come into the mission with, many times, a different perspective and mindset. It was fun to feed off his energy and spirtuality. But it was interesting doing divisions in the area that ive only been in for a week and a half.... i didnt get lost too much haha and we found the people needed to find. I am enjoying the area and the branch here. It has it`s own identity and feel. 

On a sadder note, Saturday morning, we past by the house of a member at 9:20am where we were notified that the 18 month old of a less active familyhad past away the night before due to heart complications since birth. It took me a second to remember who the family was and it was a family we had visited with elder Giforos two days prior. I couldnt believe it because it seemed so healthy when I was there. And to make the situation worse, the culture here in Argentina is the bury deceased people within 16-20 hours of death. We went straight from the members house to the viewing right down the street. and we stayed there until noon. But it is difficult because since they bury people here so fast after death, it leaves little to zero time to plan any service. And unfortunatly all the presithood leaders of the branch were out of town working and the branch here doesnt have anysort of communication set up so there were only like 2 members that knew about the death and were at the funural. It made me sad and a little angry that this family of now 4 wasnt able to have the support of the church. While we were there, elder souza and I gave blessings of comfort to the parents. It was a sad situation and It makes me even more grateful and apriciative for the simple luxeries we have in our lives, such as proper thought out funurals for loved ones. 

I am reading the new testament right now and i am in John right now. I specifically liked in john 10:10-11 where it says, I am come that they might have life, and that theymight have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth hislife for the sheep. This scripture made me think of the quote that says, ¨Every person has been given life, but not every person has truely lived¨. Or somethinga long those lines. I love what Christ said that he has come so that we not only have our lives, but that we can have more abundence of life. I believe that we can recieve a larger abundence of life as we turn to Him and live like he did, loving others  and becoming more charitable, as we turn outward in the service of others, instead of turning inward and becoming as the world is, fallen, lost, and darkening. 

I love you all and hope you have a better week and find happiness and joy in your trails. 

Love,

Elder Keicher