No smoking

June 22, 2015  (week 43 in Argentina)

  

Hola de Linda Clorinda que esta en la Hermosa Formosa!!! ja ja!! 

So now that I have a better understanding of where everything is it’s now not as much stress to leave the pension.  In all honesty our area is organized pretty well and super easy to figure out.  So Elder Goycochea and I have been rocking it up pretty well here in Clorinda. We have been able to meet some of the members, investigators, and even find new people to teach as well!  We had 4 investigators in the church this week!  Pretty crazy if you tell me!  Formosa is so different from Corrientes; it’s like black and white.  Exact opposites!!!  Everyone here is super nice and fun loving, laid back, and when you talk to someone, they want to talk to you.  Back in Corrientes it was a whole different ball game!  True that when we found someone, they were golden and progressed well, but here it’s like you walk up to one out of 3 houses and it’s a lesson.  But also there is a huge obstacle, that people have a hard time getting over, it’s being lazy.  Everyone has a hard time doing anything you want them to do, and when it comes to inviting people to church, they will normally say yes, but they don’t come.  So it’s a change in how we teach.  Elder Goycochea and I are pretty straight and direct with people to see if they really want to learn about the gospel or not, but we do it with love and professionalism.

Three people I want to talk about are first: Giovani and Gilary and then there is Flor.

Giovani and Gilary are a Columbian couple that moved here from Columbia and met the missionaries that were before us, which was Elder Sipple and Elder Extrom.  Yes Elder Sipple is indeed Alec Sipple with whom I worked with as a lifeguard.  When we found their house they were so nice and it was soooooooo cold that they gave us hot chocolate!  It’s been over a year and a half since the last time I had hot chocolate, it make me miss my snow back at home.  And we got to know them.  They are having problems with getting married legally here in Argentina and we are trying to do all the paperwork ourselves to get them married.  We went to the civil registry today and saw that they could be married, but in late July.  It’s hard here in Argentina to get anything done that involves paperwork, but we are working with what we got.  They love the church and came to the church again this Sunday.  They are a very lovely couple and even baked us cheese bread which was soooo gooood!  We will be working with them so that they can get married then baptized!!!

The Third person is Flor.  She is also an investigator of the elders before us and we talked to her to see what she wants.  She told us that she wants to get baptized and change her life.  She’s very shy and anti-social, but with us she’s very open.  We talked to them Saturday night to help prepare them to come to church and we found out that they smoke.  So out of the kindness of our hearts we were very frank with them in how smoking would affect her life in the future and now.  Her mom is nice but doesn’t want to hear about the church, and she has smoked for a long time.  We told them both that smoking is not good, therefore it is bad right?  The mom tried to reason and say that right now she just can’t quit because it won’t matter.  I told her that smoking for anyone is like a man cutting a tree:  every time he swings he cuts a part of the tree, the tree is still standing of course, but if you do not stop smoking now, you will only keep cutting that tree faster.  The tree can still stand even if there is chop marks in it, so don’t think you can’t stop smoking.  We took their packets of cigarettes from their home, with their permission, and Flor is doing better at avoiding her addiction to cigarettes.  When she came to church she told us after that she felt the need to smoke, but it went away after a minute of listening to the talks and testimonies.  She’s progressing!!!!!

This area is super nice and I love the people here, it gets either super cold or super-hot right now in winter so I hope that the weather will make up its mind so that way I’m not dying of the extremes! Love you all and oooopppp!!!! I almost forgot!!!!

  

!!!!!!!!Happy Fathers Day Papi!!!!!!!!!!!!!