Monday, August 15, 2016

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






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