Parque Leloir- Week #87

Season's Greetings from Parque Leloir


Hey Family!!!

Well, my first week as zone leader was an interesting one. It rained a lot, and keeps on raining. It is weird, because last year it was just hot all summer, but it has rained a lot this year. Everyone is surprised by it, and places are flooding pretty badly on some days. I loved the pictures of your Utah trip, and thanks Dad for the parking spot, so I don’t have to deal with iced windshields. Elder Hinckley is a baller. He is from Knoxville, Tennessee. He is in a band with his brothers, and they have like a legit CD and everything. He has permission to listen to it on the mission, so we listen to it...and they are pretty good. I was impressed. Parque Leloir is a great ward as well. It was RICH!!!!! There are some huge mansions here that I didn’t know existed in Argentina. In the middle of the area are just straight quintas (huge lots of land with huge mansions, swimming pools, guest houses, soccer stadiums, roller coasters, and airport runways) but on the outskirts of that there are normal neighborhoods, which is where we mostly work. Everybody in the ward has a car, which is nice because they can help us go get investigators. Yesterday, we went with some old man, picked up Anahí (investigator) and started driving back, when the old man started to scream that his brakes went out. NO PUEDO FRENAR!! NO PUEDO FRENAR!!! I thought to myself, “Frenar...frenar...I know what that means...oh yeah...brakes...WHAT? ¿NO PUEDE FRENAR? We started taking turns at 30 miles an hour onto slick muddy roads, with an old argentine man frantically trying to change gears and keep control of the car, and I couldn’t help but start laughing. We made it safely to church though don´t worry. He used his brakes to stop in the parking lot so that confused me, but I didn’t ask questions. It was a pretty fun Sunday morning. We worked about 4 of the 7 days of the week I would say, because of meetings, zone leader conference, baptismal interviews, and so forth, but that is fine with me, we still had a lot of time to reach our goals. We have zone conference in two weeks and we have to give a taller (workshop/training thing) on companionship study...what in the world are we supposed to talk about for an hour? Ideas anyone? How are you supposed to make that interesting?

The zone is doing alright...thanks to the hermanas...haha we gave the challenge to everyone to complete with their 140 contacts for the week, and only the hermanas, us, and one other area completed with it. There is definitely some room for some motivational work here. Elder Hinckley and I have been thinking a lot about what we can do to get everyone going. Hopefully this week will be better. We are going to be doing divisions to try and get some people excited.

We have two baptismal dates as of now. Sebastian and Daniel Esteche. Their dad was baptized last transfer and will be getting the priesthood this week to be able to baptize his sons the following Saturday. So the first Saturday in March we should be having two baptisms. Also, there is a kid named Matias that has come to church this week who is golden! He is going to get baptized! He just has to realize that first. We gave him a gospel principles manual and after ward council we came out and he was still there and had read to chapter nine. He is a reference from the Bishop’s daughter...they said they aren’t dating...but I bear testimony that something is going on. She wanted to know when we could start giving the discussions because Matias told her he is going to come every week from now on. In...the...water... So we will be working with him as well. Anahí also came, and is the niece of a member. She is twenty years old, but when we tried to take out a baptismal date, she said she wanted to but it was impossible. She is a godmother in the Catholic Church to 4 children, and if she gets baptized she will “lose them”. We had like an hour long discussion trying to convince her that she can have her god-children, and still be a member of the Church. It gave me a headache. It basically all came down to, she doesn’t believe in the Catholic Church, except for the godmother part, and believes everything about this church but isn’t willing to give up her “children”. I wrote more details down in my journal, it was just a long conversation, but for now she would rather deny the answer God gave her...oooo...ouch. She will come around, because she is really cool. Well, I will be talking to you next week, and let’s see if I can get some pictures sent here. I love you all, nos vemos.

Elder Gilmore

Ps. Also I need to know what airport I am flying into, the abbreviation and if you are picking me up you have to contact church travel offices now...it says so in my trunky papers, my day of arrival is the 21st of June...that Monday. It changed. So write me back.