Elder Morley Haley Santa Fe Argentina Mission: First Baptism

Kind of a crazy busy week, I’ll try to get all the stuff in.

Tuesday

We had another lesson with Mario. We are trying to teach him all the Commandments again after his baptism. Then we bought some soap for me and a toothbrush and paste for Emiliano because he has a toothache or something and we wanted to help. We also bought Carnela, or cinnamon for our breakfasts this week. We tried making french toast. With the help of the Hermanas in our district, we were able to do it. For the first day or two, we didn’t have anything to put on the toast. So later in the week, we went to a hippie herbal store and bought some peanut butter. The ingredients say that its mostly made out of different grasses and weird stuff, but it tastes pretty dang close to the real thing, so it will work. That night, we had a lesson with Emiliano. We had contact with him every day leading up to Saturday.

Wednesday

In the morning, we tried contacting people and finding new people to teach. We got a few people´s contact information, but nothing much other than that. Lunch was with HNA Palota. She is a really sweet lady and loves to make fun of Elder Mamani because he is Chilan. I just wish I could understand the Spanish, because she goes on rants about Chile and I don’t understand any of it. I just laugh and smile because I’m sure it was really funny. We taught Alma and her family again. Alma commited to being baptized this coming Saturday! So that’s awesome! We had another short lesson with Emiliano and met with his parents for a little bit to get their permission for Emiliano´s baptism this last Saturday! They were okay with it and so we were set. That day, we also met with a member family who has a daughter around Alma´s age and asked her to help us with Alma so when she is baptized, she has a friend. She said she would help!

Thursday

Thursday didn’t have much for us. We went into the plaza here in town, which is kind of the downtown or middle of the city. It has tall buildings, stores and clothes shops and other things. So its pretty crazy at times. We bought some paper for a goal calender for Alma. We used a few different colors of paper to make a calender with different goals such as "read the book of mormon" or "pray". We also bought some smiley face stickers for her to mark when she does each thing every day. I’ll try to get a picture of the one we make this week for a different Investigator. That night, we met with Emiliano and his family again to get more information for his baptism. He was very excited the entire week and had plenty of questions for us.

Friday

In the morning, we looked for new investigators from a list of previous investigators and other contacts. Again, not much success, but we found one lady who had gone inactive after she was diagnosed with cancer. She said that its just hard for her to get to church because her body can’t handle riding her bike the whole way across town. We told her that we hoped to see her at church this week and if she can’t make it, that we understood. That night, we taught a lady named Adriana. She was so ready to hear what we had to teach her. Her father was LDS but she never went. Her two children live with her, both are in their 20’s. I think she just wants a better life for them and to be a better example for them. We challenged her to be baptized on the 3rd of February. So with her, we will have 3 baptisms in a row. Emiliano this past week, Alma this week, and Adriana after that. We also want to get another one of our Investigators to get baptized, but she isn’t keeping her commitments, yet.

Saturday.

Saturday was all about Emiliano´s baptism. We did some teaching in the morning, but the rest of the day was dedicated to the baptism. We got to the church and started filling the baptismal font, set up chairs, cleaned some stuff, and studied in the church while we waited for the font to fill. We picked up Emiliano around 6:30 and headed to the church. The baptism was great. Members that were able to make it showed up and helped welcome Emiliano. Alma also attented, and she said that it made her excited for her own baptism. So it was amazing!

Sunday.

We confirmed Emiliano and he was really happy. The rest of the Branch welcomed and congratulated him as well. Elder Mamani and I spoke during sacrament meeting also. I spoke on the Atonement and used scriptures from Alma 26 about how repentence gives us joy and Luke 9:62 about how we can’t look back on our sins after we repent. Let me explain the branch real quick. We have a really small branch with about 25 people who attend every week. We have a lot more members, but a lot of them are inactive. So we try to work a lot with the inactive members and get them to church, while also looking for investigators and helping them prepare for baptism. We had lunch with a really nice member couple.

So this week, I studied in the first few chapters of Alma. Good golly are they powerful. I love chapter 5 and how strongly Alma speaks about repentence. It reminds me of how I need to never wait to repent. I also love in later chapters how he reminds me of my duty as a missionary and how to best serve the people with love, charity, and kindness.

The food that we usually have for lunches with members is called Malinesas. I think thats how it is spelled. It’s basically like country fried chicken from back home. I like it a lot. The thing they do different here is they don’t have much potatoes, and when they do, it’s never mashed potatoes. So on the malinesas, they love to have mayonaise. The mayo they buy here has some lemon juice in it. I love it a lot. Of course, we drink tang and soda with everything.

Oh yeah, the freaking perros (dogs) here. They are flipping everywhere. Strays and domestic alike. Everyone has dogs because they are all afraid of being robbed, but they are usually nice. There has only been one that I’ve been scared of, and it lives by the church so we see it every week. But other than that, the perros just hang out and scavenge for food. If they ever get close to you, you just yell "Fuela!" which is like "go away" and they usually leave. But the way Argentine´s say it, it sounds like "Juela!" with an H sound. Its one of my favorite things to say.

Elder Mamani is awesome. Yes, there is a siesta, the town basically shuts down. I don’t know how to make tortillas yet, but I’m hoping to get the recipe from Elder Rivera, who is from Mexico. The leather scripture cases I want are from a guy and Elder Rivera has his information, along with a guy who will receive packages from the families of missionaries and deliver them to the missionaries. I will try to get his info this week. We buy normal stuff when we go grocery shopping. We shop at Pingüino´s for all of our food and it is basically a Sonny´s from back home. Most of the families are very happy to serve us lunches. At church, they tell us what day they want to serve us, and we show up. I’ll try to get more pictures of the city this week. It’s a lot more of a city than I was expecting, but the town I’m in is one of the bigger ones.

So yeah. Pretty crazy week. Can’t wait for what this next one brings!

Con Amor,

Elder Haley