Thirty-Five Weeks

Hello everyone!

So this has been an awesome week - in contrast to last week where we only taught 8 lessons, this week we were able to get out 19 so I am pretty happy. We have found some awesome new people to teach as well that I feel confident will be able to progress and keep up the commitments that we give them as well so I am excited for that. On one of the days this week alone as well we were able to teach 5 lessons and so we will have to see what we can do this coming week.

The weather has also been super interesting; it had finally started warming up a lot, to the point where I was wearing just short sleeve shirts and even sweating some at that, but then on Friday the Santa Rosa hit (where the cold air front and the warm air front collide down hear at the change of seasons) which caused a lot of rain and brought back the cold (to the point where I was wearing a sweater, coat, and hat). The rain only lasted about a day and a half though and now that it is gone, it has started warming up again to the point where I am wearing just a sweater. It was a small taste of the summer to come though.

Another interesting thing though is that we were finally able to visit a family that haven't been going to church for a little while but where the husband is actually from the USA (New Mexico) and has only been living here for about 4 or 5 years (prior to that his wife, who is from here, lived with him in the USA but they came back to look after her aging parents). So, we got to speak english with him and his wife (it is good practice for them too to be able to keep up on it since you can't really practice here all that much) and it was pretty weird - it took some getting used to but it was fun. They had us over for dinner too though and made us Enchiladas (a food that they don't have here, Argentina is a very European type country and they don't have mexican foods at all) so that was super tasty as well.

Lastly, You can tell that my comp and I have been on the mission for a little while - we say hi to everyone in the street and then wave to people in cars passing by, but a couple times my comp has accidentally said hola to a car that drove by, and a couple times to a parked car on an otherwise empty street. It's pretty amusing haha.

Other than that though, there is not really all that much new to share, and the computer that I am using does not have USB ports so I can't really share any photos, so that'll have to wait until next week. Hope everyone is doing well though and love you all.

Love,

Elder McCollum

Thirty Four Weeks

Hello all! It suprises me how different missionary work can be from week to week (in a good way). I never know what to expect - last week we had the whole Cristina story that I shared and it seemed like a really long week, but this week it has flown by, but at the same time not a whole lot has happened. I don't really have any cool teaching stories, but I do have a few little anecdotes that I can share.

First, as of last Tuesday, Elder McDonald has now been my companion for more time than any other that I have had. I haven't ever had a companion for more than 1 transfer (6 weeks) and so the transfer that we had which was 7 weeks long (with Elder Wolfe) would have been the longest uintil now. We are heading into week three of this transfer now though, so that means we finished 8 weeks together and are going on 9. Just something kind of interesting.

Second, as we were walking I saw a saying painted above a school that I really liked. It's the kind of thing that you would expect to see, buit maybe now that I'm not in elementary school anymore it caught my attention a bit more. It said: "Mejor que decir es hacer, Mejor que prometer es realizar" or translated "Better than to say is to do, better than to promise is to carry out."

Third, Here in Argentina English is "cool" - everybody here listens to songs in english too, and you can find english in random places (normally with terrible grammer) such as restaurants to describe food. One of the things that you see most though, are shirts with random english phrases written on them, lots of them long run on sentences, and as I said with terrible grammer. This week I saw one that probably made me laugh more than any other I have seen so far though  - it said "Are you gluen free", in all capital letters, no punctation, and with the word Gluten misspelled. It was entertaining.

Fourth, we also had another family home evening with a family, and as it was at night and we weren't going to make it back to the pench in time they gave us a ride in their car. The only problem is that the car is a two seater hatchback and I am 6' 2" (188cm) and my comp is 6' 3" (190cm). So, what ended up happening is that I, being the smaller, ended up sitting in the back cargo space, getting in through the hatch. For everyone that is family, it was like when we made trips together in the Kia. It was pretty fun haha.

Lastly, I had a Jehovah's Witness try and teach me and my comp and convince us that we were wrong, and so we got into a miniature bible bash for a couple verses before I realized that that wasn't the way to try and share the gospel as a missionary. They had just immediately started attacking our beliefs, being very hostile and neither of us were getting anywhere. It gave me more appreciation for what we do as missionaries though of our church; namely, sharing our message and then inviting people to act (read, pray, go to church, etc.) instead of just trying to prove them wrong. It really made me realize how much we really are here to try and help people, and I really enjoyed that.

Other than that though, I've just got a few more pictures and that's it:

1) We had a zone meeting this last Tuesday, so this is a photo of all of us in this Zone (This zone doesn't have sister missionaries). In the photo there are people from the USA, Brasil, San Salvador, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, and Chile. Pretty cool.

2) When we get more copies of the Book of Mormon to give out, they come in boxes of 36. We got a new box last week, and combined with the few we already had it made a total of 50. Thus, the photo is of 50 copies of the Book of Mormon. It's a lot haha.

3) My first dog bite in the mission - luckily it didn't get flesh. It was a German Shepard though that jumped high enough to get it's head pretty far out of the fench as I was walking down the sidewalk. I saw it and was able to jump to the side in time, but it still got a little bit of my sweater.

4&5) More Argentine food that I have found (and liked) - Smoked Deer flavored potato chips, and Mayo that was made with Olive oil and so has a slight taste of green olive. I haven't been eating as much Mayo as at the beginning of the mission, but with this who knows haha.

Other than that though, nothing new. Hope you all enjoyed the anecdotes. Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder McCollum

Thirty Three Weeks

Hello all! It suprises me how different missionary work can be from week to week (in a good way). I never know what to expect - last week we had the whole Cristina story that I shared and it seemed like a really long week, but this week it has flown by, but at the same time not a whole lot has happened. I don't really have any cool teaching stories, but I do have a few little anecdotes that I can share.

First, as of last Tuesday, Elder McDonald has now been my companion for more time than any other that I have had. I haven't ever had a companion for more than 1 transfer (6 weeks) and so the transfer that we had which was 7 weeks long (with Elder Wolfe) would have been the longest uintil now. We are heading into week three of this transfer now though, so that means we finished 8 weeks together and are going on 9. Just something kind of interesting.

Second, as we were walking I saw a saying painted above a school that I really liked. It's the kind of thing that you would expect to see, buit maybe now that I'm not in elementary school anymore it caught my attention a bit more. It said: "Mejor que decir es hacer, Mejor que prometer es realizar" or translated "Better than to say is to do, better than to promise is to carry out."

Third, Here in Argentina English is "cool" - everybody here listens to songs in english too, and you can find english in random places (normally with terrible grammer) such as restaurants to describe food. One of the things that you see most though, are shirts with random english phrases written on them, lots of them long run on sentences, and as I said with terrible grammer. This week I saw one that probably made me laugh more than any other I have seen so far though  - it said "Are you gluen free", in all capital letters, no punctation, and with the word Gluten misspelled. It was entertaining.

Fourth, we also had another family home evening with a family, and as it was at night and we weren't going to make it back to the pench in time they gave us a ride in their car. The only problem is that the car is a two seater hatchback and I am 6' 2" (188cm) and my comp is 6' 3" (190cm). So, what ended up happening is that I, being the smaller, ended up sitting in the back cargo space, getting in through the hatch. For everyone that is family, it was like when we made trips together in the Kia. It was pretty fun haha.

Lastly, I had a Jehovah's Witness try and teach me and my comp and convince us that we were wrong, and so we got into a miniature bible bash for a couple verses before I realized that that wasn't the way to try and share the gospel as a missionary. They had just immediately started attacking our beliefs, being very hostile and neither of us were getting anywhere. It gave me more appreciation for what we do as missionaries though of our church; namely, sharing our message and then inviting people to act (read, pray, go to church, etc.) instead of just trying to prove them wrong. It really made me realize how much we really are here to try and help people, and I really enjoyed that.

Other than that though, I've just got a few more pictures and that's it:

1) We had a zone meeting this last Tuesday, so this is a photo of all of us in this Zone (This zone doesn't have sister missionaries). In the photo there are people from the USA, Brasil, San Salvador, Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, and Chile. Pretty cool.

2) When we get more copies of the Book of Mormon to give out, they come in boxes of 36. We got a new box last week, and combined with the few we already had it made a total of 50. Thus, the photo is of 50 copies of the Book of Mormon. It's a lot haha.

3) My first dog bite in the mission - luckily it didn't get flesh. It was a German Shepard though that jumped high enough to get it's head pretty far out of the fench as I was walking down the sidewalk. I saw it and was able to jump to the side in time, but it still got a little bit of my sweater.

4&5) More Argentine food that I have found (and liked) - Smoked Deer flavored potato chips, and Mayo that was made with Olive oil and so has a slight taste of green olive. I haven't been eating as much Mayo as at the beginning of the mission, but with this who knows haha.

Other than that though, nothing new. Hope you all enjoyed the anecdotes. Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder McCollum

Thirty Two Weeks

Hello Everyone! This'll be a fairly short email because it has been a pretty easy going week, but at the same time it is pretty crazy the kind of things that can happen in such a short amount of time.

I've got two good stories, the first really funny, the other really awesome (at least as a missionary).

1) There is a member here that was put in charge of setting up a family history discovery day for this stake, where anybody, whether member or not can come and learn about family history and get some instruction in how to use the site the church puts out for free (familysearch.org) to do it on. To set it up though, he had to order some materials from the USA, and they arrived here but were in holding until he could information that he needed to go and collebit of information that he needed to go and collect them. The only problem was he couldn't speak english, and so he needed us to come to his house and help him out and act as a spanish translator for the call. Well it turns out that the materials came from BYU Print and Mail service, and a young college student answered the phone and that was who we had to translate to/from. It was very very weird to speak in English like that (especially with it being where I was studying before the mission) and I actually struggled a bit haha - I can speak english with my companion but I still mix in a bunch of spanish words, and speaking english with anyone that isn't a missionary now is kind of difficult haha. We got it all sorted out though and all is good.

2) So this week, we set a goal to try and contact a bunch of new people, to try and find a lot more people to teach. One of the people that we ended up contacting though happened to be going through some really hard times (she was 40 years old and living with her mom to help her with some health problems, but they weren't getting along whatsoever and she wanted out, but had nowhere to go). Well we ended up teaching her a little bit, about God and Jesus Christ and how they really know each and every one of us personally and want to help us with the problems that we are going through. We then introduced her as well to the Book of Mormon (another book of scripture like the bible, but written by ancient prophets here in the Americas, just like the bible was written by ancient prophets in Jerusalem), and taught her a little bit about what you can get out of reading the scriptures, both the Bible and the Book of Mormon and how you can find words of comfort and how there are stories inside that we can relate to our own lives to help us get through problems we are going through, and how we can learn more about God and Jesus Christ by reading them. We then left her with a chapter to read (leaving her a Book of Mormon), and taught her how to pray and continued on our way. Well about four days later, she sent us a message saying that she read the chapter we left her, then starting reading the Book from the title page, and had read all the way until 1 Nefi chapter 12, about 35 pages (of scripture, which isn't always super reading) and wanted us to come by again and teach her some more, thanking us for the uplift that we had given her. So we set up a date for the next morning and taught her with the Bishop's wife about how we came to have the Book of Mormon and the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth, and she asked a bunch of really good clarifying questions and was really intent in learning; she then committed to be baptized on the 3rd of September and said that she would come to church on Sunday. Saturday night then though, she sent us a message that her brother had cleared out a room for her to live in and so she had moved in with him and his family to get back on her feet, but that where he lived is about 30-40 minutes away from where me and my companion are assigned to work (this also was a pretty specifc answer to a prayer she said with us). So we are still in contact with her, but we will have to send her new address to the missionaries where she is at and they can continue teaching her. All of this in less than a week - it was a super cool experience and though I am kind of bummed that we probably won't be teaching her anymore, I am really glad that we were able to help her out as much as we did and give her the moral boost that we did. 

Other than that, there is not too much new here - as I said it has been a pretty tranquilo week so I didn't really have any photos to share, so I grabbed a couple this morning of some of my food. :)

1st, we have the sugar that I make my Mate with - I got a big laugh out of it because it is one of the most South American things I have seen - it is branded "Cristo" or Christ in english. Thought you all might enjoy it too.

2nd, all my flavors of Mate - I have three 500g bags of different flavors (Forest Fruits (berry), Wild herbs (mint), and Valley fruits (apple, pear, etc mixed together). They're all super tasty, but I have gotten to the point where I am drinking about 1 liter a day during the 2.5 hours of study time we have haha.

3rd, peanuts. I found a place where I can buy 1 kilo (2.2lbs) of raw, unshelled peanuts for about 30 pesos (about $2) so I got some last week, roasted them up in the oven, and have been enjoying them as my new snack food.

Hope all is going well for everyone though and that you all have a good week to come!

Love,
Elder McCollum

Thirty One Weeks

Hello everyone! I hope that all had a good week! This week has certainly been busy; we have been doing quite a bit of service and travelling but haven't spent a whole lot of time teaching if I am honest, but the teaching experiences that we did have were pretty awesome.

First, we had a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening in english, where a family sets one night apart a week to do something as a family, accompanied normally by a spiritual message) with the Familia Singh on last Monday, where they all got together (about 10 in total, with multiple generations) and had us visit. We played the game "Mafia" with them, which was super fun because none of them had ever played it before, and then we taught them about the Restoration of the Church and asked them if they knew anybody else that we could go teach to share the message with. They then gave us a pretty good list of names and so now we get to go around and visit them, so I am pretty excited for that. And then of course there was food -- we finished with about 8 homemade pizzas and brought more home with us as well. :)

We also did a Noche de Hogar with another family as well, and they invited a really good friend of theirs over who had a really good relationship built up with the old missionaries before they were both sent to different areas and so in that way we got to know him, share a scripture, and eat more pizza.

One of the funniest things as well that I saw this week happened when we tried to visit another family that knows the missionaries well, but seems to me didn't want to attend us at that moment. Argentines really don't like telling people no or that they aren't interested, and so they normally will say "pass by another moment" until they get sick of you pasing by and finally tell you. They are very passive in that way in general; they don't like confrontation. Well, we passed by this house and they had their huge front window open with Mate (an Argentine drink) as well dulce de leche and bread sitting out on the table, so we stopped and clapped the house (you clap instead of knock here). Well nobody answered, so we waited a few seconds and clapped again and then I saw the mom of the family crawling on the kitchen floor from one room to another to try and avoid being seen. It was pretty hilarious if I'm honest but we decided that maybe we should pass by in another moment.

As far as service goes, we got to paint the inner courtyard of a school one day, so that was actually super fun and took up the entire morning of that day to do. 

There is also a member in our ward who is blind that one day was moving a bunch of sand that they bought to use in the construction of their house and called us to help because his wife and daughter were out and so that was a nice little surprise service as well that was pretty fun to do.

Other than that, transfers are this monday but I will be staying in Libertad with Elder McDonald for this next transfer. That means that he will be my first companion that I have had for more than one transfer, and then after that I have no idea how it will end up, but that is six weeks in the future so we'll have to see then.

Other than that, there is nothing really new so until next week I hope everyone does well!

Love,

Elder McCollum

Description of photos (they are all of the painting service):

1) All the pink that you see in the first photo is all the part that I painted (as well as some of the white), in 3 coats.

2) Another part of the courtyard that some of the others were working on.

3) All of us that were painting together for a group photo.

4) My right arm (and watch) after we finished painting.

5) My right arm after taking my watch off. I found it amusing.

6) My missionary nametag with some of the paint splatter on it. I thought it looked pretty cool, but had to clean it off (I was also able to get the watch completely clean).