November 29, 2010 Snare Drums and a Whistle

Bueno, I´m glad that Jordan managed to make it back [to BYU], and I can believe that he wouldn´t want to waste the money of Uncle Ed to get something to eat. But ha! That´s funny, no food for 12 hours, ja ja ja ja ja. I´ll send more pictures next week, but I don´t know if I have one with me and Argentina in the background, so I´ll have to take one. Besides, it´s not terribly different from California. Today I am going to go get a haircut and we are going to cook chorizos and eat choripan for lunch (French Roll sandwhich with suasage inside).


Weird, I kept wanting to write the spanish words for that sentence...if you haven´t noticed my spelling is worsening, because guess what in Spanish everything is spelled like it sounds! And each vowel only has ONE sound! I´m also trying to work on my accent to sound more latino, so hopefully when I call in 4 weeks you´ll notice a difference :D Also something more about my area, there´s a group of kids that get together in the afternoon with base and snare drums and a whistle, and they just beat their drums and play for hours. It´s so cool because I´ve never seen a bando gang before, especially not here! People watch and other kids bring their drums and join in too! It´s awesome.

Spiritual experiences for the week:

On Friday we were walking all day and didn´t find anybody. Nobody was home and nobody in the street wanted to give us their address to pass by later. Then at the end of the day when we were dejected and without plans we were going to head to the church to use the bathroom and Elder Blanch did one more contact. There was a mom and her brother and they immediately said they´d listen. We taught them and found out that the mom had been listening to missionaries when she was in high school with her friend and her brother started the lesson not believing that God answers prayers and ended saying he would pray and be baptized. It was a miracle to encounter them and see his faith change. Then we left with some time and still no more plans when we did another contact and the man accepted to listen. We taught him and his girlfriend for 15 minutes and they seemed interested. The night ended after that so we went home.

Another miracle. Yesterday we weren´t encountering too many people until we passed by a contact´s house. He wasn´t there but his mom was outside and she said she would listen. We needed a man 18 years or older to be present to teach her, so we went to a member´s house and he just happened to be there and ready to leave. So we returned in 5 minutes with the member and started teaching her. She told us that she has been dealing with depression her whole life and that a year ago her husband died and she doesn´t feel the energy or enthusiasm of living.  She also said that her brother is a bishop in Tucuman (Province in Argentina) and that he gave her a book of mormon recently and told her to talk to missionaries whenever she saw them and her other brother served a mission. It was an amazing spiritual lesson about the plan of salvation and she and her two daughters said that they would be baptized in the beginning of January. She also asked if it was possible that her brothers were praying for her. Chao, no more time.

Con Amor,
Elder Arrowchis