Hello everyone!
This has been a really good week, nice and full of lots of stuff but somehow easy-going at the same time.
First of all, the area:
This week was really awesome working in our area, we were able to find a lot of cool new people to teach and I had the chance to meet some people that my companions found while I was doing something else for the offices. Our area is awesome and I really love it. Some things that happened this week (in no particular order):
We have a couple investigators that have been coming to church for a long time now named Graciela and Armando (an older couple, with Graciela blind). Well this Sunday Armando turned 68 and so the day before (Saturday) he invited us over and made an Asado to share with us. It was super tasty and had chorizo sausage, blood sausage, a couple nice large portions of meet, potato salad, and various other things. It was pretty awesome (and very tasty) and a really cool moment to be able to share with them. They can't get baptized at the moment because Armando still needs to get a divorce worked out with his ex-wife who now lives in the states in order to be able to get married to Graciela, but we are hoping that things can get sorted out when his ex-wife plans on visiting Argentina at the end of the year.
Another person that was super generous with us is a man named Juan. He is perhaps one of the most humble persons that I have met (humble of heart that is), and super awesome. While visiting with him, he was explaining to us how his wife was in Santiago del Estero (another part of Argentina) helping to get a farm set up to help people with drug problems be able to recover and leave their addictions behind. He said that he wanted us to go there for a couple weeks to be able to teach all the people there and that he would even pay all our travel and lodging to do so (after saving up the funds). We had to explain with him that we couldn´t, but we had a really awesome visit with him all the same. As we were finishing up too then, he stepped into the other room of his house (it was literally just a bedroom and a kitchen) and came back with a scarf that he gifted to me since he saw my companions were both wearing one but I wasn't. I was blown back and said that I was just fine, and that I actually had a scarf but just hadn't worn it but he insisted all the same and so now I have a new tan scarf to wear everywhere. He said the next time we come, he will prepare us something to eat too and it just amazed me how generous he really is.
Lastly, we were visiting with Cristian and his family on Saturday, and two more of his cousins showed up to listen to us too, making the grand total 6 youth that we are teaching in his house, now from age 8-18 with most of them 13-15. It was super awesome, and it kind of blew my mind as I looked around and there were 9 of us there together (including my companions and I) in a lesson. It was more people than I had ever taught at one given time before, but it's an experience I won't forget. What was even more incredible is that the 8 year old girl that was there also understood everything perfectly and was able to teach it all back to everyone else too as we went over it again real quick as we finished up. Everyone was left amazed, but that too was a really awesome experience to just see the simple and pure understanding that comes from a small child.
Oh, and also we contacted a poet on the street one day that started reciting ballads to us there on the corner. It was pretty interesting, but he said that we could come by and visit him later and so we will see how that goes.
As far as office stuff goes, there was a lot that happened this week but somehow it seems to have gone by really quick and seems to have happened weeks ago. Mixed in with everything, we had transfers, a meeting for all the leaders in the mission that we had to help out with, as well as all of our normal things that we have to do. Perhaps the most fun thing though was driving out to the very farthest point of our mission that still has missionaries on Friday, and in the process going through my first area that I hadn't seen since I had left last year.
What happened though is that there were a couple of missionaries that were sick and so had to stay a couple days after the meeting for missionary leaders to recover. We had to take them back to their area though (Bragado), which was about 3 hours away in car, and so we took advantage of the trip to drop of some copies of their apartment keys to the sister missionaries right next to my first area (Chivilcoy) (they had them robbed while traveling) and take new bikes to 9 de Julio. If you can believe it, the old bikes they had were much much worse than the bike that I had. I don't even quite know how they were using them. After all that then, we got to drive all the way back. We left at 9:30 in the morning and with stops, eating, unloading bikes, and everything we ended up back at the offices at 8:30 at night. It was a fun trip. Included are photos:
Photos:
1709 - The first view we got of entering Chivilcoy for the first time in almost exactly a year. :)
1714 - The main plaza of Chivilcoy.
1717 - Also the main plaz of Chivilcoy.
1723 - The group of us that went out. Elder Huber (up front) is the one that was sick, and Elder Millett (the blonde one in the back) was his comp. We dropped them off in their area and then just Elder Venecia and I came back. It was fun though, because both of them had also been office Elders in the past (Elder Millett was an office Elder when I got to the mission).
1724 - A flooded out field/river turned into a lake that was on the highway there. It was pretty. If you look closely, you can see just the top of the fence sticking out above the water.
1731 - A weasel skin (complete with feet and nose and eyes) that Elder Huber found in the pench upon arrival (it was there before hanging up as decoration, just that he was new to the pench). He promptly put it on as a fancy scarf and posed for a good picture. Elder Venecia decided to join in with the picture too.
-Map of the drive, 530 kilometers (330 miles). We got about halfway out into the actual province, so that was a lot of fun.
Other than that though, there isn't all that much new that has happened this week. These coming weeks should come to be even a little more crazy though as we have transfers again and get a new mission president, so there will surely be some fun stories to follow. Love you all and hope you have a good week though!
Love,
Elder McCollum
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