Preaching Repentance Unto the People

Hey family,

 

So another week has come and go, and its still flippin hot here in tucuman.  also, the keyboard im using is missing the shift key, so look forward to punctuation and grammar that is even worse than usual haha nothing terribly spiritual has happened this week, of course we feel it all the time during lessons and stuff, but nothing like a wow! moment.  but were still working hard and trying to get us out of this dry spell of baptisms.....dry spells arent fun! we still have a lot of good prospective baptisms, but they all suck at coming to church and were doing everything we can to get them there, but were still struggling really hard. i think what we need is a little bit of a switch up, and im hopin either me or my comp are transferred out of this area.  the next transfer is the 19th of february, so its coming up quick! only 2 weeks. cross your fingers for me!

 

so about the really old lady named catalina.  last week, she was doing good, but shes kind of had some more bumps this week and wasnt feeling very good.  but were still gonna have faith that her and her whole family will be baptized so we have been reviewing the lessons with her. were hoping and praying for her!!!

 

there have been a few different novel experiences this week haha the first is we had lunch with a member this week and they live kind of far away from us, so we have to take a bus to their house every week.  well instead of just contacting like 1 or 2 people on the bus, we decided to get up in front of everyone and share a little something, and then pass by everyone in the bus and get their directions from them.  so i got up in front of the bus chuck full of people and start off by yelling ATTENTION everyone attention! haha so then i start going off and i felt like i was one of the prophets of old preaching repentance unto the people.  it was actually way fun and we got a few addresses from it.

 

2nd novel experience.  saturday in the morning, the four missionaries in my area, we all had to go to this little teeny pueblito thats about the equivalent of paris idaho.  there used to be a branch there, but the president died and after his death no one else got called and they all just kind of stopped going to church haha so one of the goals of the stake president here is to reactivate it so we can send another pair of missionaries there.  right now its kind of a gray zone that us four missionaries have to work on together.  but we went and its super teeny, and seriously like paris idaho.....except it has a lot of palm trees haha there is absolutely nothing there! but were gonna keep going back until we can start activating some people again.  so that will be a pretty cool experience i think.

 

3rd novel experience.  this week i think is the first week that weve had little kids throw rocks at us for no apparent reason.  and not pebbles, like freaking jagged rocks.  this little 10 year old kid almost drilled me in the head with one from across the street.  i was quite impressed with his arm strength to get that size of rock across the distance that he threw.

 

4th novel experience.  one of our investigators is confined to a hospital because hes had like 3 leg surgeries and it refuses to heal. but we gave him a blessing and now hes listening to us.  anyways, we went there the other day and they have to put a lot of blood in him cuz i guess he loses a lot or something.  but i dont know if the hospitals in the united states do this or not, but for every bag of blood that they put in you down here, you have to find a donor to replace it or they wont give you more.  so his wife like begged and begged us to donate blood for him, so thats what we did. me and my comp went and donated and i was terrified for my life because the medical system down here in argentina is absolutely horrid.  its all free, so it all sucks.  i was expecting like used equipment and stuff for donating blood, but it went good, and im pretty sure everything was sanitary.  missionaries have donated before without getting sick or dying so i figured im pretty safe haha but you have to have your DNI which is basically your documentation here in argentina to donate, and me and my comp have ours, but not elder lindsey.  we accidentally mentioned that he didnt have a DNI there in the offices and i guess the doctor was like interrogating him while me and my comp were donating about why he didnt have documentation and such.  so we almost got him deported! haha

 

5th novel experience.  me and my comp were super far away from the church, like a half an hours walk and the bishop called us and no one had filled the baptismal font for the ward baptism.  its not our responsibility to do that, so something went wrong with the ward that they didnt do it.  so anyways, he calls us and says he needs our help and we kind of basically had to do it, because he didnt have witnesses or anything for the baptism.  so we had to fill the font and we filled it in a record amount of time: 1 hour.  usually it takes 5.  not quite sure how it happened, but hey, looks like god was helping us out haha we were still kind of a little irritated because of his unorganization, we lost a lot of teaching time and lost a lot of lesson opportunities.

 

ive seen that ive changed a lot in a worldly aspect too.  last week we were in the bus terminal and there was a direcTV booth and the newest saw movie was playing.  me and elder lindsey were kind of idly watching from across the terminal and we both saw a girl get chopped in half.  before it probably wouldnt have bothered me and i would have just laughed and moved on.  and i still laughed, but then i felt like i was going to throw up for about a half and hour afterwards.  so i think its gonna be a shock adjusting to real life when i get back.

 

but yeah, i think thats about all thats happened this week, i forgot my little flash drive thing to upload more pictures, so youll have to wait until next week! hha but thanks for all your support, i love you guys! cant wait to hear from you next week!

 

con amor,

 

Elder Sirrine

Miracles Happen

Dear Family,

 

So i realized that what you said mom really is kind of true haha my letters keep getting shorter and shorter every week!  so i figured i wouldnt break the trend cuz this letter will probably be pretty short too.  We still havent found that one family with the kid that was seeing stuff, so thats super disappointing.  we managed to run into the dad one day and he said we probably wouldnt ever find everyone home at the same time like we found them the first time.  so that sucks!!!! but were gonna keep passing by and hopefully we can start teaching them again soon.  this week was really slow for us on the numbers side of things because we had so many meetings and service and stuff, so we didnt really do that great.  we didnt even find that many new people.

 

We did have the zone conference this week though, and that was absolutely awesome.  it was an all day thing and we talked about some good stuff.  the thing that probably stuck out to me the most was when we talked about how we as missionaries need to talk to everyone we can.  the presidents wife told us to start keeping count of all the people that we pass by without talking to them and putting in our agendas every day that we let X amount of people die because we didnt give them the opportunity for their salvation.  that kind of hit me hard.....so we are now talking with more people haha its still super hard because the majority of them are just going to tell us no, but we open our mouths anyways to give them the chance.  if we keep doing that, god is going to put his chosen children who are ready in front of us and we´ll be rollin in the baptisms! haha also, i got beckys package that day and it was free!!! so i was pretty happy haha tell her thanks for me!

 

 mom to answer your question, my spanish is coming along really well, i can basically understand everything that people say to me now.  and yes i can hold a conversation with them haha  but i did play the piano in church for a couple weeks, but the girl who was playing it before came back from vacations and is playing again.  its actually kind of a relief for me, because now i can sit with my investigators without having to worry about playing the hymn and prelude and stuff like that.  but now elder lindsey, the guy in my apartment, wants me to teach him to read sheet music, so im gonna start teaching him.  and dad, to answer yours, we have seen that thief guy again, but we havent taught him or anything.  now its kinda like we say hi to him and his minions in the street and they say hi back and tell us to come drink beer with them haha we told them we dont drink that, so theyve been offering us soda water lately.  and i have no idea if he went and killed that guy that one day, he never told us....im sure if he did, no one did anything about it because the police here in argentina basically do nothing.  weve walked past people who are smoking like marijuana in broad daylight and theres like pipes and spoons and stuff out and nothings happened with them haha the police are like super lazy and dont do anything.

 

but on to the good stuff thats happened this week. we went to the house of those 3 really old people last night, the one old lady that had a heart attack or whatever and shes doing so much better!!!! she can walk now and we actually have lessons with them and stuff, and we set a new baptismal date for all of them plus their other daughter who wasnt listening to us before.  so thats super exciting.  it looks like she had enough faith to recover!!!  we also went and gave a blessing at one of the hospitals yesterday and it was really cool.  the guy is super humble and him and his wife are going to start listening to us and when he gets better theyre gonna start coming to church. so we´ll see how that goes!

 

ummmm......im trying to see of what else to say.  i was gonna tell you about summer vacation here, which is going on right now.  not only do the kids have school off, but like half the businesses take the summer off too and the city is super empty.  its really weird.....the people of argentina are kind of lazy in general and theyll do anything to get work off, so of course they take the summer off with the kids too haha.

 

but yeah, i think thats all for this week!!! the picasa thing was being stupid this week and i couldnt upload like anything, so ill try again next week.  thanks for all the support you guys give me, and i hope to hear from you next week!!!  love and miss you all!!!

 

Con amor,

 

Elder Sirrine

Not Much Happening...

Dear Family,

 

So nothing terribly exciting has happened this week, so this letter will be kind of short haha, but we´re still just working hard, and finding a lot more new people to teach! The majority of our people are still coming from Suzana, my wife/grandma! haha i love that woman!  She couldnt come to church for like 3 weeks in a row, and the 4 of us missionaries here were are really worried that she was going to inactivate....but the last 2 weeks she has come to church, and both weeks brought more of our investigators with her, so shes still on track!  She also feeds us lunch a lot, and always has pop or some kind of food ready for us when we come to her house to have some lessons.

 

Those two awesome families that we found last week have been really hard to find this week and we´ve been kind of disappointed with that.  We had an appointment with both of them to follow up and neither of them were there.  The family with all the weird stuff happening in their house we havent even seen in the past week, and the other family, we went and the one girl Jhuana said that her mother in law said that she doesnt want to listen to us, because shes just not in the right mental state right now because her husband was killed 2 years ago.  But we found her yesterday afternoon and had another lesson with her and hopefully we´ll be able to continue teaching her.

 

As for your question about the temple, there isnt even a temple in our mission.  The nearest one is in like Uruguay or Paraguay or Buenos Aires, and there are some serious travels involved with that, so we wont be attending the temple during these 2 years.  But what ive heard is that during your mission you dont worry about the work for the dead, because youre on your mission to do the work for the living....so thats that i guess! haha  Youre girls camp idea to hike to the temple actually sounds really cool, are you gonna do baptisms at the end of it?  And are you gonna make them hike back up the canyon after? haha cuz that would suck!!!

 

Soccer has been really fun, we got to play again on Friday night with all the kids from the neighborhoods in our area.  I decided i was gonna go out and attack the ball instead of defending like i usually do and i made 3 goals!!! i was pretty pumped haha  but yeah, last week, when i hit that car so freakin hard my comp busted up laughing and ran around yelling ¨gringo power!¨ in english and thought it was just hilarious.  he thought it was even funnier when the other gringo kicked it over the fence and managed to hit the police chief in the leg pretty hard....they had to go beg for the ball back, and both me and the other gringo were banished to the goals because we kick too hard haha and yes my comp is pretty good, he used to play on like a semi pro league back in peru or something?  so hes supposed to be pretty dang good.

but yeah, nothing much has really happened this week, ill let you know when it does!!! thanks for all the love and support and i hope to hear from you all soon!!!  love you!!!

 

Con amor,

 

Elder Sirrine

Every Catholic...

Dear family,

 

So the work here is finally starting to pick up again!  I love when we actually have people to go and talk to.....right now, we have so many in the one half of our area that its hard to get to them all in one night.  But we have found 2 families this week that are just ready for it.  We had lessons with both of them and they both went awesome.  The one was with the Rocha Family and there son hung out with the missionaries all the time when they lived in Buenos Aires, but never got baptized.  So we talked to his wife, his mom, and his moms best friend, and theyre really interested.  They all accepted a baptismal date the other day, and hopefully we can get them there!  The mom, Rosa, is a super strong woman and is interested mainly because her husband was killed 2 years ago, and when we started talking about the plan of salvacion and how she could see him again, she got super interested.  The second family we found this week, the mom mariana actually contacted us in the street, because her son ismael is having problems.  Before school got out, he kept seeing like this little child spirit thing with red eyes at the school that would call to him and be like ismael, lets go play!  but he kept seeing it and it scared him, and so he absolutely refused to go to school.  but he also hears a sheep making noise in his ear almost every night and wont sleep with the lights off....says he can like feel its presence there or something.  but we taught him and his whole family, there are 5, and they all accepted a baptismal date too!  we blessed their house, and told them if stuff keeps happening with him, well give him a blessing next time.

 

But yeah, were just working hard, and i dont really have that much more to say about what happened during the week....i do have some more weird stuff here in Argentina though.  They eat eggs with absolutely everything here.  the pizza is usually cheese with crumbles of boiled egg....and it actually tastes really good! haha also on sandwiches, empanadas....whatever! also, when i left on the mission, i thought it would be kind of hard to convince people that joseph smith saw god and jesus christ.....but what happens more often than not is we are teaching catholics and we tell them that happened, and theyre always like, oh that has happened to me on multiple occasions, and its just the most wonderful experience ever! every catholic here has seen god, jesus, and the virgin mary, and more often than not for some reason, theyre crying blood.  if thats not demonic, i dont know what is....but apparently its a beautiful experience.  freakin crazy!

 

We also got to play soccer this morning with another district and it was way fun!!!  we absolutely destroyed them! haha  but turns out i really am just the giant clumsy white kid who just power houses it.....i kicked it so hard this morning cuz i was right in front of the goal and was bound and determined to make this goal.  so i kick it, and its at just the right angle where it sails over the church fence, goes across the street and just hits this car parked in front of a couple police officers so freaking hard.  i kicked it so hard, that the car alarm went off, but not only that, the ball rebounded off the car, flew like 50 feet back across the street, over the fence, and landed in our court again. the people just looked at us and were like hey! calm it down a little bit!  i was kind of embarassed.....but yeah, thats been my week! not too eventful, but way good!  miss you guys and cant wait to hear from you soon! love you!

 

Con Amor,

 

Elder Sirrine

Im Still Here....in Tucuman.....with my same comp haha‏

Dear Family,

 

So another week, more stories! haha its been fun this week, but the work still is kinda sucking really bad....we went to centro the other day, the part of our area that is like downtown tucuman and we were just contacting old investigators, knocking doors, and just doing everything we could to get more people in centro.  We ended up walking almost 70 freaking city blocks....and had 1 lesson the entire freaking day!!! i was super mad, and a little disappointed.  but ive decided that everything from this week and the weeks before have been leading up to the whole subject of patience.  we had a district meeting this week and we decided we were all going to study the attribute of chirst patience because our whole district has been having difficulties lately.  so i studied it the other day for like almost an hour and it was so awesome!!!! its helped me so much and i think its probly changed my mission.  patience is basically bearing all the sucky stuff, knowing that if you keep doing your part, working hard, not giving up, and making yourself be happy even though life isnt the greatest right now, that God WILL provide you with success, and that all this crappy stuff that is happening right now will all be worth it.  so that has made me a TON happier, cuz i know that while we are having difficulties right now, lots of investigators are missing appointments, losing interest, and we cant teach to many lessons, i know that it will all pay off soon and ill have lots more happy moments in the future! and also, i set a goal this week that i will stop counting down the days till the next big event in my life, whether it be p-day, transfers, or when im gonna receive letters, cuz all that distracts me and im trying to live a week ahead of my life.  so now im trying to just enjoy the moment and not think so much about the future, and involve myself more in the work right now!  so this week has been pretty good in regards to my personal progress, whereas the progress of my investigators it kinda sucks haha

 

So the other day we were at susanas house ( my ¨wife¨) and we were talking to her waiting for maria to come over so we could teach her.  well we waited for a while, and then someone started screaming that she had passed out and then susana was yelling at us to run and go help, and so we took off running to her house.  shes a very big woman, and were pretty sure the heat mixed with her body mass basically just overheated her and thats why she passed out.  but we got her to wake up a little bit and we had to move her to a different room.  well my comp just ended up watching and not doing anything while me and this 12 year old stick of a girl tried supporting this 400 pound woman into the other room.  luckily she didnt pass out again or i think guadalupe would have been done for haha  but this same lady has a little 5 year old kid that causes a ridiculous amount of problems and the other day he got a lighter somewhere and lit the house of a neighbor on fire....long story short, maria is going back to buenos aires like this week with her kids and we just lost our next 2 baptisms.....but shes going to get baptized there, so its all good!

 

We had to fast the other day for the monthly fast, and it is the worst thing ever down here in the heat when we walk so much!!! i hate fasting! my sacrifice better have helped my investigators out, because it took everything i possibly had to restrain myself from drinking a glass of juice that an investigator put in front of me during a lesson.  hopefully the heat isnt as intense the next time, cuz we could probably become dehydrated.

 

Also, i was going to answer one of your questions you asked.  after baptism, we do continue visiting those converts, for basically their first year as a member.  there are certain lessons that we have to teach them after baptism, like what temples are for, eternal marriage, family history, a bunch of stuff like that.  we always encourage them to come to church with us and stuff like, and try to have lunch in their houses too so they have a lot of contact with us still.

 

We had transfers yesterday, and nothing happened here in my area.  im staying here, my comp is staying here, and the other 2 elders in my apartment are staying here too.  im not gonna lie i was a little bit disappointed that i dont have a new comp, cuz i was waiting for someone to come who is a little more competent who can really show me how things should be done.  but when i found out that both of us would be staying, i got a renewed feeling of just wanting to work even harder to make up for my comps social retardedness.  so this is gonna be a good transfer :)

 

i also found out some weird crap that my comp believes this week too.  he was telling me about this stuff that happened in peru and i thought that it was just stories....turns out he actually believes that its true.  the first one is about a little town in peru where supposedly if a husband cheats on his wife, or vice versa, they turn into like half mules.  then when the townspeople wake up in the morning, they see this half mule person and then they know that this person is an adulterer and they kill them!  the second one is about this river in peru and i guess a pink dolphin lives in this river.  if you walk close by this river, your best friend, or lover, or whoever comes up to you and starts talking to you (this person is the pink dolphin transformed) they talk to you for a while and then they say hey lets go fishing! and this dolphin takes you to the river, drags you in with him, and youre never seen again.  he told me that its gotta be true because a lot of people have disappeared in that area, so that proves this pink dolphin thing is real.  the last one was he told us about a news article in a newspaper in peru where apparently this guy was going flying around with this jetpack and slicing peoples faces off and taking their intestines....he was dead serious about all of this.  its freaking hilarious! haha

 

so yeah, thats about it for this week, tell chad and megan sirrine to write me again, theyre slacking! haha also i received demi huntsmans wedding invite today, so if you see laurie, tell her i am sending the letter to demi tomorrow! haha i did read all of the scriptures for the 12 days of christmas, and im still wondering how you found all of them....and let me know how mitt romney is doing! all the members down here have been telling us stuff about him.  apparently hes doin pretty good?  but yeah, thats all, hope to hear from you guys next week!  neccia, tanner, and susan, write me a dearelder or email!  love you all!

 

Con amor,

 

Elder Sirrine

Christmas Eve Photos

Christmas Eve dinner on the balcony!!  Pizza, sparkling cider and a new soccer jersey!!

I'm a father....kind of.....

Dear family,

 

So this last week has been pretty alright.  Parties and fiestas absolutely suck for missionary work, so im not the biggest fan of christmas and the new year here.  So hopefully the work will pick back up again and we can start baptizing more people! haha And speaking of baptisms, mom, we only have had 4 so far, so fix that calendar! haha

 

Im sure youre wondering what the whole subject line was about....well there was this elder in our district who got randomly transferred to the offices and his old companion ended up being companions with a mini missionary, or a kid who is only serving the mission for 2 weeks to learn and stuff. Well we were going to do divisions with this companionship, and this mini missionary ended up coming to my area with me for 2 days.  he hadnt even been to the mtc or anything, so he knew like nothing.  but anyways, i was basically senior comp and trainer for those 2 days and it was a really good experience.  it kind of showed me that if i absolutely had to, i could probly be senior comp....but there is no way i want it that quick.  way too much responsibility. 

 

So nothing super spiritual has happened this week, and i just of kind of random stuff to write about.  we went to this one guys house and were pretty sure he was on drugs.  hes super cool, but he started telling us about these dreams that he has been having lately, and that theyre just full of blood.  he told us one where he stabbed his girlfriend a lot, and the other one where he woke up inside of his dream and there was like this giant black baby in between him and his girlfriend.  anyways, this black baby thing started screaming and attacked him and i think he said he threw it against the wall, and then stabbed it a lot too....then he proceeded to tell us how there is like an evil presence in his house that him and his family have felt for forever. we told him we could bless the house and it would go away, and he told us he didnt want us to do that just yet, cuz he wanted to see if something would happen with this spirit.  i told him he was stupid and the next time we come were gonna bless it anyway.  oh, and it just so happened that on the way to his house, we saw another 2 people get robbed, so that was cool i guess.

 

we also had our pension revised this week by a senior missionary couple.  they kind of destroyed us.  the pension was super clean, we cleaned it so deep the monday before.  but they told us some stuff that ive never even thought of.  and we found out where the cockroaches in our pension come from too.  so were gonna get that fixed, and they told us we need to have someone fumigate our pension.

 

so some of the weird things from argentina.  the men here have like no shame and are super lewd.  whenever they see an attractive girl, you can hear like the entire street whistling at her.  and im not even kidding, like the entire street.  also, lots of shirts here are from the united states.  we see a lot of university shirts and stuff like that for colleges.  i think the funniest one ive seen is this dude was wearing a DARE shirt and was walking down the street smoking....me and elder lindsey had a good laugh at that.

 

also, sarah dastrup sent me and invitation for her wedding! haha i thought that was really thoughtful of her.  if you see her, tell her i sent a letter to her and jake today. 

 

last thing....scripture for the week!!! im definitely gonna follow this scripture haha its 1 Cor. 9:19-23  it basically says be one with the people so they like you and will convert to the gospel for you.  so when i come back, i will be argentinian!!!  and this morning, we watched the restoration video in our apartment and we were changing the languages a lot just to see if we could understand.  we changed it to portugeuse, italian, and french.  i could understand a little bit of portugeuse, almost all of italian, and nothing of french.  so im learning portugeuse and italian after the mish! haha

 

but yeah, thats all for this week.  so have a good week, and i will talk to you all next week!!! love you all!!

 

Con amor,

 

Elder Sirrine