Ethan's Ten Percent in Argentina: Time is Flying.....60th P-day!

60th p-day in Argentina, nice! I feel older and older in the mission every day. It seems like time is going by a lot faster. I think its going by faster now because I don't think about it as much anymore. In the beginning of my mission I was constantly worried about it, and thinking about the time and it seemed to crawl by. But now that I don't worry about it, when I do occasionally check the time it always surprises me to see how little I have left!

Well this week has been decent, I would've said it was good but we had the huge let down of not having any investigators show up at church. We even went to their houses before the meeting started to try and pick them up, but they weren't home. So that was a let down.

On Wednesday my companion elder mooneyham was still a bit ill, after the district meeting in the morning he just died in bed for a few hours, I let him sleep hoping he would get better. We were able to visit Gimena that night for a bit though, in case you don't remember she is our investigator who speaks english. She had a Book of Mormon in spanish, but she wanted an english one to practice/study her english. She has a huge final exam this week to finish her 7 years of studying english in the national university of cordoba, but she has failed it twice previously. She is nervous about it and is studying 24/7 and says she doesn't have time to read the Book of Mormon right now, but I promised she would do better if she read a chapter I left her. She agreed to do it, and later texted me and said she did it. So please pray for her that she can pass her exam this time.

On thursday we had a lot of technical difficulties, I was trying to download the restoration video to show to some of our investigators, the super old ones, because we feel that it would help them a lot but we were trying to download it for 2 hours it was so annoying. And in the end the dvd player can't even read the file. That just shows me that the video will be really important for them once I get it to work.

On friday the zone leaders came to do exchanges with us. It was fun because I went with my friend elder Welch, he is going home in 2 weeks and he can't believe it. We had a crazy visit with liliana, she is one of best investigators and she accepted a baptismal invitation, she just needs to get married first. She understands that and is willing to do it! She also has some crazy catholic beliefs deeply engrained. She showed us this picture of "the virgin of mate", mate is a cultural drink here, but they worship this virgin and pray to her. Just the mate cracks me up, if you guys came to argentina you would understand the mate and how people drink it 24/7. I drink it a ton too its really good I just hope I can find it in America after the mission.

Saturday was a solid day of work. We had lessons with familia baez (the super old people) and with ximena and her little daughter, and also with americo (the guy with the mangled hand, cant remember if I have talked about him or not). They all said they would most likely be coming to church, and although they didn't this week I still have good hope for them. A little funny story was that while I was talking to some guy in the plaza next to a catholic church, and these 2 girls were looking back at us and while looking they both tripped on a curb and fell down, both of them! It was hilarious. Another thing we did was at 9:20 we were starving, and the store closed at 9:30 and we were pretty far away, but we sprinted there, over a mile, and made it just as it was about to close. Im sure it caused a scene but it was worth it.

Sunday was a rough day because none of our investigators came to church, but we had a good lesson with a kid named mauricio. I don't know why we never had high hopes for him, but sunday he told us he was seriously considering joining the church! His mom said she is fine with him making his own decisions. He is 15 and im sure he will be coming to church next week.

Monday was decent, The main thing I remember was that we talked to a guy who is blind in one eye, and was selling honey on the side of the road. He told us that his kids are all members, and that his son even went on a mission to columbia, and the guy had the name tag in his wallet. It was super cool! We have an appointment with him on friday. He also invited me to come with him to "El Clasico" in a few weeks, its when the two biggest soccer teams from cordoba play each other and its huge here. He is a season ticket holder and he can get one other person in free, I was dying to say yes, but I doubt we would be allowed to go. After the mission I definitely need to go to that match at least once though.

Today for p-day, my old zone, (cordoba west) came up here in the train to spend the day with us, we played soccer and cooked some meat over a fire. It was fun, although I am pretty burnt again.

So this week I finished the Pearl of Great Price, and read the Joesph Smith History. Because I am writing down all my thoughts during the studies now it takes me forever to get through the books, but its better this way. Something that called my attention in the story was verse 6.

6 For, notwithstanding the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect they pleased; yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions.

There are a ton of different churches in the world! Lots of people are confused about why if there is only one God, then why are there so many churches?? We know that if we ask God, He will make that answer known to us, but lots of people have different beliefs and the last thing we should do is contend with people. Lots of times, the best thing we can do is be an example! When people see us living our beliefs they will be able to know that what we believe is true.

Thats about it for the week! Hope everyone is well and having a nice valentines day! Love you all!