Week 23 (I think)

Hola Familia!!

Another great week on the grind!! We have been working hard this week and we had a couple of great things happen! I hope you all had a great week too!!

First.... BAPTISM!!! Yes we had the baptism of Luciano and Amaray on Saturday! It was so great! Amaray asked me to baptize her so that was really cool as well! We didn't have a ton of members there at the baptism but it was still really good and everyone stayed for a while after to chat! I made cookies again and they were a hit like always, I am going to translate it because they all want to learn how to make them!

Okay so to respond to some of your stuff, 

-Mom, yes Hermana Abonizio actually does not speak English at all. They told me that they put your comment into the google translator and then respond and translate it again! Pretty funny! But yes they are called besos (kisses) they kiss on the cheek here, but we don't do it, just the good ole hand shake.

-Park City looked super fun!! That will really need to be on the to do list when I get home!! You guys will have to have a list! and way to go mom, going on the big kid rides ;)

-Mom, The Tarzan song, I actually listen to that song a lot! I got a lot of Disney music from Elder Dillon when I was in NC and that is one of the songs I listen to a lot! Has the same effect!

-Mom, Yes sorry I'm the worst, but no my package was not messed with last time. Lets hope it is the same this time. From what I have heard usually they are fine.

So this week we got to finish our tramites, that was nice to get out of the way and really nice that I was here in Rosario because if not it is a super long trip. (only about 45-60 min for us)

Next week Pday is on Tuesday for the transfers, just so you know.

So this week Newell´s and Central both won their divisions (soccer) for the whole country of Argentina. Those are the two teams that are here in Rosario. Wow was it crazy!!!! People were honking their cars and shooting fireworks for like 3 days after! I love the game day feel here!

This week has been a lot colder!! It isn't too bad during the day, especially because we are walking and everything. But at night I have been sleeping in sweats and my thermal top. It is mostly because we don't have heating, only a small space heater but it is really expensive to keep it running all night.

The new jacket I bought has been great! It is really warm and just better. I am thinking I will give my other one to a family or something here, someone who needs it. Would that be okay?

So the ward activity was great!! They had a lot of little activities and games to play. Empanada contest (Claudia won!), and races and stuff. But the highlight of the activity for us was this game (there are pictures) where each of the kids sat on a chair and their moms put on red lip stick and they raced to see who could kiss their kids face the most times. SOO FUNNY! I think the winner was 15.

We have been teaching Claudia and Maria´s brother and his family lately. They have shown some interest but I will keep you posted on that.

So yes, I watched the meeting thing last night. Did you guys see the Palmers that were in our ward?? So I wish i could say that i got more out of it... but I am not THAT good at Spanish yet... But it was really cool to see so many from the MTC there!

Alright that is it till next time!! I hope you guys have a great week! And pray that I get to say in Las Heras for at least another transfer!! (Barrio means ward/neighborhood by the way) I am so grateful

for all of you!! Love you!!

Elder Sisk ♥

Baptism of Luciano and Amaray

Elder Sisk and Amaray

Dinner at Pamela's with Elder Welsh and his new companion

Study time with Elder Clavero

They've been cooking a bit :)

Tug O War at the ward activity

 

Ward activity - Moms kissing kid's faces

Week 22 of the Mish!!

Hola Familia!

Happy Father´s Day Dad!!!!

This week flew by! I feel like it was only yesterday that I was sitting here in the Ciber writing an email to you guys! Things are starting to pick back up again and we are starting to find more people to teach. Things went kinda dead for a bit, it is really hard to keep it going after having a ton of success in an area. But we are working hard!

Okay I am going to start with your questions because I have not been very good at answering them lately.

Mom, Yes a lot of people sleep the siesta but a lot just chill in their house and drink mate too, just depends.

That is SOOOO funny about Cole! Me and my comp were both laughing hard at that. I'm proud that he didn't let him push him around. A lot of missionaries don't fully understand that it needs to be even.

Dad, My Spanish is getting A TON better. I have gotten a lot of compliments lately. Obviously I am not a pro or fluent at this point, but to answer your next question, I think i could get along pretty well if I was alone. I can buy stuff, ask directions, and order food from Subway so that's all I need right? But yes it is improving a lot. I even catch myself thinking in Spanish at times. Obedience is key!

Dad, My companion is short. He is from Uruguay and he likes basketball a ton which is cool! We get along well for the most part, but being from different countries there are times we have different ways of doing things and stuff but that is just part of it. He has only 1 sister as well and he will have gone for 3 years and 9 months without seeing here by the end of his mission. She served in Chile and was gone when he left. He finishes his mission in January.

Yeah it was really great to see Welsh, He said he likes being AP.

Okay so for this week:

We met this lady with a bunch of cats (i think i told you) well we went back and taught her. Her name is Laura (pronounced lauda in Spanish) she is suuper nice and loves us!! She is hard to teach though because she is constantly going off on some rant. We have high hopes for her though, I feel like she would make a great Mormon grandma who just spoils all the kids in the ward! hahah

I was able to help some of the Latin missionaries in our zone with their English booklets (its a mission thing for them to learn English) at district meeting and that was really fun.

We taught this guy named Jose 2 times now. He is crazy, but so funny. He is all over the place all the time, and LOVES the US. He is always asking me questions... weird questions. Like if they have the death penalty and electric chair in Utah. 

This week I had Tramites which is the papers you have to fill out to renew your visa and get an Argentina ID. I wasn't able to do it, so we have to go back tomorrow. But it will be kinda cool to have and ID card from here. 

One morning we were on our way to a street that we wanted to contact and I had some guy yell CIA, CIA, CIA at me. I guess this is really common for tall Yankees(American) missionaries here. Also right after that There was this group of girls close to my age and I could tell they were looking at us. As we got close to them they started to cross the street and one of them looked at me and said ¨hey, mi amor¨. I cant help it, I guess I'm just too cute :) hahaha

This week was suuuuper humid for a couple of days! Big change for a Utah boy. I was so sweaty for a few days. They weather has been really random this week. Hot and cold.

We went to visit this investigator this week and her and her brother were singing karaoke on youtube. It was super fun and they are really good at singing. They are 2 who investigated the church a long time ago, but we are starting to talk to them again. This was a good way to gain some trust with them and be able to just have fun. They both love to sing English songs. Neither of them speak English but they can sing the songs with almost no accent! I was pretty impressed.

I cut my hair by myself on Saturday! (picture coming) I bought some hair clippers from my zone leader who is going home in 2 weeks for like 15 dollars. It will be nice to have, I think I will just always keep my hair pretty short. It is a lot easier to deal with.

I have also started a new goal, I am going to take pictures of the day. I want to take at least one picture each day of something random. This will help me take more pictures because I am a little bit out of the habit since welsh left.

We have been eating more alfajors... They are really good! I am trying to limit myself a little bit because 1- I don't want to get fat and 2- they get expensive after a while.

I ate another tomato this week. There are a lot of missionaries here who started their missions hating tomatoes and now they love them. So maybe I will go over to the dark side... who knows?

Yesterday I was able to bless the sacrament in Spanish for the first time. It was really cool to do!

 

Luciano and Amaray Juncos are set to be baptized this Saturday! I am so blessed to be able to work with the Juncos family. They are so great, we were able to go give Maria and Claudia´s mom a blessing this week. Their family is very special to me. 

That is all that I have this week! I love you all so much and I hope you have a wonderful week!! I am so grateful and I thank my Heavenly Father daily for the family and friends that I have, I am very blessed. Loves!!

♥Elder Sisk

Week 8! Wow!!

Hola Familia!

This week was really rough, our numbers were really low and we just could not seem to get our lessons to stick. We had a lot of doors closed in our face and a lot of excuses! But.... We are still working hard and we have Amaray and Luciano moving towards baptism! I also want to apologize, I forgot my camera today so I wont be able to send pictures. SORRY!!!

On Monday we had lunch with Pamela and her family. It was really fun because Elder Welsh and his new comp Elder Yarro came down for the lunch too. It was really fun to be with Welsh again in her house.  I also ate a tomato for the first time on my mission and...... It was not bad hahaha

We were contacting this week and we had a man open the door and before we could even say a word he said ¨nope we are all satanics here¨ and closed the door. I couldn't even hold the laughter in! That is very typical to get crazy excuses and people who will just shut us down before we say anything.

I bought a book from the mission office called stories of the Book of Mormon. I bought it for the Juncos family because they have some little kids. It was such a good idea, Luciano read 28 chapters in the first day and almost finished the book by the next time we say him. Amaray read a bunch too! Also with them, we are moving their baptism back 1 week because of fathers day next Sunday. But we taught the word of wisdom lesson and Luciano has a piercing in his lip (very common here) and we told him that it would be best to take it out. He stood right up, walked in the other room, and when he came back it was gone! Such a stud!!

As you may have noticed, Silvia was not above when I said who was preparing for baptism... She got really sick and I guess that the doctor told her that she needs to smoke marijuana in order to keep her feeling well. She told us that she doesn´t want to keep having us over since she can´t follow the word of wisdom. We are still trying to work with her though. I will keep you posted.

Have I told you about how siesta works?  It is the hardest thing ever as a missionary because no one is willing to answer the door or have a lesson. It is a solid 3 hours of hard boring work.

There was also an Argentina soccer game this week and that also is a time that we couldn't work. Luckily we had a lesson with the Juncos family that night so it didn't affect us too much.

On Saturday we spent the morning in the hospital with the brother of our mission president´s wife. He is at a hospital really close to our house and we went to stay with him for a while so his wife could go home and rest. It was really nice to be able to do. We also might have caught a glimpse of Sports Center while we were there ;) but most of it was about soccer.

We had a dog with legit dreadlocks follow us for over a mile on Saturday too. there are a lot of really gross looking dogs here! haha

I am sorry that I don't have much more to say this week, it was a very slow week but we are still working hard and my Spanish is coming along really fast. I'm not pro but it is improving a lot!

I love you all and have a great week!!

Elder Sisk

Another Week Down South!!

Hola Familia!!

Wow what a week it was! We have been working super hard and had a few really great experiences!

Okay now on to my usual hit ¨hit the random highlights of the week¨. Silvia was not baptized because she got really sick this week and spent almost all week in bed. She also did not quit smoking in time, on Monday we had to go talk to her and tell her that she couldn't be baptized and it was the saddest thing. This 51 year old woman who I have come to love so much, just starts crying when we told her. I bore my testimony to her about trials that we have in our lives, and I felt like the gift of tongues was really working at that time because the words were just coming. We are going to keep working with her, I know she can do it!!

On Monday we went downtown to the shopping. I bought a new jacket because I decided that I really don't like the one that we bought at Mr. Mac. (Also, Mr. Mac sucks, I had to redo the hem in the pants we bought from them... oh well its all part of the experience!) While we were shopping I found this jacket that was 1,500 pesos ($300) and if I was not a missionary I would have spent a lot of time thinking about buying it! hah

This week I have been working on being perfectly obedient, because obedience brings miracles and that is literally how I am learning Spanish. It is coming so fast, now that I have Clavero. Honestly every day my Spanish improves in some way or another. But I also know that if we are obedient, we will continue to find success. We gave baptism dates to 2 kids ages(11) and (13). I know that if we are still obedient we will continue to have more success.

I decided that Heavenly Father is really trusting our family right now.  He is trusting us to take good care of His children. Last night we had a Fireside with Pres Giuliani with the YSAs in our stake. There was a comment made about callings in the church and how they are callings over an area, not over the people who are filling the seats on Sundays. I thought this was really interesting and something that everyone can be better at for sure.

I talked to Carla about the message she sent you. That was really nice, because she doesn't speak that great of English! She wants to learn really badly though! She is great!

This week we contacted (yes mom, we usually just start ringing random doorbells or clapping outside of their gates. Here when they have a gate, you don't go in, you clap from the street.) a lady who told us she has over 20 cats.... haha we have not gone back yet, but I am a little nervous of what her house may look like! hah

There was a soccer game this week Newell´s is one of the big teams here in Rosario and my area is almost entirely Newells fans. The game was late at night and every time Newells scored, there was honking, yelling, cannon blasts, and cheering for about 15 minutes straight! (no joke) I love the way people get into the soccer here. It has taught me new ways to watch the Twolves games after the mish ;)

So nothing screams YOUR NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE like seeing 8 cop cars and 2 motorcycles pull up in front of a house down the street and them searching like 3 houses and patting everyone down. haha I thought, wow that is probably more cops than the entire Springville PD! This happened while we were helping a family paint their house on Friday!

So Elder Clavero is from Zach´s mission in Uruguay. I am finding out that Zach and I are pretty much eating the same food, and have a lot of things very very similar!

Well I hope you all have a great week! I love you, and you are in my prayers every day!

♥Elder Sisk

Alex and Elder Clavero