Karen's Got Sass 6/13/17

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 20^th 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 14^th 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

Pre-Mature Year Mark 6/5/2017

Well here we go,

Kinda reached my first real mile stone in the mission… exactly one year from right now I will be eating McD´s in the Buenos Aires airport awaiting my flight to the promise land(USA)…. Hahaha but I am not trunky… just making observations. We had an interesting, basically normal week. Nothing too exciting happened. Probably the most exciting part of this week was our trip to Resistencia for leadership council. It was the last council meeting with Pres. Franco before he goes…. If anyone is trunky here it has to be the mission president. But we left for Resistencia last tuesday at what was suppose to be 2pm but there was an Indian protest where they blocked the highway preventing any sort of travel. And our 2pm FlechaBus bound for Resi turned out to be a 5pm Flechabus bound for Resi. Pres. Franco invited the 2 branch president missionaries and their companions to the council meeting as well so Elders Moreira and White came with us. Thanks to the Monopoly Deal game I have, we were able to wait out the delay by playing some games of that in the bus terminal. On our way down, the Argentine ´´military´´ boarded the bus at the boarder of Formosa and Chaco and checked our iD´s. Luckly nothing transpired from that and we made it safely to Resi by 11pm. The leadership council was great and was centered on Ch.9 of Preach my Gospel, which talks about how to find new investigators. President combined that with Alma 26 which talks about Ammon and the sons of Mosiah. It was really good. Then we packed everything up for our Zone afterwards and headed back to Ibarreta. So I got the package from Mom that had the long awaited SlapChop inside. That thing is a life saver. I appreciate that thing so much and now my cooking time is literally split in half. What a luxury! But I read the list of what was suppose to be inside the package and customs took out the Popcorn seeds:(… but that is okay because I just found out that the local china market here sells popcorn seeds...(yes there are Chinese people in Argentina).

The work in our area is starting to pick up. A big focus President Franco talked about in Council meeting was how effective it is to work with Less-active families and partial families. So we have been putting a lot of effort into finding all the less-actives in Ibarreta so that we can activate them, hopefully find their unbaptized kids, and get to teaching their friends and family. I recently just got off the phone with the mission office and they are working on getting the updated birth certificate of Celedonio Cano and they said that that should be getting here within 2 weeks. So we are happy to hear this and excited to see this family enter the waters of baptism together.

Last night we were leaving a lesson with a recent convert when I completely threw out my back. As some of you may know, I have a pretty bad lower back that gets tweaked every 6 months or so. Well what happened is I bent down to put my boots on after the lesson and just felt the sharpest pain in my lower back and had to wobble back to our place. I am pretty sure it is the same exact injury that dad had about a year ago when he was working on the wall and hurt his back. It is really incredible that I have an injury like this even though I am 20 years old. But I am fully convinced that the 4 years of weight lifting with Mr. Boley of Legend High School gave me the back I have…. Too many back squats will do that to you. So now I do my studies knelled over my bed like dad was knelled over the ottoman because frankly, that is the only position that will not hurt.

But anyway, that was my week. We will be having District Conference(like stake conference but a district) this Sunday and President Franco will be coming to preside over it and give his final talk over a pulpit as a mission president. I will end my email there and I hope that you all have a great week!  

UPDATE from Argentina 5/29/2017

Well I am writing again from rainy Formosa, Argentina. 

It has quite literally been raining all week and the streets here show it. There is one paved street in Ibarreta.... the main avenue and the rest of the streets are dirt. And it isnt nice compact sand type dirt. It is straight Idaho farm field completely loose dirt that, when wet/combined with water, causes your foot to get completely submerged in the deep thick mud. It has thrown an obstical in our way as far as the missionary work goes because we cannot move very fast in these type of conditions. It also makes it difficult to contact and find new people to teach(which is what we need right now) because nobody wants to accept wet muddy missionaries into their homes. But we are pushing on. We are hoping and praying that it
stops.... but apparently forecast says that it will stay like this all week. Yay!

But luckly we will be spending Wednesday and thursday in Resistencia at leadership council so will be able to escape the mud and rain of Ibarreta. Itll be nice to get out for a day or two and change up the routine. The work here in the area is hitting a road block. Our wonderful family that is set to be baptised is facing opposition right now. The dad needs his Birth Certificate from Salta, but the problem is, is that there is no one in Salta to send the birth certificate to us. So we will be going to the civil regesters office Tuesday to talk to them on what we can do. SO we will be focusing a lot on that and trying to get this problem resovled. I will mention this issue we are facing with Pres. Franco on Thursday because most likely he has faced a similar problem like this in his 3 years here.  But other than the Cano Family, we are teaching a couple other people that are mas o menos progressing and we have a girl in the Colony who has a baptism date for the 27th of June. But mainly what we need is to find new people.

On Thursday was like Nation Indepenence day here in Argentina.. so the branch here had a big BBQ at the church from 12pm-3pm. It was a lot of fun and like 50 people showed up... which is a lot!! It is kinda funny... 50 people show up to BBq in the pouring rain and 16 show up to church in the drizzling rain. Kinda a snapshot of the strength of the church in this part of the world. But the activity was a lot of fun. We had people bring friends and non members there that we hope will make them more open to listen to us. Not sure if photos will upload on these computers anymore..... the Internet has taken a turn for the worst. Friday we walked a lot in the rain and I was completely soaked all day and that made me kinda sick when I woke up on Saterday. So unfortunatly we didnt get to do much Saturday due to me being under the weather.

 We visited with a guy here last night named Gilberto. He is a 62 year old guy who has a bad heart. He is a relative of one of the members here so that's how we got to know him. But he is in a pretty sad situation right now. Last week his pacemaker stopped working. So he went down to Formosa to the hospital there and the docters barely looked at him. He got down there and after waiting all day, they looked at him for 20 mintues and told him he had to "Sacar Turno" or pretty much take out a turn to go back in a couple weeks to get properly looked at, examined and cared for..... then he came back to Ibarreta and is waiting for that day... just hoping that his heart doesnt stop in the mean time.  Really made me think and feel for this guy. Made me think of how blessed all you are that are reading this. One thing I can remember, from at least the campus life at a major university, was how everyone complained and got all worked up on how horrible their lives were and how messed up the health care system is and how unethical it is that the bakery down the street wont bake a cake for a gay wedding. The problems that we face with are all circumstantial. The better we understand the we are living in a fallen world and understand that it is being ran by imperfect people, the better we realize our relience or dependence in a redeemer. That leads me to a couple scriptures I used in my talk I gave this week.

2 Nephi 4:34

O Lord, I have ^atrusted in thee, and I will ^btrust in thee forever. I will not put my ^ctrust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his ^dtrust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.

Romans 3:23

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

This is something I am just now starting to understand, that our dependence/obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing.... and I mean ONLY thing that will move us safely from this life to the next. This thought leads me to Mosiah 3:17 where we are taught that,

And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be ^ano other name given nor any other way nor means whereby ^bsalvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the ^cLord Omnipotent.

 

There I will leave you with that thought. That is something that became a lot clearer to me this week in studies and I hope you take time to ponder that idea. I hope you all have a great week and have a GREAT Memorial Day !! Love ya all

Corbin Keicher

Sent from my iPhone

Actually sent from Internet Retrasado que es tan lento como un caracol tirando veinte libras

New Transfer...

Well we had TRANSFERS

To start I will just fill in on what happened. Elder Urquidi got transferred to Italia Sur in Formosa and Elder Freeman came from Las Lomitas to be my new companion. He has one less transfer than me and is from Oregon. Super cool kid and very smart. Also, Elder White came from the office and replaced Elder Carrizales in Est. del Campo. I will attach the transfer paper that shows where everyone is and you can look at that. It was tough to see Elder Carrizales go. He is such a cool guy and super fun to be around.

So this week was pretty normal. We finished the transfer without the Cano family getting baptized but things are lining up for their baptism this Saturday. The problem is that they are not married like I have already mentioned and in order to get married here you have to present your original birth certificate. And for the dad (celidonio) he is getting his sent from Salta, ARG and that should be getting here in three days. So if that all works out they will get married on Friday and Saturday will get baptized. So we are going to work towards that. Funny experience, the mom and daughters came to church Sunday where the branch president announced that we would be having branch council that night and also a good-bye party for the missionaries that were leaving. So Fabina Cano (the mom) came and ended up being in the branch council/. And when we got to talking about our investigators, Fabiana just butted in and explained what they needed to do to get baptized... haha she is awesome. Then right after the branch council we had the good-bye party with the branch and also with Elder Carrizales and Elder Moreira. We drank hot chocolate and ate pastries and took a lot of photos. I will attach pics of that.

Elder Urquidi got really sick on Saturday from a Lasagna we made on friday. So we had to spend all day Saturday in the house so it was kinda boring. But really nothing too crazy happened... We cleaned and organized our house sooooooooo much yesterday when Elder Freeman showed up. It is so nice to have a little change up. We will be traveling to Resistencia next week for leadership council because this Thursday is the Argentina Independence day. But that was the extent of my weekly experience.

You all sound great. I hope the planning keeps going well for the wedding. The backyard looks amazing. I hope Spencer's dad recovers... scary! But thats what I got.... love you fam!! Have a great week!

Corbin Keicher

ps: we have really bad internet and don't have enough time to upload all of them  

704- photo at the goodbye party

Internet Retrasado

Well hello again! 

It was great to see and hear from all of you yesterday. Even though the internet wasn't good and we only got to talk through the computer I still enjoyed it. All the other missionaries had troubles and their screens froze and were basically just talking to a frozen picture for their calls. So that is just the luxury of Ibarreta, Argentina Internet. Even today, having 4 missionaries emailing is too much for the network so we are going 2 at a time. haha crazy, I guess I am just used to it. 

But everyone seems to be doing well. It was good to see all of you in action for a little bit. Asher was a surprise for me. Super talkative and all grown up. But the personality is still there. 

So that you all know... i'm not sure if I said this yesterday, but next p-day is tuesday because we have transfers next Sunday/Monday. This week and transfer flew by... and I really enjoyed it too! This morning and last night, Elder Carrizales and Morriera stayed with us to spend P-day here. And we played 17 games of Monopoly Deal. haha it was super fun... and about as fun as it gets here. I won 9 of them.... 💁

There was an exciting and funny experience that happened this week. For the first couple days of last week, our shower head had been acting weird.  The shower head is an electric shower head. Inside of it has the mechanism that makes the water from cold to hot. And there are 2 wires that run to it to provide the power. On Tuesday the wires started shorting out randomly throughout the day. It was randomly spark and then make a small explosion sound. It was really weird. Then as we were going to bed that night it kept shorting out like every 15 minutes. It was soo bizzare. So that morning I decided not to shower because I did not want to risk getting shocked by showering. So that day passed and it kept shorting out like it does. The next morning I woke up feeling so disgusting and gross that I decided I had to take a shower. But there is nothing I hate more than cold showers. So I took my duct tape and I tape it around the wires that were exposed and making the sparks and explosions. I took a quick shower and Elder Urquidi did as well. Everything was fine. Then at 8:51am as we were saying our closing prayer to our daily planning we heard a literal explosion from the bathroom. When we looked in the bathroom there were flames on the wire and was burning my duct tape. It was CRAZY! Soooo we called an electrician and he should be coming today or tomorrow to replace the whole shower head. So i have been showering with a bucket since Wednesday morning haha funny story... I attached a pic

This week was super fun!! As far as the missionary work went this week we had a couple things happen. On Thrusday, we had a priesthood activity at the church were all the guys came to the church and played soccer and ate "churripan" or sausage hot dogs. We brought Rodrigo to the activity but like I said last week he is moving back to Buenos Aires. So at the activity we took him into the computers and we looked up where he lives exactly and showed him the closest chapel to his house there. Then we filled about an online referral to send to the missionaries in Buenos Aires. Then we enjoyed the activity. Luckily I didn't have the privilege to embarrass myself playing soccer with latinos because we aren't allowed to play soccer. But we are allowed to be the goal keeper haha. But I took a small video of them playing I will upload. With the Cano Family, like I mentioned yesterday, we have them set to get baptized this Saturday... but it depends on if they get married on Friday. We taught them and passed by a lot to keep them motivated. The last time we checked the dad was at 4-6 cigs a day. So not sure if he will make it. So we will be working a lot with them. I will be able to update you next week better.

On Wednesday I think we went the the colony and worked there. The church there is pretty weak, so we work with the only active family there to strengthen it. We visited with a kid named Miguel there that is working on going on a mission. So we are trying to help him with that. But there in the colony was where I was able to catch a hold of a goat and put it on my shoulders. It was a pretty fun and the goat was so nice, didn't resist at all. I'll try to upload that pic. Then on Friday we had divisions with Campo where I went there.  Campo is like 30 minutes up the road from Ibarreta. I was with Elder Carrizales from Cody, Wyoming. He is a super cool guy and is serving as the branch president over there. He goes home in August after the 9 week transfer. It was fun talking to him and learning from him with his experience. 

I am glad to hear the Rockies are doing well. They would have their one good season during the mission haha. But that is all I got. Sorry my emails arnt very detailed... I will try to work on that. Have a great week!! 

E' Corbin Keicher

We found a sleeping horse on the side of the road (not dead)

 I painted my name on the wall... service for a old lady in the branch

Found snake skin on the road to the colony

NO SMOKING

Monday already??

This week passed kinda quick for me. But it was a great week anyway and saw a lot of success. We had district meeting last Tuesday in Fontana which is like 20 minutes down the road. There I interviewed an investigator for baptism that the Fontana elders are teaching. He ended up getting baptized over the weekend. So congrats to them! 

After last P-day in the afternoon we went to the District Presidents house and his wife taught us how to make ´´Pionono´´ which is basically a rolled up cake. haha it was really good. I attached a picture of that. Then this week we also had divisions and Elder Freeman from Las Lomitas came  with me to Ibarreta. But the part that was less awesome is that we had to wake up at 3am to catch a 4am bus to Las Lomitas because it is a 2 hour bus ride. Then I had to take another 2 hour bus ride back to ibarreta and got back at 9am. It was long and I just slept the whole time. But I enjoyed spending a day with Elder Freeman. He is from Oregon and studied i think 3 semesters before the mission at BYU-Idaho and another small school in Oregon. We found some really good Alfajores together called ´´Sin Culpa´´. Each one costs $15 pesos which is kinda much for an alfajore but it was really good haha. 

This Sunday was probably the best Sunday in my mission so far. We had 5 investigators in church. 4 of them were the entire Cano family. The other was our investigator from a couple months ago named Rodrigo. He is the guy that had a lot of smoking and drug issues in Buenos Aires and Elder Taylor and I started teaching him. But told us he was moving back to Buenos Aires until mid April. Well Elder Urquidi found him last week and got him to church again! He is such a cool guy. He is very humble and nice. But he told us that he will be moving to Bueos Aires and staying there until October. So we are going to have to contact the missionaries directly cause he is more than just a reference. haha he is an investigator with 2 church attendances. But the Cano Family loved church. We had some really crucial lessons this week with them. We taught the Law of chastity and the word of wisdom... we had been saving those until they had experienced church because they aren't married and the dad smokes. And it was a miracle! They told us that they tried to get married last year but just got lazy and didn’t put in the effort to get all the things for it. But they said that they will get married and accepted and are planning to get married on the 19th....the day before their baptism date! Then when we taught the WoW, we had the president Falcon (Branch Pres)  come with us. He was an alcoholic before he meet the missionaries and literally turned his life around. So that helped the dad see that it is possible. He told us that he smokes like 10-12 a day. Then they all came Sunday. It was such a powerful testimony meeting and afterwards I taught the Gospel Principles class with the 5 investigators and the wife of the branch president while Elder Urquidi taught the youth. I taught ´´Fasting¨ and what it means to fast. Celidonio (the dad of the Canos) shared that he got up that morning and didn’t smoke, which apparently he does everyday... it is just a fix, like drinking a cup of coffee. After all three hours President Falcon gave Celidonio a blessing. He basically has to quite smoking in one week.... so keep him in your prayers. 

Oh and with the Mothers day call this sunday… we will most probably do it in the house of the district president. So we will see what happens with that. I will call at 4:30pm our time, 1:30 your time. The only thing is I don't know if the computer will have a microphone. I think all will turn out to be fine. You guys just be ready on your end and I will try and figure out all the things. The time is 45min-1hr. So lets try to follow that schedule. Cause the whole zone is coming here to talk.  

But yeah that was basically the week. I made tacos this morning and we cleaned the crap out of our little house. I hope you all have a great week. You all sound soooo good. I am glad the graduation went smoothly. I am not surprised that kenz lost her name cord.... typical! 😂  

Have a great and fun week! Love ✌

Corbin Keicher

Sitting in chairs(obviously) at a part family's house

Inside the house of the part-family with them and their parrot

Pic with Elder Freeman

Dead Dogs and Baptisms

Interesting week! The biggest thing that happened this week was Multi-Zone conference in Formosa (3 hours from Ibarreta). That happened Wednesday and I enjoyed it a lot. It was kind of bittersweet because that was the last conference with President and Sister Franco and my last interview with Pres. Franco. But crazy thing happened on our way to Formosa that morning. As we were arriving to Formosa, there was a little bit of traffic. We were going like 10 MPH when a dog attempted to cross the road. There was a Toyota truck in front of us that didn’t even blink an eye and plowed over the back side of the dog going 10mph. I was in the back of the shuttle half asleep when the spouse of the driver started freaking out. I woke all the way up and saw the aftermath of it all and heard the poor screeches of the dog. The shuttle driver stopped and they moved the yelping dog to the median of the road and we continued on. Half a mile down the road the Toyota truck had pulled off the road, so when we passed by them the ´´spouse´´ lady stuck her head out the window and said so many bad words in Spanish to the guy in the truck. As a missionary you don't really hear that side of the language. It was just a funny/sad situation all together and probably wont ever forget it. 

At the end of the conference our zone and a couple other zones were just waiting to get all our interviews done. We found ourselves standing in the middle of the cultural hall talking with Sister Franco. It was soo fun talking to her. She is so ´´Trunky´´ which means is ready to go home. She filled us in on our she got called to the Primary general board. She said that she did a Skype interview with President Henry B. Eyring where he extended the calling. She said that she thought the skype call was for President Franco but turned out to be her. She said she is super nervous about having to give general conference talks. Which I would be too. Then she talked about a couple of movies and filled us in a little bit on what is happening in Syria cause we literally have no clue. I just learned about that the other day. After the interviews we went to a grocery store called Carrefore and did some shopping where I bought Tabasco, Tostitos, and Prego. A bottle of Prego here costs $11! crazy... but sooo worth it! haha

As far as the missionary work this week it was a success! Friday we did divisions with Fontana which is like 20 minutes down the road! I spent the day with Elder Ferriera from Rosario, Santa Fe, ARG. He has 2 transfers less than me I think. But we passed by a lady there who is LOCA!! She is a total inactive member and is 68 years old. To explain a little she is married to a Jewish guy who is 48 years old. They got married LAST YEAR. and to make it even crazier, this jewish guy lived in the states for 15 years in Miami and Seattle and other places. I told him I was from Colorado and he looked at me and said ´´oh...Denver? sí?...y aurora?......y Colorado springs no?¨ haha So he actually knew a little of the map but English... couldn’t speak it at all. But he, being Jewish, left after 3 minutes to go shopping. So we talked to the lady where, to make a LONG story short, is very mad at God, mad at people, mad at her neighbors, and just mad at life/the world. It was very frustrating trying to explain to her that staying in her house all day not doing anything wasn’t going to help her situation. She hasn't left her house in months supposedly. But anyway that was the most exciting thing about divisions.

Then Saturday we had the baptism of Raul. It was a success and there were a ton of members there. Also Fabiana Cano and her daughter came to the baptism as well, which was awesome!! Afterwards we ate food and the youth had mutual. On Sunday we had a great lesson with the youth. There has been ¨wars and rumors of wars¨ between the young women of the branch. They have been excluding and grouping off and saying mean things on facebook. So Elder Urquidi taught a lesson to them about contention. Then we watched the video about Bullying with Elder Uchtdorf talking! It was a super good lesson and they all liked it. But that was basically the week. It has been raining a lot here lately.. I am getting kind of sick of it haha.

I hope everyone enjoys the week up in Logan at the graduation for Mackenzie. I bet it will be fun! I hope you all have a great week!!  

Elder Lake and I meet once again

Selfie with Maxi Falcon (the son of the branch president)