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).