Soiled Soldiers Club

Hey fam,

So its been another week, and time is flying by even faster it seems
like haha last week was good, but had its disappointments as well.
But overall, good :) And happy birthday dad!!!! How óld are you now?
First of all, before i start, i just wanted to ask some questions.
Can you get on facebook for me and find out Whitney Holdings address?
shes a girl i worked with down at college.  also, do we have a few
volumes of the history of the church in the house? and can you look at
how much articles of faith by james e talmage costs? those books are
cited a lot in all the stuff that we talk about, and i would be
interested in reading them when i get back.

This last week was freaking COLD.  It wouldnt be that bad if argentina
knew what a ventilation system for houses was, but that doesnt exist
here, so we have to close ourselves in our bedrooms with crappy little
electric heaters to avoid dying of cold.  And the mornings suck even
worse haha It got so cold some of the nights, that all 4 of us moved
into one room, closed the door, and turned the heater on full blast,
and we managed to keep the room warm haha but it looks as of now that
the cold wave is over and this week is going to be hot again.

I dont think i mentioned this, but our ward here recently started
doing something called Noche de Barrio, or Ward Night.  Its basically
family home evening, but its for the whole ward so that we can get
everyone more united and involved together.  Its also an awesome
activity for our investigators to come to.  Were doing it every
Wednesday night now at 7.

Also, we talked with the evangelical guy again last week, and he has
some doubts.....but they are super stupid doubts. The first one is hy
we use the baptismal prayer that we use.  He thinks we should baptise
just in the name of Jesus Christ, because thats supposedly what it
says in Acts 2:38.  He told us if we went to israel right now and
tried baptizing in the name of the father, son, and the holy ghost we
would get stoned by the people of israel.  but if we went there and
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, they would be completely fine.
Me and my comp almost busted up laughing, because first of all, Jews
dont believe in Jesus, nor do they believe in the doctrine of baptism.
So we would all just gét stoned to death there for tring to baptize.
but his other doubts are why we use wine instead of water in the
sacrament, and he said its not a real church unless we wash each
others feet in church like jesus did with his apostles.  he told us he
wont believe us unless we convince him why we use the baptismal prayer
we do......were gonna tell him to pray about joseph smith, cuz thats
the real issue at hand.  ill tell you how it goes.

We started teaching Silvina, our recent convert anahis mom.  shes the
last member of her family who isnt baptized and shes finally decided
that its time for her to start coming to church and join.  shes super
interested and fulfilling all of her committments, like reading,
praying and whatnot, so i think shes a baptism for sure, here in the
next few weeks.  im really excited to keep teaching her and completing
their family.

We also decided to go back to anabels house last week, cuz we havent
passed by for almost a month.  we actually managed to find her, and i
think we may have got her back. and her daughter ariadna recently
turned 8, so now we can baptize her as well! i really hope that we can
get her to church and to baptism.  were also teaching anabels mom, ana
maria, so ill keep you guys updated on them.

Turns out that Alejandro did not get baptized last weekend.  We had
everything scheduled and ready and then we called him Friday at night
and asked him how he was for the baptism the next day.  He told us
that he had a soccer game and that he wasnt going to be able to get
baptized......we were pissed.  apparently we fodged in something,
because he didnt understand that his baptism was more important than a
freaking soccer game.  and he didnt come to church on sunday either,
so i think were going to wait until next week to baptize him.  Also,
Juana and Fabiana, our potential baptisms for this week, both fodged
us and didnt come to church either.  So i was quite pissed off Sunday
in the morning.

All that anger, i kindly let off in a controlled way during sacrament
meeting, because it just so happened to be missionary sunday, and i
just so happened to go first.  I dont remember if last week i told you
how me and my comp left church just absolutely pissed off because
everyone there is absolutely irreverent and its kind of a madhouse
during sacrament meeting? well anyways, my talk was on reverence haha
and i dropped CANE on that ward.  and they totally listened!
afterwards, everyone was quiet and you could actually feel the spirit
in there.  i basically told them they suck at reverence and made them
feel bad, and then gave them the vision of what church could be if we
were all just a little quieter and tried controlling our kids.  they
were all actually listening attentatively.  afterwards in ward
council, we talked about what we can do to help those families who
have trouble controlling their little kids and whatnot, and we came up
with the idea that the primary is now going to supply coloring sheets
and colored pencils so kids are coloring quietly instead of running
around and playing with little cars or whatever.  i really hope next
week sees improvement.

so i saved the best, least spiritual part for last haha here in
argentina you never know when the food is going to hit you wrong, and
it just does it at unexpected times.  theres also a thing among
missionaries called the soiled soldiers club, and i almost joined it
last wednesday after lunch.  we left the house, and all of a sudden i
just had like the biggest bowel movement and had to go to the bathroom
desperately bad.  it was like a 15 minute walk back to the pension,
and we went as fast as we could.  i was holdin on like crazy, and of
course my comp just thought it was hilarious, and so he was thinking
up every single funny thing he could think of to try and make me laugh
and lose control of my bowels.  he almost succeeded like four times in
making me poop on the way back to the pension.  i wanted to kill him.
but my superior control over my bodily functions ended up winning, and
we made it safely to the pension.  so i still have not joined the
soiled soldiers club :)

But yeah, thats about it for now! thanks for writing me and hope to
hear from you all soon! love ya!

Con amor,

Elder Sirrine