July 29, 2013

Quynn

7/29

This week has been really fun. On Thursday we went to the capital of this area, and we had interviews with our Mission Presidente, and he taught me a lot, and I really enjoyed my interview with him. I was able to have a really spiritual experience with him. This week me and my companion Elder Creer were praying to find a family, and we prayed to find out who we should go visit, and we were guided to find a family of 9 that is now listening to us, and yesterday one of the kids came to church. It`s been a little miracle for us, and we`re super excited. We are going to keep working with them a lot, and we`re going to try and get the whole family to come to church and everything. Another crazy thing was that yesterday in church the branch presidente stands up after sacrament meeting, and says, "now we will listen to Elder Allsup...." and I just kinda look up at him, and with a puzzled look on my face tapped my chest and gave him a little hint like "are you serious, i`m going to speak now?!" So I grabbed my scriptures and went up on the stand and gave a talk about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and how as members we can be better disciples, and I talked a lot about what the impact of an invitation can have on a person. There are many instances in teh scriptures of entire cities converted just by invitations. For example with Ammon as he converted the king, He just invited him to learn more about God, and the entire nation began to become converted. It turned out really good, and it was a pretty funny experience for my companion to watch. This last week was FREEZING cold. It got down to 3 degrees celsius, which with humidity is absolutely horrific, because coats and things don`t do anything. First time in my life that I honestly wasn`t able to sleep because of the cold. But it`s warming up now so it`s all good.  Plus the washing machine of our neighbor broke, so we`ve been washing everything by hand, which has been fun. I did it the first 8 months of my mission so ìt`s been fun to return. Just takes a while.  I want you to look up on the church website The Work of Salvation, it was a broadcast that went out like a month ago, it`s so AWESOME. Watch it PLEASE!!!! You`ll love it and it`ll help so much! And if you can please start praying for the Peralta family, and Matias Gomez too, that would be awesome, we need some miracles with them.  But thanks for everything, I love you all! Have a great week! Today my companion had to go to Resistencia for a new missionary training so i`m in divisions and we`re enjoying it a ton, it`s with another missionary that leaves here pretty soon, so it`s been fun to talk about all the mission long stuff. But Thanks 

July 15 2013

July 15

Wow, one of the best weeks of my whole mission. So many awesome things happened that I don`t even know where to start. Well, actually I do... At the beginning of the week we found a less active family - Los Corvalan. It`s a Dad of like 30 a mom of like 28, they aren`t married, but they`re both members, and they have 2 kids, Javier y Tiago, and Javier is 9 and isn`t baptized, so we found them, and we had a really awesome lesson with them and got them really excited to come to church and we offered to help them with everything and yesterday all 4 of them came to church and loved it! It really was an incredible experience, and they`re all really exctied. Our plan is to get Javier baptized in a week or two, and that will get them excited to get married, so that they stay active in the church and thigns as a family, and in a few horus we have a family night with them, where we invited some other members to come with us. On saturday our branch presidente asked us to give talks too, but we had no time to prepare, so literally as I was walking up to the pulpit yesterday in church to give my talk, I was still deciding what I was goign to speak on. But literally!! Haha so that was awesome, but to be honest I felt really good about it. I spoke on the Spirit and how he`s the third member of the godhead, and I spoke more about the doctrinal side of the spirit, what his role is and his purpose, and the members really seemed to like it, because it wasn`t so simple that they felt like they knew everything, but wasn`t so complex that they didn`t udnersdtand, and I had a few people actually want copies... So i`m not sure how i`m going to tell them that I didn`t really ahve a plan on what I was going to speak about haha. IT was also really awesome because we`ve been working a ton with the youth of the branch, adn after church we had 4 of them coming up to us asking when they can come with us! So that`s a huge blessing and we`re really trying to get them all excited with soem activities and just by being really cool with them. Just amaizng how the spirit works. But this last week we also were able to have 12 lessons with a member and 16 others, and we found 40 people, and 31 of which have baptismal dates...Which is one of the most successful weeks i`ve ever had. Probably one of the hardest weeks i`ve ever worked as well. It`s amazing here. I love it so much. Me and my son get along great and we work really well together. He`s learning really fast as well. Today I spent the last 5 hours DEEP cleaning the pension. IT`s been about 15 or so years that the pension has been cleaned, so you can imagine. I will send soem before and after pictures next week. I used so much bleach that my hands started to lose the first layer of skin. But it was such a great week.   This week I really was able to feel the spirit very strongly a few different times, and I want to let you know everyone that this really is the true gospel. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. There is NO way any man could have written the book of mormon. I know that he was called to restore the gospel, and I know that God really does listen to our prayers. I hope everyoen has great plans for their lives and that you are telling your plans to our heavenly father!! I love you all have a great week! There is so much more i`d love to tell you but I don`t have more time!

July 8 2013

July 8

First foto: me, my kid on my left, Elder Butta, and Elder Santoro

Second me and my kid with Presidente and Hermana Heyman

Third: Me with one of my absolute favorite families from my last area, they gave me a ton of stuff when I left

Fourth: Me and Guillermo and Viviana my converts the night before I left

Fifth: Me and A familily that gave me a cake and stuff for my birthday, the little girl even decorated the house and made a big banner and stuff for me, it was really cool

Sixth: Photo of our baptism of the family we reactivated and baptized the little girl

July 1, 2013

Hey Everyone! This week absolutely flew by. Last tuesday we had our zone meeting wtih the whole zone, and directly after we did divisions in a town about 2 hours away, and I was there for 2 days, then I came back and showered and me and Elder Butta had to directly go again to a different town about an hour away to do another baptismal interview, and then later in the week we did 2 more baptismal interviews. We had 5 baptisms in the zone this last week and for the month we hit 10 baptisms,a nd our goal was 9, so we are SUPER excited and we did awesome this month.  COming back from that little town an hour away, the car driver wanted to pick another passenger up to be able to make more money, so he bought a lawn chair and put it in the very very back, so my companion sat in a lawn chair on the way back, going 120 kilometros down the highway all the way home haha I`ve got a pictre I`ll send. It was hilarious. We also were able to have our baptism on friday, of hte little girl of the family that we were able to reactivate, and it turned out GREAT!!  I`ll have to send some pictures next week, I don`t have more time to upload them.  But my birthday was really awesome too. 3 Different families made us a cake and other desserts, and we ate a ton of food. It was crazy, but it was really awesome and really fun.  It was a great birthday weekend and it really helped to just have a great experience in the mission. The mission officially divided on this last friday, so we`re all pretty excited about that. Our mission is just flooding with new missionaries now and A TON of Hermanas. It`s pretty nuts how many we`re receiving every week now. But we have transfers tomorrow so we`ll see what happens. I`ve been here for 4 transfers, but we are still doing really well, so I could easily stay another transfer, so we`ll see! I`m really excited either way!  Today we also went to a really expensive empanada place to celebrate, and we tried 16 different types of empanadas. I`ll send you a picture but it`s definitly a MUST DO when we all come back here at the end of hte year. some of the best food i`ve ever eaten. I`m really excited about it. But we also gave talks yesterday in church about missionary work, and all the members started getting all excited to come hlep us and things, so this week we should be doing some awesome work. But I love you all, thanks for all the help and for everything you do. Thanks for the prayers and thigns. I`ll be sure to send a ton of pictures next week of all these things. Oh and another sad thing is we had to give our kid up for adoption. He left on wednesday and I was still in Divisions. so I didn`t get to say goodbye to him which was sad, but It`s okay. I love that little guy. But I love you all, thanks I hope you have a great week!!!

June 25, 2013

Hey Everyone, pretty crazy week, just like always as a Zone Leader. Our mission is splitting on this friday so it`s been crazy. We recieved even more elders and hermanas this week, and we actually got assigned to train one of them as zone leaders, which is like the first time ever! So that`s been awesome. His name is Elder Quispe from Peru, and he`s awesome, but i`m sad because they just called us like 5 minutes ago and we have to give him up for adoption tomorrow... meaning he`s leaving and the crappy part is, is right now i`m in divisions 2 hours away and I won`t be able to say goodbye to him, so i`m a little sad, but I sent a picture of us three, and next week I`ll send more of us 3. On sunday we made philly cheese steak empanadas, and seriously they were some of the best htings i`ve ever eaten in my life! I can`t wait to make them all for you. We took the great long loved argentine tradition of empanadas and gave it a good ole american twist and the outcome was fantastic. Me and my companion are doing great, and we are seeing a ton of success with the zone, so we`re really happy and doing awesome. This week I learned something really cool. I am loving so much my mission and I was actually a little sad to know it`s going to end in just a few months and I was a little down, but for some reason a few nights ago I just picked up my mini book of mormon in English and just began to read from Jacob and now i`m already almost done with Mosiah, and as I read Mosiah 4 for one of my studies, I really was very comforted to know that we can be just as happy as we are inthe mission, outside fo the mission if we just live th e gospel. I want everyone to just read Mosiah 4 and especially pay attention to verse 12 how it say the world ALWAYS two different times in how we`ll receive so many blessings as we live the principles of the gospel, I was able to feel the spirit and the confirmation of how it`s okay to finish the mission, but luckily i`ve still got a good chunk left and i`m super excited for it. Next week are transfers so we`ll see what happens! We`re all a little sad but really excited about hte mission split, especially me because my other two areas now pertain to the other mission which is a little hard, but it`s gonna be a huge blessing for this part of Argentina. I love you all, and I hope all is well!! Seeya next week!