Hey everyone! this week was really great. we have 20 new investigators, and we´ve got 8 baptismal dates lined up, so hopefully all goes well and those happen. i´ve learned a lot this week, and i´ve got a lot of cool stories, hopefully i have enough time to get to all of them!
i´m actually in the placita right now, which is the big city of posadas, and it´s really cool here. there is a mall here that is exactly like south towne mall, and i couldn´t beleive how much i felt at home. it was kinda nice to feel at home for a little bit, because i absolutely love it here, but it´s pretty different.
last monday night i tried helado (icecream) for the first time, and it was amazing. it´s much creamier, and has a lot more pure sugar here, so it´s pretty awesome. that night we watched the joseph smith story with a family investigator that we found from a reference the other week, and i felt the spirit stronger than ever before about joseph smith. in that moment in that kitchen (which was nice to go inside because all our lessons are outside) i knew joseph smith was a prophet. i knew that he really saw heavenly father and jesus and they told him he was going to re establish the gospel of christ. i know he had that experience, and i know that the book of mormon was translated by him. it was a really spiritual, and amazing experience for me.
i also started to feel love for the investigators that night. because before, sure, i liked the people, and wanted them to get baptized, but i hadn´t loved them until that. i hadn´t wanted them to change their lives yet, and i shared (in my broken castellano) my feelings about my family. and how important it is to be with our families, and i know they felt the spirit. it was really cool.
wednesday we were walking to a visit, and just like any other day it was super hot, and i was sweating like crazy, but as we were crossing the street, we came upon a house that we were passing, i looked at the house number, and saw the last name of the family, and i felt something. it was kinda wierd, and i didn´t really know what it was... so we kept walking.... but after about 20 steps i couldn´t stop thinking that we needed to go back, and what if that family had been waiting for years to hear the gospel? but i didn´t want to say anything because i felt a little embarrased and we were already late for a lesson, but i told elder taylor that we needed to go back to that house. as we are walking back to the hosue i´m getting nervous for some reason, i was nervous that maybe it wasn´t the spirit or something, but we clapped, adn the lady came out, and she accepted us to start teaching.
she has 11 kids (which here, the average is probably close to 8 to 10 kids because the government gives you money if you have a lot) she told us she´d been visiting with the jehovas witnesses for about a year now, and she seemed willing to listen to us. so we gave her the first lesson, and the spirit was there. i know it was. and at the end of the lesson, i invited her to be baptized, and she accepted. it was a really powerful moment, and i know the spirit directed me to do it. so we are going to go back tomorrow because there wasn´t an earlier time she could have us back, but i feel like she´s ready, which would be great beacuse our ward doen´st have a lot of priesthood holders right now that are young, and shes got a lot of kids. it was the first time i had ever felt the spirit direct me somewhere, and it was something really special. i have always heard about those kind of experiences happening to people, but for some reason never really expected it to ever happen to me this early on. it taught me a lot of things, 1 that we need to be listening to the spirit in order to hear it, and 2 we have to act or else the spirit isn´t going to keep whispering.
thursday we had the tremendous opportunity to go to a members house, it was really really messy and dirty, and we got to eat..... chicken liver! hooray! out in the hot sun, and with bugs and yuck. it was just a rough situation. ugh i was gagging every single bite, and it´s really rude not to eat at least like 2 plates of food here, so i´m praying that i don´t puke all over this table, and the worst part, was i went to take a drink of my first drink, which is water, with tons of dirt in it becasue they put some leaf in it because i guess the man has heart problems or something, so that was bad, then i had some warm grapefruit juice to drink after that. it was the worst meal i´ve ever had in my life, and i still think they are going to be some long term consequences. all 4 elders got kinda sick afterwards. so we decided to fast after that meal so our bodies could get it out of our systems hahaha. the fast was actually really good though. it was my first 24 hour fast, which surprisingly i never got hungry or thirsty. usually we´re dying of thirst but i was just fine.
every morning after we exercise we shower and get ready, and every morning i love waking up, doing those, and after showering i get to put on my garments and clothes, and it´s cool because it literally feels like the armor of god. especially after i put on my badge. i feel protected, and i feel really blessed to be able to be one of god´s soldiers. (i´m sure tance is going to go find a badge down stairs and put it on and pretend to be a missionary now and go out in the back yard and pretend to preach with his book of mormon) hahaha
yesterday we had some really good experiences also, we ate lunch at a members house after sacrament, and their baby wasn´t wearing a diaper, and crapped all over the mom´s lap. it was all green, and chunky and nasty, and it didn´t help we were eating green noodles with meat and potatoes. and we were in this tiny little shack so the smell was awful, but it was hilarious. last night though we found a lady who saw us walking the other day, and was going to ask us to come visit, but she was too timid, and last nigth we were directed to find her, and she´s got like 10 kids too, and she´s so ready. we also invited her to be baptized, we are just praying she´s ready. it´s been really cool this week to have those experiences guided by the spirit.
at church all the little kids want to sit by us, which is fun haha thye´re so much fun. and i love talking to them because i can usually understand them. but it´s fun teasing them and things. i don´t have much more time, i hope all the stories made sense! i love all the emails, thanks for everyone´s support and fun stories, sorry i don´t have time to reply to them. i found out if you send a letter to this address, it will get to me
elder quynton trent allsup
mision argentina resistencia
entre rios 435
3500 resistencia, chaco
argentina
i hope all is well, i love you all so much, thanks for everything, i´m doing great! i´m going to upload some photo0s, hope they work! keep praying and reading, seeya next week.
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