Week 36: Leah Searle Put Me In Tears

Hey Guys!

Wow.  What a Week.

First off, the week started well, cause I got my first real goal playing with Latins in soccer, and yes, I was extremely proud of myself, even though I still cannot play for my life.  

Second, we had a miracle this week too.  We got a gas leak in the pension, and for some reason, the gas detector did not sense it, and never went off.  By a miracle, we ran out of gas, right when we got the leak, so it didn't just flood the pension while we were asleep.  We are protected!

On Tuesday, we were able to go with a member to visit some investigators, and we went to visit Antonela.  When we showed up, she wasn't there, but Hermano Nieto was (the nearly deaf guy) and he invited us in.  Apparently he drinks, so we started teaching the word of wisdom.  He wasn't accepting it, and making a lot of excuses.  Our member, since he is an RM, knows a few things in English.  He just straight said ¨He is drunk¨ in English, and Hermano Nieto didn't even notice haha.  

Then, Antonela came, and we had an awesome lesson with her.  The sprit was strong, and, becuase she knows very little of religion, we asked her to pray to know if God existed, and she said she would.  We went back the next day and she was super happy, and she told us that she got an answer to her prayers, and that she felt really happy.  That was a really great blessing for us to hear, and it lifted us up a lot.  However, she then told us that her parents told her that she cannot be baptized, and that she might be moving soon, so that was quite disappointing, but we are trying to figure out a way to fix the situation.  

Anyways, this week I had a couple of really hard days.  I dont know why, but I just felt depressed, and it was difficult to find it, but I just kept studying and praying to bring the Spirit into my life.  I decided to read some of the letters that people sent me for my birthday, and I had been praying to know if Heavenly Father is proud of me as a missionary.  As I read the letters, I pulled out one from Leah Searle that said ¨You are already doing a great job.¨ 

That destroyed me.  I felt the spirit strong and it comforted me a lot.  The Lord really does look out for us and cares for each one of us.  

Finally, last night it got cold, rainy, and windy.  Like super cold haha.  We also have a lot of dirt roads so that makes it fun with the mud.  We rode really really long and far and we were filthy and cold and wet, and so stinking happy too.  Doesn't really make sense, but it was so fun haha.  Unfortunately, none of our contacts had pity on our condition, so we stayed in the cold haha.  It was fun nonetheless.

Anyways, this week was crazy, hard, long, great, spiritual, and everything you can think of haha.  We ended with 6 new investigators and we have a golden reference that we are trying to contact!

Funny

We were riding in the car of a member on Saturday, and he hit a speed bump pretty fast, and since they are all short, it was no problem for them, however, im really tall, so I slammed my head on the roof (they have small cars here) and everyone else laughed haha

Had a couple of dogs come after me this week, and the first one, I just lazily tossed a rock at him and it popped him in the face with a nice POP, and he ran away haha

Did it again with a huge German sheppard that came after me.  It was a small rock and didn't affect him.  Just made him mad.  That was scary haha.

We got to do divisions with some young men during the Mini MTC thing here.  I was street contacting with a young man, and we saw an old man´s hands hanging outside his front gate, so we went to go talk to him.  As soon as he saw us, he skee dattled out of there, and hid in his house, looking through his window like 3 ft from us.  We just sat there and waved for a few seconds, while he just looked at us TERRIFIED, and then he escaped.  I would have loved to read his mind right then.

Love you all!

Elder Conover


When in Argentina, do what Argentines do...and burn your trash!

WOOOOO FOR GAS LEAKS IN THE HOUSE!

We had ridden really far this day, so i just laid

on the ground and ate my milk and cookies while

I rested. haha

When your companion has really really bad bed head!

Thank you Leah!!

We got dirty last night.

Yaaaayyyyy for wet everything hahahaha

My feet were way cold so i put them in a bucket of hot water haha

I made some stir fry, and it was actually way good.

This woman comes a couple times a week and just fills up her

bucket with our spicket, and says hi to us when she does it hahaha

When you have to wash all clothes in a bucket,

the sock smell test becomes a very common thing.

good ol siemens and duewag

Week 35: I Had To Follow Mission Rules And Protect My Companion

Hello Everyone!

Hopefully you all had a great week.  This week was kinda strange again, but we got some good success at the end!

Probably the best news of the whole week:  WE HAVE NEW BIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They are the best bikes in the entire mission, and they are super nice, with shocks and everything.  We have been SO blessed.

Second big news, is that Elder Long got a special transfer, so he left, and it is just Elder Sorenson and I kickin it in Colonia Bombal.

Anyways, got to go to the hospital another two times this week, and one of them was finally for me!  It is about time haha.

On Pday, we were playing soccer, and Elder Sorenson and Elder Williams kicked each other, and Elder Sorenson took it pretty bad and messed up his foot, so we sat in the pension for a few hours and went to the hospital on tuesday to get it X-Rayed.  Luckily, he is OK.  

On Wednesday, we were getting ready to leave, and I decided to pray specifically that we would be able to see a miracle in the day.

  Later on, we were riding, and we passed a house that we pass all the time, but I just felt like we should stop.  I had a little battle in my head saying that we could pass by the next day or whatnot, but the Spirit finally won and we went over to the house.

  Right when we got there, the mom and the kids got home, who are super nice, and explained that they know a member of the church, who they just love!  They are christians, and some of them are practicing, but they said we can come back this next week!

This week we also got to teach a less active woman, named Hermana Villegas who has not gone to church in 8 months, and has no way to get to church because she is about 80 and has a hard time moving around.  We had a great time reading the scriptures to her, and then we worked with the ward mission leader to get someone to pick her up before church to take her, and she came!  Then, during sunday school, they talked about the same chapter in the Book of Mormon that we had been reading with her.  The smile and joy on her face were priceless.  She then asked us to please keep coming by and to ¨not abandon her.¨ It was a great experience and we were blessed to be a part of it.  

On Friday, we had interviews, which were perfect, and I basically got the PERFECT counsel that I could have, and it made me feel so good, and then when we got back to the pension, I was in our garage and I ran into a little rusty pole, which really hurt, and the nurse told me to go to the hospital to get another Tetnus shot.  Oh so fun.  And then I cut my finger pretty bad the next day.  Woo!

Anyways, to finish off the week, we were blessed with 4 awesome new investigators from 2 different families.  The Lord really blessed us so much this last week, and we are getting ready for a long, hard, AWESOME, tiring week of work, so we can bring this area back to life after about a month of not being in the area.  

Funny: 

First off, let me present one of the rules in the missionary manuel: 

¨Be aware that you have a responsibility to protect your companion from physical and spiritual danger.  If you do not fulfill this responsibility and your companion engages in serious misconduct, you may be subject to Church disiplinary action¨ (Page 32).

Now that we have that established, I'm gonna talk about what happened yesterday. 

We were riding to a far area, and we have noticed there is a posse of dogs at one house that HATES us and always comes after us.  This time, I came prepared with a handful of good sized rocks.  As we passed the house, Elder Sorenson was leading, and the leader dog went after him, and Elder Sorenson was trying to fight him off.  I, remembering the above stated rule from the mission manuel, came flying in like a valient knight on my trusty steed, ammo in hand, and oh so skillfully pasted that dog with a rock, forcing a nice squeal from his vocal cords as we made our get away.

But oh, that is not all......we taught our lesson, and then we had to return.

As we came back, I made sure I still had rocks, and I whistled as we rode to make sure the dogs didn't come on us out of no where.   As we approached, the posse came out in full force, but this time, a HUGE dog that was not there before led the pack, straight at me.  I took my aim, and fired, beaning the dog, and got a pretty good yelp, and made it stumble a little, which allowed me to make my get away.  Unfortunately, I was in a low gear, so my feet moved quickly, and my bike not so much....so I popped it into gear and barely got away with the dog right behind me, trying to kill me! Haha

Love you all!

Elder Conover

Me and Flaca

This is Maria....she bought us hot dogs in the 

bus terminal....and no, we did not know her.

When the members make you food just cause. 

Dat tough guy missionary bike squad doh´

The Ammo!

New bikes!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lion King

When your comp is down and out.

I wrote this on the bus window this morning

Super ugly dog we found

I ran into a small metal pole thingy

The pole

When my finger decided to go crazy and bleed all over

Apparently 1 star is something to be proud of

Week 34: Come to Know God Better This Week

Hey Guys!

Another week here in Colonia Bombal, and unfortunately, we did not have bikes again, so the work was a little bit (really) difficult, but we still got to teach one lesson, which was good.  However, the week was a lot of personal growing if anything.  

We had to go to the hospital a couple of times this week (I keep on breaking my companions) and had to spend the night in the office Elders´ pension, but luckily we got to go work with some missionaries in a nearby area, and we did a TON of door knocking, and received a lot of rejection.  One man came out and got mad at me and stormed off saying that he hates religion.  I felt bad for him, and I wanted to figure out why he hates religion, so I went back to his house to ask him, and he got really mad at me and yelled at me.  Fun Stuff.

Then, we got another guy who cussed us out in English and told us that our prophet conspires with the goverment to do barbaric things.  It was an interesting conversation.  

In the offices, the Elders there told us that we won't get bikes for another week, which means another week of basically no work.  That really frustrated me since because of everything that has happened, I have only been able to work one full week in the last 6 weeks.  So, we called the zone leaders and we worked in their area for a couple days, and they assigned us to knock doors in the richer areas, so we got a TON of rejection haha.  

We knocked doors for a while, and no one wanted anything.  After about 2 hours or so, it started raining really hard, so we took cover under an over hanging roof.  I noticed a woman inside the kitchen in the restaurant we were next to, and I had a clever little way to get teach her come to my mind.  I begged her to let us in to ¨wait out the storm¨ but really to teach haha.  She said she couldn't, but as we left, she called to us to come back in, and we got to talk for a while and she accepted a Book of Mormon, so we are hoping that that turns out!

While in the offices, we had a lot of time to read, and I decided to read the Liahona.  Something about me:  I am a self-critical perfectionist, and I am driven really hard by myself, and if I fall short of my own expectations, I feel like a failure.  It's something that the Lord is trying to pound out of me in the mission.  When I opened the Liahona, I found a talk by Elder Garret Gong, called ¨Becoming Perfect in Christ¨ No joke, this talk put me in tears.  It was literally written just for me and it made me feel so much better.  The Lord truly knows us each personally.

Finally, we did get to teach Antonela again this week, and sadly she hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon, but we had a great lesson with her about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The lesson was way good, with a strong spirit, and at the end, Antonela committed to prepare herself to be baptized on May 7th.  We were so excited and just ran around outside after that lesson haha.  The Lord is so good when we work hard.  

Funny:

Something I hate when knocking doors are intercom doorbells.  They never talk to you when they hear you are missionaries.  We found a few houses with intercoms, and I had an idea.  I grabbed a dead leaf, and when they answered on the intercom, I rolled the leaf around in my hand next to the microphone to make them think it was statc. It failed miserably haha.  They could hear me just fine and they still rejected me

Another intercom story:  Someone with an intercom just asked me who I was, and I just responded: Elder Conover.  They got extremely confused, and asked again, and I responded, Elder Conover!.  We got rejected again.  I need to think of new ways to contact intercom houses.  

After knocking doors for like 3 hrs, and getting rejected everytime, we got rejected again, and Elder Long suddenly started strutting away, and broke out in ¨and another one bites the dust¨ and after that, we did that after every rejection.  

When we went to the doctor for Elder Long, the doctor gave him a treatment to help him with his problem.  His only advice was essentially just break the Law of Chastity #onlyinsouthamerica

We ate dinner with some members this week, and they pulled out some Ají peppers.  (hot peppers).  Argentines cannot handle spicy foods at all, so we just chowed down eating straight chile peppers.  Suddenly, we were dying.  Three gringos sitting in the house of some members, dying of spicy mouth, crying, red-faced, begging for milk.  It was hilarious for the members and they were laughing really hard haha.

I love you guys!

Elder Conover

I am convinced that my area is like the most beautiful 

area in the whole world.

Door knocking in the rain!!!!

Rain in the area means lots and lots of mud!

The Trio Selfie

Strange exercise equipment we found.

There weren't enough beds so I got to sleep on the tile floor.
I will never ever complain about sleeping on the couch or on
carpet haha

I found this is the zone leaders´ pension.....they 

are latins so they didn't even know what is was 

and they gave it to me!

We are so poor that ramen is kinda expensive 

for us to buy hahahaha

The empajor.  They are so bad for you but so 

good haha

We all shaved our legs last night just cause and 

elder sorenson shaved stripes into his legs.  

Yes, he still has it like that hahaha

Week 33: El Trio

Hey Guys!

I hope that you all had a great week, and that you all especially enjoyed conference.  I know that I did!

First off, on Tuesday, we went to the bus terminal for transfers.  Elder Hollis waited really long to pack up, so we were sprinting to the bus hoping he wouldn't drive away haha.  Literally up to the LAST second haha, but then we went to the bus terminal and Elder Hollis left with his new comp, and I got my two new companions....Elder Long from Florida and Elder Sorenson from Logan, Utah.  Elder Long has six weeks more than me and Elder Sorenson has six weeks less than me.  

Anyways, last week I mentioned that the new bikes broke again, so this entire week we didn't have bikes, but it was OK, the Lord definitely blessed my feelings so much to not get stressed out by it.

On Wednesday, we were walking in an area, trying to get to another barrio.  A woman that we didn't know called to us, and come to find out, she is a less active woman, and she has been wanting us to pass by her house, but we didn't know her, but we just happened to walk by.  It was definitely a miracle and the Lord guided us.  We had a spirit filled lesson with her that really lifted us all.  

This week, with the lack of bikes, we also had to go to the hospital again, so this week has been very strange as well.  I think that if there is any lesson that the Lord has been trying to teach me in this area is patience.  This area is considered one of the best in the entire mission, but it just seems like every week there is something huge like hospital, changing companions, broken bikes, etc. that prevents us from working at all.  At first, it KILLED me, and I always felt so stressed, but the Lord has grown me and helped me to be more patient, waiting for the results to come from his hands, while we do all in our strength to work hard.

Despite the hinderences, the Lord blessed us with an amazing lesson.  We passed by Antonela´s, who is the 17 year old girl we are teaching.  She works in the house of some members, taking care of them, because the woman is blind and the man is almost deaf, and we usually teach in their house.  

When we showed up, we were disappointed to find out that she was not there in that moment.  However, the woman told us that she had been reading the Book of Mormon, so we were super excited for that haha.  

We then gave the couple blessings of health, and right then, Antonela walked in.  Literally perfect timing to feel the spirit.  We then sat down with her and gave a lesson about the Book of Mormon and how to get an answer from God about it's divinity.  She ended the meeting with a prayer, and it was amazing, and the spirit was so strong.  As soon as we left I ran and did a nice little heel click out of excitement haha.  

Finally, Conference was amazing.  We got to watch all 5 sessions, such a blessing, especially since it was in English.  We got to watch all of them live, and we left the priesthood session at almost 11:00 at night haha.  Fun time difference.  I was especially touched by Elder Oaks´ talk about opposition and Elder Holland´s talk at the end.  Both were amazing answers to prayer and I am convinced that they were written for me.  The Lord really knows each of us personally.

Funny

When the Hermana Nieto (the blind woman who Antonela takes care of)  told us that Antonela was reading the Book of Mormon, we all started fist pumping and like freaking out hahaha.  It was definitely one of those ¨you have to be a missionary to get it moments¨

When we were in the offices I heard the following conversation.

Elder 1: ¨I miss baseball¨

Elder 2: ¨I miss sports¨

Elder 3: ¨I miss girls¨ 

#yougottabeamissionarytoknow

We were riding the bus yesterday, and Elder Long was standing next to me, but behind.  A few minutes later, I looked out of the corner of my eye, and there was a girl really close to my comp with her head on his shoulder, like kissing his neck I think.  This, of course, terrified me, and I took a better look, and Elder Long had sat down without me seeing, and a couple had taken his spot next to me #yougottabeamissionarytoknow

I love you guys and hope you have an amazing week!

Elder Conover

We had a woman give us each a GIANT pomegrante.....

benefits of being in a farm area.

Elder Sorenson and Elder Long

Elder Hollis and I with his Oh so sexy hat haha

Yes, i am amazed by the sunsets in my area haha

I was tired haha

The Maipu Zone!

¨Cuidado con los perro¨ (Beware of the dog)

oh so terrifying

Please be grateful for washing machines.  I wash my clothing 

in a sink with a brush.  And, this week we ran out of soap.  

Having dirty clothes and no soap is not fun haha.

That moment when you see your aunt on general conference from Argentina!

the ¨gringo room in conference¨

Got a card from my mommy!

Elder Matthews and Elder Vosti

Dat Trio Doh

Elder Moody and Elder Sorenson