10/29/13

Thank You to all that are and have been reading Quynn's mission blog.  We are going to get him next Tuesday and pick him up from the mission home on Tuesday the 7th.

For all of you that would like to come, his homecoming is November 24th at 11:00 am
13700 S 6400 W at the stake center.

Please read his last entry as it is his last "work week"!

And to all you missionary  moms...two years does come to an end!

10/28/13

Pretty eventful week! 

On wednesday we got a text message from the family that was going to get baptized last week and it said that the mom had gotten in a fight and didn`t want us to come back or anything to do with the church... so that was a pretty crappy thing, but we went on Friday after she had calmed down, and after she had rejected us for that day and thursday as well, and we had one of the most intense lessons i`ve ever had in my mission. The spirit was so strong as we both testified, and really looked for what she needed to hear, and it was so intense how the spirit popped into our heads exactly what she needed. It was incredible and a huge experience for me and Elder Escorcia. It was cool because in conference I remember Uchtdorfs talk about how sometimes we need to just look people in the eye and tell them that they CAN do things. So that popped into my head instantly after she was done explaining herself, and after I said that she started to bawl.. It was so awesome... They came to church yesterday the three of them and they`re going to be baptized this nextcoming saturday.. On saturday we had 5 baptisms of the Familia Santander!!!!!!! Man they are so incredible!! I^ll try to upload some pictures. We also had so many members participate that it was an amazing turn out. The entire family came and also many investigators.  We had 7 people yesterday in church as well, so we`re hoping to have another 3-6 baptims this coming saturday if we can work well enough with them.  We were 11 people walking to church yesterday it was awesome. It was like a parade of people. But here in Argentina it`s required to vote so there were a ton of poeple going to vote and it was funny how they all looked at us in our suits walking through the mud.  I also did a baptismal interview for a lesbian this week, which was pretty awesome to tell the truth. To watch someone go through somethign so difficult in their life, but through our Savior she was able to change completely and now is going to be baptized.  We did divisions a lot this week too which was fun, but i`ve got like 1000 mosquito bites because it`s been so humid.  Something funny this week was on tuesday night we were walking back to our pensh, and a girl without a lot of clothes passed us as we all passed a group of teenage punks that were howling and whisling at her, and as we passed, I looked at the kids and said "ah, Gracias!" (as if they were whisling at me) and then all the kids started laughing their heads off at the one who was yelling and whisling the most and they were like "ahh gay gay!!" laughing at their friend haha, it was awesome.  But I am super stoked for this week, we`re gonna just kill it! My last working week here in the mission... I never thought it`d come... But we have 22 new missionaries coming to the mission this wendesday and 22 the next wednesday  so it`s gonna be SUPER hectic for all the zone leaders getting their missionaries where they need to be, so please pray for all of us and for the familia Santander and the familia Ayala! I love you all thank you so much! 

10/21/13

Hey I don`t have anymore time today, but i`ll just recap really quick because we had a ton of zone leader things to do, but just know that WE CAN DO HARD THINGS!!! IT`S POSSIBLE!!! Phillipians 4¨13. just do hard things!

The Familia Santander is doing great, and we were able to have 2 more baptisms this last week, so that was really exciting! The two little kids are 9 and 10 and i`ll send pics next week. They asked when their placks would arrive to start working with us in the street haha. I love them so much they`re awesome. Their mom is now coming to church as well, which is awesome so we just gotta get them married and baptize their dad as well!  The other day I fell runnign because of all the mud in the morning, so my hand is all messed up but it`s all good.  I`m letting my comp feel a litlte more heat of being a zone leader, so that`s been a lot of fun to watch him progress.  Yesterday they invited us to an asado and I eat just a rediculous amount... they just kept serving and serving and serving, and the asado here is just pure pure pure meat. It was awesome but a lot of food... haha, but it was really cool because here it`s a big deal the person that gets to cut the meat, and the dad just looks at me, and gives me the knife and says "corte usted" which was awesome.  Its a huge honer to be able to cut the meat after it`s done cooking, so that was really cool.. Other than that we expect quite a few more baptisms this weekend so please pray for Alejandra, Milagros, Juan, Natalia, Yamil, Estefanìa, and Cinthia!! They all have a baptismal date for this weekend and they`ve all been to church and are super excited, so please pray for them! I love you all thank for everything!! I`m doig great! It`s getting super hot here, so start getting prepared mom and dad!

10/14/13

This week we had zone leader councel on monday, tuesday we had our zone training to train our missionaries, and wednesday for a huge lack of sleep since saturday night not getting sleep from the priesthood meeting and having to wake up at 3 am on monday to travel to Resistencia I think my body was just needing a break, and Wednesday I got a bad fever and it was really humid and muggy from all the rain, so that was rough being in the pension, but I feel great now and doing great again.  I`m finishing the new testament right now and i`m super amazed with how many attributes i`m finding of a true disciple of Jesus Christ, and i`m writing them all down. I`ve also been really surprised with how many times it mentions the importance of believing.  I am putting it into practicfe because a little earlier in my mission I put a really high goal for baptisms to have by the time I finished, and I am really close, and with the people we have right now I know we can hit it, so i`m doing my very best, thanks for your prayers! Somethign important I learned this week was to help others.... Romans 15:1-2. and nothing separates us from the love of our Heavenly Father Romans 8:38-39 , some of my favorite scripts now.  On saturday we had to paint the pension getting ready for the elders to move and today we spent our whole p-day helping the sister missionaries move into their new pension, which is in a members house right acrosst he street from us. It was  alittle rough using our whole day for them but i know it`s worth it... We are finally in our pension good now, and we cleaned like crazy. Bleaching everything and painting, and it`s super nice now. Just like new and it`s really gonna help be more tranquilo and have the spirit more.  We found the Familia Ayala this week, and they came to church along with the others that are gonna get baptized this next weekend, so we are expecting some more baptisms!!! Tons of rain this week... Muddier than goodness, but it`s been fun.  The other day we had to cancel our lunch to take the sisters some boots and the elders umbrellas because they didn`t have any, so i`m learning a lot of humility and not being frustrated with things that happen, so it`s been a great lesson. Thanks for all you do and I hope you have a great week!!

10/8/13

This was a good week.. but absolutely nuts.... We had 2 baptisms! But it was crazy because the kid the whole week kept saying no, yes, no, yes, no, and then like 1 day before his baptism decided to get baptized, so we went to his house to do the interview, and the freaking kid left town for the night! So that was nuts, and we had to do the interview right before the baptism... that was a little crazy, but an adventure.  The familia Santander is doing really good, they are really excited and we`ve been able to help them decide to get married, we just gotta help with the paperwork now to get married! So that`ll be fun. COnference was pretty good!! It was really rought beause we had to run around going from the stake center to our area a half hour away and we had to worry about the zone and their investigators, so it wasn`t the most enjoyable thing every due to that. But it was really good. I was able to watch in english too which was good.  Tatiana is doing well, the girl that got baptized last week. She gave us like 10 references to her friends so that is awesome, we`re super excited for that. Yesterday I had my last zone leader councel in Resistencia which was really good, but sad as well. I had to say goodbye to a lot of really good elders and hermanas that I probably won`t see again... so that was rough. It was really cool though to have the very best numbers out of all the zones. that hadn`t ever happened to me yet, so that was really cool to go out with a bang! We were super stoked about that. We are doing really well, and i`m already out of time so i`ll have to say the rest next week, but thanks for everything. Please pray for la familia santander and dayana y daniela y gustavo y matias. These are the people that are progressing right now, so we`re really excited and we hope to have some more baptisms this next week! i love you all thanks for evreything!! 

Sept 30, 2013

Just to give you an update on what the mission is like for me right now... It`s getting really hot, but it`s been raining quite a bit lately, so luckily the true heat hasn`t gotten to us. I`m in an area that`s a little poorer, so we eat a lot of noodles, with chicken or meat, but it`s super good anyways. I love the food here. I live with 3 columbians so that`s pretty exciting. My area isn`t huge, it`s actually the smallest of all my areas, so we don`t walk AS much, but we still walk a ton, and we`re always on the move. My companion is Elder Escorcia, and we are currently in a ward, not a branch like almost all my other areas. The members are really awesoem, and they help us a ton, and are super willing to do anything. The zone is doing really well. Right now we are really pushing to be the best zone in the mission, and we`ve got councel this monday so we`ll see if our numbers are hitting our goal! We just wanna kill it. Health wise i`m doing good! We are running again in the morning, because the other elder I live with also likes to run, so i`m running every morning about 25 minutes, and that`s helping a lot to keep the stress levels down. But i`m enjoying the heck out of the mission now. I love being able to see progress in our area, and in the zone. That`s the hardest thing i`ve seen being a zone leader, is that it`s already difficult running your own area, and when they give you 5 other areas to look after on top of that it gets a little hectic, but I absolutely love it. There is ALWAYS something to do. The other day an elder forgot his documents when he went to renew his visa, so we had to run around finding a scanner and stuff, on saturday one area had an emergency baptism, so we had to travel to do their baptismal interview, also last week one of the sister missionaries got pretty sick, so we had to travel and give her a blessing, just things like that, plus divisions weekly with the elders... It`s awesome! Each night we call all the areas and verify with them and figure out what we can do and give them some thigns to help them out. It was a little wierd calling Sister missionaries at first, but it`s normal now. It felt wrong, like I was sinning by talking to them haha, but it`s all good now, I love everything and i`m just doing great! Anything else you`d like to know?   Love you all!

Hey Everyone. Pretty awesome week. Started off a little rough because my companion from Mexico got sent to Resistencia, and we were like best friends, so that was really hard, but I got a new companion that`s from Columbia! I actually already knew him from Villa Angela. His name is Elder Escorcia. He was working in the other part of the city so we saw eachother all the time. He`s SUPER calm and I haven`t heard him raise his voice even one time, not even being excited haha, but he`s awesome. Which means now I live with 3 columbians, and there is another columbian Sister in our Zone, that goes to our ward, and her companion is from the United States, from Sandy, but her mom is from Columbia and her dad is from Guatemala, so she`s pretty much Latina and also columbian... So my life is pretty much columbianified right now! It`s pretty fun. But I can`t believe i`m starting my last transfer. It doesn`t seem real.  This week was super successful for us. It started off last monday after P`day, we found a family that lives right next door to Tatiana, our investigator, who GOT BAPTIZED on Saturday! It was so aweosme. I don`t know if i`ve told you about her, but we found her about 3 weeks ago, by asking people if there was anyone they knew that had just ahd a baby, and three different people guided us to her house, so we went and she`s 18, and we were in divisions actually with another kid from California, so i`m pretty sure she only let us sit down because we both had blue and green eyes, and she was pretty stunned, (we call those types of girls snakes) but anyways she had a billion problems in her life, and she has changed completely. Before in her life, she did drugs, drank, was with a different guy each day, and her family is a wreck, but since we`ve taught her in teh last 3 weeks, she`s stopped smoking, stopped drinking, stopped drugs, and she actually had to leave her boyfriend, who she had been with for a few years already, all to get baptized.... She`s so freaking sick! We couldn`t believe how much she had changed, and she was so excited to get baptized. she even went against her family because they didn`t want her to get bapitized. With ALL the odds in the world going against her, she did was the Lord asked, and she`s going to be sooo blessed, and I am so surprised by her example.  

This week was awesome, We did 5 different baptismal interviews, with some of the coolest people ever, and we were able to find some of the coolest people ever too. On saturday we found 2 more families, and yesterday in church we had 12 investigators! I couldn`t believe it. We were super blessed. And on top of that it was sprinkling rain, and when it even looks like its going to rain here in Argentina, nobody does ANYTHING. Everyone just stays in their house, because there is so much mud, so we truly saw miracles this week.  Laura and her kid are progressing amazingly and she has already comitted strongly to be baptized this weekend. We went to her house two days ago, did all the baptismal interview questions, and we finished and she said... chicos... I`m ready to be baptized! Wow how awesome is that! The spirit is so powerful. That`s the biggest thing i`ve learned this week. I have also been reading a lot in acts, when the spirit for the first time in the world began to work like it does now a days, and it`s amazing to see how the apostles were able to have to much success just because of the spirit. I think truly as far as numbers go, they probable converted more poeple than Jesus Christ because of the strength of the spirit. I am so amazed each time.  One of the famlies we found on Saturday is the Family Santander, and we found them by pure miracle, and we sat down, got to know them really well, and said they`d like to go to church, but they live SUPER far, so we were a little worried, but we woke up super early yesterday and passed by each of our investigators and families, and at the end went by them, and we arrived to the boyfriend of the mom, which we hadn`t even met yet, and he said, "what do you guys need?"    "We`re just here to go to church with the family, we met them yesterday and they said they`d go to church with us....."             "oh, okay let me get them" and he left, and then the little girl invited us in, and each of them were still sleeping, one of the little girls had gotten a little sick, and they said "sorry we`re not going to be able to go today" and the only thing I could think of was to say "oh, but we actually already called a taxi, and it`s on it`s way, so just get ready" and as it was coming out I thought... we didn`t call a taxi? And the mom just said "oh, serious? okay... get ready kids!" and even the dad got ready and they all came! All seven of us crammed into a TINY little car and went to church ahhaha. But we visited them last night to see how they liked church, we get there, she invites us into her house, which nobody ever does here, and she said, yeah me and my boyfriend already want to get married to get baptized, and we want all our kids to get baptized too, also, would you like to come eat with us next sunday?.......... WHAT?! How sick is that?! THey are super humble, with a tiny little house, but they`re so awesome I already love them.. I really really really hope they keep progressing. So we`re super excited for them!! Please pray for each of them. The other family we have is the family Monzòn. and they are two girls, Diana, and Daniela, and they are SUPER intelligent. Yesterday they LOVED church, and Diana the older one that`s 13 asks us "Did sin exist before we came to earth?" What 13 year old thinks of a question like that?? They are both super awesome, super excited and everything. But we`re super blessed, and we wouldn`t have been able to see any of this if it weren`t for a miracle. Please pray for each of them and we are going to be working super hard and diligently to help as many of them as we can. I have a big goal for my last transfer, and I know that i`m going to be able to hit it if we just keep working as hard as we can. I don`t know that i`ve ever worked as hard as I am right now, with our area and with the zone as well, so we`re super excited and super ready to just kill it this transfer.  I`m going down swinging like crazy!! This next week we`ve got Zone Leader Councel, so i`ll write you on Tuesday, and a member promised to make us cow tongue, so that`s gonna be cool. But please keep them in your prayers (Laura, Manuel, Sofia, The Familia Santander, The Familia Monzòn, The Familia Franco, and Edgardo, and Nico), and I`m so thankful for each of you. I love you all, have a great week!